Understanding OCR

OCR is a technology used to convert scanned documents or images containing text into computer-readable text, allowing automated data extraction and analysis.

Real-life Applications of OCR in Automation Testing

Extracting Data: Extract crucial information like invoice numbers from invoices, receipts, or forms. By using this, we can perform validations, ensuring that software correctly processes and stores such information.

Test Data Generation: Reads test data from legacy systems or documents and creates test scenarios and test cases, reducing manual effort in data preparation.

Example 1: Extract product details, prices, and customer information from invoices and purchase orders. This is used to perform end-to-end testing, ensuring accurate order processing and improving customer experience.

Example 2: Digitize prescriptions and medical reports which are used in automated testing of EHR systems, guaranteeing the correct storage and recovery of patient information, medications, and treatment histories.

Introduction to NLP

NLP is a branch of artificial intelligence that helps computers understand, interpret, and generate human language. Its role is to bridge the gap between human communication and machine understanding, allowing software to process, analyze, and respond to text and speech data in a way that resembles human language comprehension.

Real-Time Examples of NLP in Automation Testing

Log Analysis: Identifies patterns and errors in log data, automates the detection of exceptions, and reduces the need for physical log inspection.

Test Case Generation: Converts natural language requirements into executable test cases. By translating textual descriptions of desired functionalities, NLP streamlines test case creation, ensuring that test cases accurately reflect intended behavior and reducing the time required for test design and scripting.

Chatbot Testing: By simulating user conversations with natural language, NLP ensures the chatbot’s understanding and ability to provide appropriate responses, improving overall functionality and user experience.

Accessibility Testing: Assesses the clarity and correctness of textual content for screen readers and visually impaired users.

Localization Testing: Automatically compares source and target language content to ensure that localized versions of software or websites accurately reflect the original text and cultural requirements for various global audiences.

Integration of OCR and NLP

Combining OCR and NLP in automation testing allows for advanced capabilities, such as extracting and comprehending text from images or documents, enabling sophisticated data validation and test case generation.

Extracting Text from Images: OCR can extract text from images, making content machine-readable. NLP can then analyze the extracted text, allowing automation scripts to validate the information in image-based UI testing.

Sentiment Analysis on User Reviews: NLP can perform sentiment analysis on user reviews, categorizing opinions as positive, negative, or neutral. Combined with OCR, you can extract textual reviews from images or unstructured data sources, enabling automation to assess user sentiment without manual data entry.

Benefits of Using OCR and NLP in Automation Testing

The integration of OCR and NLP minimizes manual effort in data entry and test case generation, allowing testing teams to focus on higher-level tasks. Additionally, these technologies excel at handling complex scenarios, such as analyzing vast amounts of textual and visual data, enhancing test coverage, and overall testing effectiveness.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the synergy of OCR and NLP in automation testing promises a transformative leap in efficiency, accuracy, and coverage, ushering in a new era of software quality assurance where intricate testing challenges can be met with ease, precision, and speed.

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In this blog, we will explore the importance of test automation, its role, and benefits, why businesses need it, and highlight the top test automation tools for 2023.

The role and benefits of test automation are multifold. Test automation helps organizations to:

• Achieve Faster Testing: Automation enables the execution of many tests in a short amount of time, allowing for faster testing cycles and quicker feedback on application quality.

• Enhance Test Coverage: Automation allows for comprehensive test coverage, ensuring that all critical functionalities and scenarios are thoroughly tested, reducing the risk of potential defects slipping through.

• Improve Accuracy: Automated tests are highly accurate and consistent, reducing the likelihood of human errors and ensuring reliable results.

• Save Time and Resources: Automation eliminates the need for repetitive manual testing tasks, freeing up resources to focus on more strategic activities, such as test design and analysis.

• Enhance Collaboration: Automation facilitates collaboration among different teams, such as developers, testers, and business stakeholders, enabling faster issue resolution and better alignment on testing objectives.

• Enable Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD): Automation enables seamless integration with CI/CD pipelines, allowing for faster and more frequent releases of software applications.

Also Read:  Digital Assurance and Digital Engineering – The pillars of Digital Transformation

Top 15 Automation Testing Tools

1. Selenium

Selenium is a widely used open-source automation testing framework that supports multiple programming languages like Java, C#, and Python. It provides a wide range of features for functional testing, including cross-browser testing, parallel testing, and integration with various testing frameworks.

2. Appium

Appium is an open-source mobile automation testing framework that supports both Android and iOS platforms. It supports testing of native, hybrid, and web applications and provides a robust set of APIs for interacting with mobile devices and simulators/emulators.

3. TestComplete

TestComplete is a comprehensive automation testing tool that supports both web and desktop applications. It offers a record and playback feature, supports multiple scripting languages like JavaScript, Python, and VBScript, and provides a wide range of built-in testing functions.

4. Cucumber

Cucumber is a popular tool for behavior-driven development (BDD) that allows testers, developers, and business stakeholders to collaborate and create tests in a natural language format. It supports multiple programming languages and integrates with various testing frameworks.

5. Robot Framework

Robot Framework is an open-source, keyword-driven automation testing framework that uses a simple tabular syntax. It supports both web and desktop applications and provides an extensible set of libraries for various testing tasks.

6. TestCafe

TestCafe is a free and open-source JavaScript-based automation testing tool that supports web applications. It provides built-in support for handling multiple tabs, iframes, and pop-ups, and offers cross-browser and parallel testing capabilities.

7. JUnit

JUnit is a popular testing framework for Java applications that provides annotations and assertions for writing unit tests. It integrates with various build tools and continuous integration (CI) servers, making it suitable for agile and DevOps environments.

8. TestNG

TestNG is another popular testing framework for Java applications that offers advanced features like support for data-driven testing, parallel testing, and test configuration through XML files. It provides rich reporting and supports integration with various tools and frameworks.

9. Protractor

Protractor is a widely used automation testing tool for Angular applications. It supports end-to-end testing and provides a built-in set of locators for testing Angular-specific elements.

10. WinAppDriver

WinAppDriver is a Windows Application Driver that allows automation of Windows desktop applications. It supports multiple programming languages like C#, Java, and Python, and provides a rich set of APIs for interacting with Windows applications.

11. Cypress

Cypress is a fast, modern, and developer-friendly automation testing framework for web applications. It provides an easy-to-use API for writing tests in JavaScript and offers features like real-time testing, debugging, and cross-browser testing.

12. SoapUI

SoapUI is a popular open-source tool for testing web services and APIs. It provides a comprehensive set of features for functional, security, and load testing of APIs, and supports multiple protocols like SOAP, REST, and GraphQL

13. Appium Studio

Appium Studio is a commercial version of Appium that offers additional features like enhanced reporting, parallel testing, and test analytics. It supports both Android and iOS platforms and provides a user-friendly interface for creating and managing tests.

14. Ranorex

Ranorex is a commercial automation testing tool that provides a wide range of features for desktop, web, and mobile testing. It offers a record and playback feature, supports multiple programming languages, and provides a rich set of reporting and analysis capabilities.

15. Katalon Studio

Katalon Studio is a popular free and open-source automation testing tool that supports web, mobile, and API testing. It provides a rich set of features for test creation, execution, and reporting, and offers integrations with various testing frameworks and tools.

Conclusion

As organizations continue to emphasize the importance of software quality and efficiency, test automation tools play a crucial role in achieving these goals. The top test automation tools for 2023, including Selenium, Appium, Cypress, TestComplete, and Robot Framework, offer advanced features, integrations, and capabilities to streamline testing efforts, improve productivity, and ensure the delivery of high-quality software products.

The post Top 15 Automation Testing Tools for 2023: Enhance Your Testing Efforts for Successful Digital Transformation appeared first on Indium.

In the contemporary world, Test Automation and automation testing services is adjudged as the best way to achieve enhanced efficiency, coverage, and effectiveness of any product or software.

The Software Industry is brimming with automation tools. The interesting fact is that many organizations that use 3rd party tools to utilize open source technology of some kind (Selenium, Appium, Junit, TestNG, etc.).

In this agile world, organizations look for a tool that provides the best possible features to utilize in the software testing process.

Selenium is one which is most preferred for web Application automation because of several factors.

Now let’s analyze where the current trending tools like Protractor, Jasmine, and Ranorex fit in this Selenium dominated world of test automation. Let’s travel and explore more.

Selenium:

Selenium is an open-source testing tool where it is designed especially for web application automation.

The best part of Selenium is it’s compatibility with different platforms and browsers. It provides API’s to interact with different web browsers.

Selenium Webdriver bindings come with different languages such as- Java, Python, C#, etc..

Challenges with Selenium:

• It supports Web-based applications and not for Desktop Application Automation.
• Limited support for Image Testing.
• No Built-in Reporting facility. Need to integrate with other reporting libraries like Extent Report, Allure Report, TestNg etc.
• There is no synchronization between automation test scripts and Web application. We need to explicitly synchronize tests with application using various available waits in Selenium.
• Lack of professional experts On-demand support for Enterprise Projects.
• No participation from non-technical resources.
• Not an All-in-One solution – requires 3rd party tool bindings.
• No official support from Selenium. But, it has large open community forums.
• Selenium alone can’t support for Mobile App automation. Need to use Appium

Protractor:

Test Professionals describe Protractor as an “End-to-end test framework for Angular and AngularJS apps.”

In general, Protractor is a powerful tool for web application testing. The right mix of Selenium WebDriver, NodeJS, Cucumber Jasmine, and Mocha makes it as attractive for web automation.

Though it is intended for AngularJS applications, still it performs well with non AngularJS applications as well.

Originally it was introduced into market by Google developers and became  open source in the future.

Angular JS:

In this modern world of eCommerce days, every company is interested in making an impact online.

This has actually created a huge market for web developers in market. It’s difficult to think about the development of a contemporary single page application without involving AngularJS.

The fact is it helps developers to build best applications. Thus AngularJS is coined as the next super thing in web application development.

Architecture of Protractor:

Protractor works in conjunction with selenium webdriver. Where it provides best automated test infrastructure that allows users to test Angular application running in a browser or mobile device.

Protractor is a wrapper around webdriver.js, with extra functionalities and features. To transact with browser, WebDriver utilizes Selenium JSON-Wire- Protocol.

Why to Prefer Protractor?

• Most of the Angular JS applications are entrenched with HTML attributes like ng-controller and ng-model. Selenium locators cannot find such web elements with just Selenium code. Whereas Protractor can easily find and control Angular-specific locators in the attributes of web application.
• It performs faster than Selenium because there is no need for any additional waits to use. Since Protractor can able to track the network, router changes, and execute the testing scripts accordingly.
• Does multi-browser testing on often used browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, Edge, IE11 in quicker time and in an easy way.
• Protractor works equally well for both Non-Angular and Angular web applications.
• Protractor has parallel execution feature, thus making it easier for testers to run test cases in numerous instances of any browser simultaneously.
• It has node at its core, where extensive variation of packages can be installed when needed. Which means installation of several packages and working with them is quite easy in Protractor.
• Protractor has multiple assertion libraries to work with. Though it’s easy to use with Mocha and Jasmine, with the latter being default.
• Testers can deploy their Protractor code in cloud easily. It supports Sauce Labs and Cross Browser Testing along with other cloud platforms.
• Protractor is much faster as it improves and manages synchronization to a greater extent. Also, it works equally well with headless and real browsers.

Conclusion:

To summarize Protractor provides all the capabilities of Selenium along with many other useful additions such as:

• It is well adept with synchronization and we no need to use wait on each and every element.
• It has a variety of assertions and annotations along with the ability to create our own assertions as per the requirement, which is easier than Selenium.

Overall, it is a perfect upgraded tool used to test Angular based Applications. There are numerous NPM packages available out there which can be embedded with framework smoothly. These packages will yield our framework even better.

Ranorex:

Ranorex was introduced to market in 2007 with a vision for revolutionizing the automation testing process, It is a commercial GUI based test automation tool used to test desktop, web, and mobile apps.

What makes Ranorex attractive?

• Ranorex is based on the XPath query language that facilitates efficient search of components in a web-based application.
• Ranorex record and playback interface allows tester for automating any application by recording UI actions.
• Ranorex Studio supports a broad range of environments, specifications, and settings includes:

1. Windows desktop technologies, that includes .NET, ActiveX, Delphi, Telerik, and Microsoft Office apps.
2. Mobile testing on Android and iOS platforms.

• Cross-browser testing on all major browsers like chrome, firefox, ie, etc.
• Ranorex supports in integration with DevOps environments which demand continuous testing and fast feedback to test results.
• Ranorex offers a wide range of testing tools to integrate with most CI/CD tools, test management tools.

The popularity of Ranorex:

A data-driven researcher, iDataLabs says Ranorex has close to 1.2 percent of the industry share in the automation Testing Tools category.

Ranorex is a licensed tool, but definitely it will be worth full in the long run of testing. Because of its features, it provides out of the box for automation.

While free tools such as Selenium are backed by a massive community, the Ranorex user base is smaller compared with Open Source tools.

Features of Ranorex:

• Multiplatform Application: For web, desktop, and mobile applications, while Ranorex competes with products such as Selenium, which supports web testing only.
• Codeless test creation: Codeless test creation: Drag-and-drop interface allows for conducting code less tests. Once keywords are set by team member, no programming background is needed to work with Ranorex.
• Built-in image comparison: Smart object identification technique is able to automatically detect any change in the UI. It includes GUI recognition elements( RanoreXPath ,The path editor, Ranorex Spy).
• High-quality customer support: Customer service is professional, helpful, and quick to reply.
• Execution Report: Every test run in Ranorex Studio results with automatic execution report that provides logs and also screenshots for validation. Hence this makes the workflow much easier than Selenium.

Conclusion:

Ranorex Studio is a very powerful tool to automate tests for web, standalone and mobile applications. Even non-programmers will be able to create tests without hurdles. To summarize:

• Ranorex supports multiple technologies like .Net, Java, HTML etc.
• Ranorex Spy is an object recognition tool which identifies the hierarchy of UI elements in any application.
• Ranorex Recorder allows recording of test steps and replaying the same to test application with different input data.
• The repository contains all the UI elements and their unique logical path.

Overall Summary

Maintaining the quality of an application and ensuring a bug-free product is crucial for the success of any project.

In Automation testing phase, Tool selection is a vital part. Though each tool is a good player on its own ground.

But considering, project requirements such as project type (Web/Desktop/Mobile), scope of the project, existing team’s strength, tool that integrates seamlessly with their project planning & test management tools, CI/CD , reporting, easy to learn & simple to use and many more. Hence automation team can choose best tool that matches their requirement.

Overall, looking at the unique features of Protractor and Ranorex definitely, these two sets its own image in this Selenium dominated world of test automation.

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