Automated Regression Tests: The Growing Significance & 5 Strong Tools

The year 2018 will see more devices being launched, which will increase the need for software quality assurance and testing. Automated Regression Testing tools are developed in a way to handle these growing needs for aggressive testing. Specifically, for testing and developing software applications for various purposes. These applications will eventually get more complex and teams will have to stay assured that the application is functional, secure, and operational in every way and as expected.

Regression tests are run to assess whether any new error or issue is due to recent changes in the software. Hence, the software is tested before making that change and retested after making that change. For select areas, teams also need to analyze whether a software is facing an issue due to new bugs and also to check whether the recent changes have achieved their intended objectives.

Moreover, Automated Regression testing is needed to ensure that a new feature is introduced without impacting the functioning of operation of other features. The release is tested and followed by addition of test cases to the regression testing list. There is a growing need for this type of testing to help businesses to adopt new technology and get them in order to achieve their business objectives.

For instance, let’s consider the recent craze around robotics and human bots. The software or the software applications that control their actions must be aggressively tested to ensure that the results are in line with their objectives. Otherwise, it can result in dissatisfaction and failure in adopting the technology. Additionally, it would result in waste of efforts and investments.

With an objective to ensure that the tests are effortlessly and scrupulously conducted, enterprises leverage automated testing tools to conduct regression tests. Both Open-Source tools and licensed tools can be leveraged to do the same. It totally depends on the objective of the project, or the kind of application, and the capabilities of the team to decide whether to go with licensed or open source tools.

5 Tools for Performing Automated Regression Tests

The 5 tools listed below are a combination of both. We don’t claim that they are the best, but they are some of the strong contenders in the testing and development space.

Selenium
Selenium as a testing framework has been endorsed and leveraged quite extensively by testers and developers over the last few years. It has been one of the most popular open source automation frameworks in the field. It is majorly used for testing web applications across diverse browsers and platforms such as Windows, Mac, and Linux. It is a user-friendly tool and helps testers to write tests across different programming languages such as Java, PHP, C#, Python, Groovy, Ruby, and Perl. Hence, there is no need for teams to develop special skills to use the Selenium Testing framework.

Moreover, it also offers record and playback features to develop tests even without learning Selenium IDE. It supports almost all popularly used browsers to conduct tests when compared to other testing tools. Reference to Regression testing, it is one of the most considered automated regression testing tools for web application testing. Specifically, Selenium WebDriver is used to build robust, browser-based regression automation suits and tests.

Official link: Selenium

TestComplete
This Test Automation platform is from Smartbear, with desktop, web, and mobile testing tools. It is widely used for automating functional and regression tests. It is a licensed tool, which supports creation of tests across different languages such as JavaScript, C++ Script, C#Script, VB Script, Python, and JScript. Additionally, it supports integration across varying source control systems and provides an Automated Test Recording Engine for developing test cases.

With reference to reporting, the platform can generate reports that comprise detailed logs. It also offers built-in keyword-driven testing operations and runs regression tests also for UI changes.

Official Link: TestComplete

LeanFT
HPE’s Lean Functional Tool – LeanFT is a powerful and lightweight functional test automation tool with added features to deliver effective results in Continuous Delivery and Test Automation for Agile project implementation and DevOps. It is leveraged for functional, regression, service testing, and helps developers and testers to collaborate effectively in building high-quality software/applications. The tool automates testing with an in-built, visual user experience that ties manual, automated, and framework-based testing together in one IDE.

It further helps cut down costs and complexities associated with the functional testing process to build continuous quality. HPE LeanFT further helps automate user actions on web or client-based applications. Additionally, it creates and executes tests on Mac, Linux, or Windows platforms. It is a developer friendly framework that helps create robust and reusable Selenium tests with its tools – Object Identification Center and Object locators and utilities.

Official website: LeanFT

Ranorex
Ranorex Studio offers an array of automation testing tools that cover testing across all desktop, web, and mobile applications. It is loaded with various features such as GUI recognition, reusable test codes, and bug detection mechanism. It further helps in integration across various tools and provides a record and playback facility to run the tests.

Moreover, Ranorex license enables effective desktop, web, and mobile application testing, as it can be effectively integrated within the current testing environments and can be adapted across standard programming languages. It is a tool that can be seamlessly implemented and used, which makes it popular amongst testers as well as developers.

Official website: Ranorex

Serenity
Serenity is a Java-based test automation framework that seamlessly integrates with behaviour-driven development tools such as Cucumber and JBehave. It further enables you to keep your test scenarios at a macro level and automates micro level implementation details in your reports. It an open-source tool that is designed to ease the process of automating regression tests.

One of the key highlights of the tool is that it binds with Selenium WebDriver and BDD tools, making BDD and Selenium tests quicker and effortless.

Official Website: Serenity

In Conclusion

Zion Market Research’s report titled ‘Test Automation Market by Test Type’ provides a global industry perspective, comprehensive Analysis, and Forecast on the market for 2016 – 2022”. According to the report, the global test automation market was valued at approximately USD 15.87 billion in 2016 and is expected to reach approximately USD 54.98 billion by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 23.01% between 2017 and 2022. Whether it is functional testing, regression testing, or security testing; market statistics imply that the need for automation will grow as technologies evolve and get accepted into mainstream.

Cigniti’s systematic approach to Regression Testing ensures minimum disruption while keeping costs under control. Our Regression Testing suite guarantees that the new features or enhancements to the application do not cause any unintended impact to the existing quality of the applications.

Connect with our test teams to build the perfect test environment to build robust applications for the future.