Test Automation Tool comparison – Selenium vs QTP

“This whitepaper has been created as a guide to help QA Heads understand, compare and implement industry’s best test automation tools – HP UFT/QTP and Selenium.”

Introduction

It’s a known fact – Automated testing will shorten development cycles, avoid cumbersome repetitive tasks and improve software quality. But how do you get started? Success in any Test Automation (TA) effort lies in identifying the right tool for automation. There are so many test automation tools (both open source and commercial) available in the market and it is extremely important to choose the right tool that best suits your overall requirements. But it is always wise to set a benchmark by comparing HP Quick Test Pro or HP Unified Functional Testing and Selenium as these tools have been the talking point in the automated testing tools market and they have acquired the majority of the tools market share. So we will start from one of the pioneers in the Test Automation space – HP Quick Test Pro (aka HP UFT).

HP Quick Test Pro (QTP) or HP Unified Functional Testing (UFT)

Without a doubt, the most dominant commercial player in the market when it comes to functional automation is QTP. It is an easy and extremely user-friendly tool that works well with Windows & Web-based applications.

Let us talk about the advantages first:

The primary language is VB script and tool being power-packed with features, Organization doesn’t need to have a skilled coder to write a basic automation script. Its related add-ons give you the flexibility and power to test web services and service virtualization.
Object repository is one of the greatest features of any commercial tool that automatically suffices a need to be component-oriented. This tool is at its best when it comes to navigation, results in invalidation and reports, etc. and Organizations don’t need to worry about the integration of QTP with other supporting components.
QTP is integrated with Quality Center so different high-quality dashboards can be configured. Another big advantage is the different types & level of support you would get in case you run into technical issues. You would always have someone to bank upon for services & solutions

Now the other side of the coin – Disadvantages:

QTP is phenomenally costly when you compare it with any open-source or commercial tools and license cost is entirely dependent on volume and the type of licenses. On top of it, if you want to have add-ins integrated, you further need to shell out additional hundreds of dollars.
The licensing cost is not done with a one-time purchase but it stretches over years to come since applications will always mature over a period of time with new features and technology to meet the demands of the competitive market.
If Organizations upgrade their applications and don’t upgrade QTP, then it would be technically impossible to sustain automation allowing all the dollars spent on tool & effort spent by automation resources. Hence, Organization needs to continuously spend to upgrade QTP for new features that support new technology.
Though the scripting time is less, the execution time is relatively higher as it takes the entire armor along pushing load on CPU & RAM. Also, it primarily caters to windows environments and a limited number of browsers support.

Selenium

As a marque tool in the open-source test automation space, QA decision-makers always feel good if something comes to them as a freebie especially in the cost-consuming test automation space. Selenium has the open-source edge and moreover, it supports a variety of languages that include Java, Python, PHP, C#, Ruby, and even pure JavaScript. Selenium is at present the most powerful Open Source Automation tool available and it is based on java scripting to a large extent. It is more suited for the agile methodology of coding and testing.

From the advantages perspective, here are the few:

Selenium supports many languages such as Java, C#, ruby, python. It doesn’t support windows based applications but is one of the best tools for web-based automation and supports all browsers such as IE, FF, Chrome, Safari, etc.
Being into open source world, Selenium can integrate with just about anything to give you a robust framework such as Maven or Ant for source code compilation, Test NG to drive tests (unit or functional or integration), Jenkins or Hudson or Cruise Control to integrate into a Continuous Integration and different reports or dashboards out of Jenkins.
Selenium also helps you enter bugs or issues into JIRA (Bug management tool) through Jenkins. With the help of Jenkins or Grid, testers can connect multiple nodes to run different tests in parallel.
Cost is the biggest advantage as it is freeware and is integrated with other open-source tools. As mentioned above, the only cost that you need to spend is on the human resource (single or team) who knows all of the above stuff.

Now let us look into the disadvantages part:

Organizations need to invest in a resource that knows coding as per standards. The resource should also be well versed in framework architecture and various components that fit in.
Tool support is done by way of communities and more and more people are joining together to contribute to providing solutions and support free-ware. But issues may not be addressed in the next release cycle like any other commercial vendors do routinely. So it can potentially leave Organizations by themselves to find a solution on their own and contribute to the community or wait for someone to give a solution.

Comparison Matrix:

Conclusion

At the end of the day, it is as simple as buying a branded car and assembling a car on your own. The branded car has its cost & services attached whereas, in the assembled car, you need to take care of everything on your own. But, there is a hybrid solution where you can go to a custom workshop to get an assembled car (sales and post-sales support) and pay for their services.

The same concept is now available in IT too such as you go to a service provider who has everything i.e. who has developed automation frameworks using different open source components, who has coders ready to put in muscle & tissue to the pre-existing wire-frame and deliver it to you. This concept is the new trend in town and many companies have switched to open source frameworks built by service providers thereby reducing their overall product cost.

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