Scope:
IS&T web applications contain complex browser-based user interfaces created with JavaScript, HTML and CSS. The functional/regression test tool we currently use, QTP, only works in Internet Explorer, so it does not test IS&T’s set of supported web browsers. Therefore QTP cannot test individual browser issues. Also, IS&T needs to evaluate its web applications against new web browsers and changes to the IS&T web application infrastructure (new database, new application server, new VM, etc.)
What we did:
- We convened a committee with representation from xxxxxxx, and began studying the current web application testing landscape.
- We looked at a list of X amount of Test Tools (add list of tools here) and choose 5 worthy of further evaluation, based on the following criteria:
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- Support for all MIT operating systems
- Support for all MIT browsers
- Ability to playback tests in a browser (instead of testing via browser emulation)
- Ability to record tests (to make test creation easier)
- Some sort of gui (versus code only framework)
- Decent documentation
- Some sort of name in the industry
- We created a test plan to evaluate these Test Tools. The test plan was heavily weighted with DOM manipulation, AJAX and other JavaScript functionality. (expand)
- We broke up into groups of 1 to 3 users to try each of the 5 Test Tools.
- We modified the Test Plan as needed.
- We compared notes and removed EggPlant and AppPerfect because:
- AppPerfect: Could not parse an html select and we were not able to get support from the vendor, (as Ed for details)
- EggPlant: Because it is image based, it does not directly test JavaScript and it was maintenance intensive.