Automated Test Script Executing Tool

Abstract

Software testing process is a critical aspect of any software development process as it is essential to verify the software product for its proper functionality with the expected quality level. With the recent developments happening in software testing domain, test automation has been attracting a lot of attention from the industry as a result of urgent need to increase the productivity of the process while maintaining the accuracy. The present day test automation tools (MarathonITE, Selenium, and Sikuli) have a wide variety of features which makes them more suitable for different contexts. However, most of them has several problems in common. Some significant problem areas identified are; need to access the code for GUI component identification, not being able to execute batches of test scripts, requirement of customized test reports for high quality outcomes, and not having compatibility with other technologies used in the product etc. Though these problems have been resolved in certain tools, there was not a single tool which has catered to all the issues. Thus, through this research project it was intended to come up with a test automation tool which could help to address all the aforementioned issues. Image processing based GUI component identification is gaining a lot of popularity in the context of test automation. Thus this project used a supporting tool called Sikuli which could perform the initial tasks such as test script creation. Then the developed tool through this research project will include the functionalities of executing a flow of test scripts (which were created by the supporting tool), and generating customized test reports based on test statistics etc. The specialty of this automated test script executing tool is that it does not require the code level access and doesn’t require a customized framework to be compatible with the other technologies. The prototype of the tool is developed using key technologies and tools such as Java, Python, OpenCV, and Sikuli APIs. The tools underwent several testing processes to ensure that it is serving the purpose in the correct way. Further, this prototype of the tool was also subjected to the evaluations of the stakeholders of the test automation domain such as QA leads, QA engineers and Software engineers etc.