In quest of automation tools ...

As automation is catching up like wild fire in software testing field – people are frantically searching for cost efficient ways to do automation. Some cash rich companies are investing in industry standard and proven automation solutions from leading tools vendors like Mercury, Rational, Compuware and Segue – other “not_so_rich” companies are struggling around “open source” free tools. Some of the product companies like Microsoft, CISCO – invest in developing their own in house tools. So, broadly we have three categories of automation tools in testing – Commercial automation tools, Open source tools and in-house tools. The first two are available to testing community at large. The information about commercial tools is rather well known and is available at respective websites

Mercury - http://www.mercury.com

Compuware - http://www.compuware.com

Rational - http://www-306.ibm.com/software/awdtools/tester/functional/index.html
(It is quite surprising to see that the information about "once highly popular automation tool" Rational Robot - has gone so deeper into IBM site - it is hardly visible link on IBM main site)

Segue - http://www.segue.com


Here are some free tools on web (a partial list based on my own searching of such free tools).

1. Watir – Web application testing in Ruby http://wtr.rubyforge.org/
2. Watir Web Recorder - http://www.mjtnet.com/watir_webrecorder.htm
3. Open source testing tools http://opensourcetesting.org/
(Note that these are “TESTING” tools not “AUTOMATION” tools)
4. Selenium- A test tool for web applications- http://www.openqa.org/selenium/
5. TestMaker – Framework for Test automation of web based applications and Web services. http://www.pushtotest.com/Downloads/

This is ever growing list – Good thing is that more and more people are investing in developing Open source tools. This will build up pressure on Commercial automation tool vendor to offer tools that are cheaper price and rich in functionality.

Shrini