Each and every piece of software must first go through extensive testing before being made available to the general public. We would put ourselves at risk of everything from minor bugs to significant security flaws if we did not take this precaution. To keep up with customer demand, you must, however, release updates to your web and mobile apps more frequently and bring software to market at a faster rate than ever before. A substantial amount of practical training in software development, testing, and quality assurance technology skills is included in Simplilearn’s Automation testing courses. Phase-end and capstone projects based on actual business scenarios are also included in this training.
In order to continuously test their software in a way that is more efficient and frequent than can be accomplished by manually testing it, many businesses rely on quality assurance (QA) automation.
What is Automation Testing?
Automation testing is a method used in software testing to check whether or not the outcomes match what was anticipated. You can achieve this goal by creating test scripts or by using any of the available automation testing tools. Test automation is used to automate testing tasks that are time-consuming or challenging to complete manually, such as repetitive tasks.
Automation of quality assurance can be seen in the testing of the software you are developing using a third-party application. With the aid of some technology to reduce the amount of repetition, human testers used to be required to complete a sizable portion of these tasks on their own.
On the other hand, automated testing can complete a sizable portion of these tasks by itself and even runs tests that are more complex than what can be done manually.
Your company can automate quality assurance in a variety of ways, including the ones listed below:
- Developing entirely new tests from scratch with your internal development team
- utilizing test automation software without code that was created for non-coder users
- a third-party testing outsourcing company that offers quality assurance services.
Businesses that use continuous integration, which involves developing, testing, and deploying software frequently throughout the day as opposed to in stages as was typical in more conventional development models, are aware of the value of automated quality assurance testing. Automation tools for quality assurance can perform this testing.
- The purpose of software testing is to find critical bugs, security holes, and user experience issues. Hiccups that only happen in specific use cases are an example of a bad user experience.
How is the automated quality assurance testing carried out?
Even though the testing procedure can be automated on its own, writing the script that executes the tests still requires some programming experience.
Your development team typically creates the source code for your quality assurance tests, but if you use codeless testing software, you might be able to create the tests using keywords rather than source code.
Automating quality assurance testing can be done in two ways:
1.    Graphical user interface (GUI) Testing:
GUI testing is the term for API quality assurance testing that mimics the use of a graphical user interface (GUI). For instance, it could simulate a series of keystrokes and mouse clicks to check whether the program runs as intended while simultaneously recording any errors for later playback and analysis.
Even though manual testing of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) is comparable, automating the process makes it more effective and also eliminates any variables that could be influenced by human error.
Every time the test is run, it can be done exactly the same way, or it can be used to test different software features, which will result in more accurate results and bug reports.
2.    Application Programming Interface (API) Testing:
The application programming interface (API) needs to be tested using API testing at the message layer because it lacks a graphical user interface (GUI). The message layer needs to be tested as a result.
These tests can be used to assess both internally developed and externally developed APIs, with a focus on testing complete transactions as well as individual software components.
In addition to testing response time and response format, security attack responses, and how well the software handles responses, this may also involve testing the software’s capability to handle boundary conditions and edge cases.
To simulate the behavior of cloud-based applications and each of their component parts, API tests may also use service virtualization. As a result, there is no longer a requirement for live system testing.
Depending on the kind of software and the methods of development you employ, different quality assurance tests will need to be performed on the software. Testing for a cloud application that makes use of continuous integration might require more effort than testing for internal software created using the waterfall model.
Types of Automation Tests
The tests listed below are examples of the types of tests you might be required to take:
1.    Unit Tests:
- Unit tests are among the easiest quality assurance tests to automate because they focus on testing the smallest pieces of your software application, also known as units.
- It is simple to diagnose a bug because unit testing enables you to run one of these incredibly specific tests, allowing you to ascertain precisely where the issue is coming from.
- Unit tests are typically run locally on the developer’s machine and are not intended to check the functionality of components connected to remote databases or web services.
- They are frequently produced by the same programmers who wrote the code for the actual unit.
- One of these techniques is test-driven development (TDD), which entails running each piece of code through a series of tests until it can pass the test without error before it is added to the software.
- Unit tests only test one component at a time; integration tests test multiple components simultaneously, such as the software’s ability to connect to the proper web services. Compared to unit tests, these tests are an improvement.
- To check whether specific steps, like sending a confirmation email, are working properly, an integration test may simulate a customer action, like placing an online order.
- These tests’ design takes more time and resources, but it’s crucial to make sure that your application or software operates properly overall.
- They are controlled at the code level rather than through a user interface.
2.    Functional Tests:
Functional tests and integration tests are very similar; the main distinction is that while integration tests check that each component of the system operates correctly, functional tests check that the output is accurate.
Because the internal systems are not examined, they fall under the category of testing known as “black-box testing.” As a result, the tester is not required to be familiar with or comprehend the system’s underlying code.
- Smoke tests are most commonly used as spot checks. They are used to test a build’s stability and determine whether or not the most important features are working properly.
- If so, the build can proceed to more thorough testing; if not, the developers can address the problems before devoting any more time to testing it. If the problems are fixed, the build can proceed to more thorough testing.
- Since end-to-end tests are among the most thorough, they require ongoing upkeep and access to any relevant databases or web services.
- They are necessary to make sure that your entire system functions as it was intended to, though, such as making sure that online purchases are reflected in your customer relationship management software.
3.    Non Functional Tests:
- Non-functional tests called performance tests are used to check a system’s performance, such as speed or stability under heavy data loads. Performance evaluation examples include:
- Finally, regression tests are used to ensure that a change to the software did not introduce any bugs—new or old—that were already known. We saw this earlier.
Although this is a partial list and some quality assurance tests may fall under more than one category, these are some of the most significant quality assurance tests that can be automated.
Also read: Oracle Testing Tools: Types, Challenges, and SolutionÂ
