What is automation testing and its types?

November 26, 2022 0 By Saasha

The software testing process is being transformed by automation on a massive scale and that means testers must have excellent automation skills. An automation testing course will teach you all the skills you’ll need to improve the pace and quality of software delivery while staying relevant in your career.

What is automation?

Before we start with Automation Testing, it is necessary to define the term “automation”. Automation is a process that uses technology to automate a manual activity and aims to prevent or minimize human/manual effort. Now let’s see how automation can help in software testing.

It means creating test cases once and then running them as many times as needed to test the software. Manual testing is a laborious and time-consuming process, and using automated testing speeds up the testing process. Because once written test scripts can be automatically run indefinitely, there is no need for human interaction.

What is automation testing?

Test cases are run automatically as part of software testing, known as automation testing, using an automation tool. In other words, it streamlines the manual testing process. The tester writes scripts and they are then run on demand or on a regular schedule as needed. As a result, testing time is cut in half, enabling more frequent product launches.

Defining an automated test tool

Since we’ve already defined “automation” and then “test automation”, it doesn’t seem like the limitation of the test automation tool will cause us any trouble. Let’s begin:

A test automation tool allows individuals to specify software testing tasks to be performed with minimal human intervention.

There are many different kinds of test automation tools and it’s important to remember that. They may differ in the types of applications they test, namely web, desktop and mobile, in the way the test cases are executed (by writing code in a scripting language, by writing code in a complete programming language, by recording the steps performed using a GUI), in their licenses ( free, freemium, commercial) and many other factors.

Types of automation frameworks

A framework is a set of automation rules that can be beneficial in the following scenarios:
Maintaining testing consistency
Improving the structuring of tests
Minimizing code consumption
It allows even non-technical testers to participate in the testing process
Improving code reusability
Frameworks used in automation testing often fall into one of four categories:
Based on the data
Keyword driven
Modular
Hybrid

Behavior Driven Development Framework (BDDF) and Linear Scripting Framework (LSF) are also used in automated testing.

Types of automation tests

After familiarizing yourself with automation frameworks, you may be interested in learning about the many forms of automation testing. Depending on your application, different testing methods can be automated, and in this section we have discussed the most critical types of automation testing.

Unit Testing:

The components and units of a web application are tested under unit testing. Unit testing of a web application is done during the development process. It is also the first step in the web application testing process.

Smoke testing:

Smoke testing is done to find out whether the deployed build is stable or not. To simplify, they verify the operation of critical functions so that testers can move on to other tasks.

Functional Testing:

Functional testing is used to see if all the features of your web application are working as planned. Functional testing

covers the following areas:

user interface, API, database, security, client/server application, and overall site operation.

Integration Testing:

Application modules are logically linked and tested as a group in integration testing. The primary goal of this test is to verify data transfer between the various components of your web application.

Regression Testing:

Regression testing is primarily used to ensure that a recent code update does not break any of your web application’s existing functionality. Simply put, it checks that the existing code continues to work the same way it did before with the new changes.

Additionally, there are several automated tests that need to run in addition to the above.

What are the different types of test automation tools?

Test automation solutions come in different flavors. The sheer number of available options can overwhelm the process of analyzing and choosing the right tool. To help you, in this section we will briefly review how we might classify testing tools.

Codeless vs. code-based vs. hybrid tools:

For example, some test automation systems require coding knowledge while others do not. Hybrid instruments combine the most important features of both worlds and are increasingly popular. They allow non-coders such as testers and other professionals to create test cases using a visual interface. Using a language like JavaScript, engineers can further refine these test cases.

Commercial vs. open-source:

Pricing and licensing models for test automation tools can vary widely. Others are proprietary but have a free version or at least a free trial. In addition, test automation solutions are increasingly being delivered through a SaaS model. The client pays a monthly or annual subscription fee. Mobile vs. web vs. computer: Different types of software are supported by different test automation technologies. It is possible to have tools to target desktop applications. When people talk about testing tools, they often refer to online and mobile apps. Web testing is a vast field that can be further divided into many subtypes for ease of use.

Production vs. Non-production testing:

Finally, it is becoming increasingly common and valuable to perform various types of testing on an application after it has been deployed. Several techniques include synthetic and non-synthetic monitoring, chaotic engineering, A/B testing, canary release, and stress and performance testing in production.

That’s the cover

If you haven’t already, we hope this short introduction to the different forms of test automation and test automation frameworks has helped you better understand test automation. Just try to try out some tools.