The Future of Test Automation Q. Is it OpenSource

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The Future of Test AutomationQ. Is it OpenSource?
Test Managers Forum Jan 2008

• Facilitator - Duncan Brigginshaw
• Director, Odin Technology Ltd.

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The Rise of OpenSource
Development/Test Tools
CM CVS,Subversion
IDE Eclipse
Unit Testing JUnit, NUnit
Jboss
Build Tools Ant, Nant
34.8 IT managers polled have Jboss - BZ Research
2006
Apache, MySQL
50.8 Webservers Market Share (Netcraft 2007)
44 RDBMS Market share (EDC 2007)
Linux, FreeBSD
37.6 Servers Market Share (IDC Projection 2008 )
3
Current Commercial Tools

• Current Market Leaders
• HP Mercury, IBM Rational, Compuware, Empirix,
  Borland
• Others - AutomatedQA, Seapine, Original, Odin
• Tool Architecture
• IDE with Language, Recorder, Visual Creation
  Tools, Wizards, Mapping tools, Logs, Execution

4
Open Source Testing Tools

• Current Available 70
• Strongest Presence
• Watir/Watin/Watij
• Web Application Testing In Ruby/.NET/Java
• Huge resource of supporting tools Firewatir,
  Watir Recorder , Wet, Cubictest, Visual Studio
• 58,000 Downloads (to 18th Jan 2008)
• Selenium
• Javascript browser tool Tests in Tables or
  .NET, Java, Perl, Python, Ruby
• Selenium IDE, Molybdenum, Selenium RC
• www.opensourcetesting.org 100,000 Registered
  Users
• Others
• Sahi, PyWinAuto, Floyd, Frankenstein, AutoIT,
  Abbot/Costello
• Load Performance 35
• WebLoad (RadView), Jmeter, OpenSTA

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Is OpenSource the Future for Test Automation?
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Skills - Resources

• Commercial tools have a large base of Experts
• How are tools really used?
• Table/Data driven Frameworks (Homegrown and
  commercial)
• Open source tools rely on a Mainstream
  Programming Language for scripting and
  development
• C, Java, Ruby, Python
• Could a Developer be the Tool Expert?

7
Support Maintenance

• OpenSource has support facilities
• Its OpenSource!
• Fix your own issues contribute
• Adapt, extend, contribute new features
• Could hiring an OpenSource Developer replace a
  commercial support function?

8
Training

• Surprisingly commercial training is available!
• Watir and Junit/Nunit training courses
• www.trainingpages.com
• Other Open Source training
• http//www.opensourcetraining.co.uk/
• Training in C, Ruby, Python, Java readily
  available
• Frameworks tend to be written in house and
  training developed (or commercial frameworks)

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Supported Environments

• Objection Lack of Environment support and
  Integration (Test management, CM)
• Who is part of a Web (Browser) or WebService
  based development project?
• What are the others?
• Most commercial tools have open APIs.
• Build it! Its Opensource after all.

10
Conclusions