Application of Test Automation with RPA

With the advancements in the field of technology, artificial intelligence has been having a huge impact on our lives. This is known with the fact that it is used for which it is being used massively out daily lives. Even the most mundane of the tasks can be done with the help of technology.

Amongst the various tasks for which AI is being used, it is used in the field of robotic process automation.Robotic process automation is an emerging form of business automation. It is used to program systems to create an action list by observing the human user perform the assigned tasks in the application’s GUI. The RPA then copies all the work done to its memory and repeats the tasks in a direct manner.

RPA finds its uses in many fields such as IT support and management, automated assistant, process automation etc. However, RPA finds most of its uses in test automation.

Test Automation

Keeping true to the principles of RPA, Test Automation helps to automate the repetition of various tasks which have predictive outcomes. By making use of specialized software to control the execution of tests, Test Automation compares the actual outcomes generated by it along with the predicted outcomes. All this work is done in an environment where in the testing process is already done in place. This is because in such environments, it would be difficult to do all the additional testing all over again.

Test Automation finds its uses in various fields such as data generation in a set up format, product installation, interactive GUI formation and defect logging etc.

Approaches to Test Automation

There are multiple ways with which humans can make an approach to test automation. Amongst all these, the general approaches used widely are:

1. GUI testing –In this approach, a testing framework is created to generate the user interface which generates the user interface for making use of various functions such as keystrokes and mouse clicks. The software used then observes the keystrokes and finally validates the behaviour of the program, checking whether it is right or wrong.

2. API driven testing – API driven testing is another testing framework which makes use of a framework created by the official for testing purposes. It too observes the behaviour by bypassing the API. It is helpful where public interfaces to classes need to tested with modules or libraries along with a variety of inputs.

Graphical User Interface testing

There are various automation tools which provide the user with the record and playback feature using which they can record the human actions. This data can be viewed and reviewed as many times as needed by the human interface. The advantage of this approach is that it requires close to little to no software development. It can be made use of in various areas and all it needs is an application that has a graphical user interface.

Many times, users may find a graphical user interface testing tool for testing websites. In such cases, the website stands to be the interface. However, such an interface is completely different from traditional interfaces as the framework makes the use of completely different techniques to render HTML. In such areas, usually, the Headless browsers or solutions based on Selenium Web Driver are made use of.

API Driven Testing

Even though GUI testing is used popularly, it is very difficult to create and maintain GUI-based automation testing. Because of these reasons, API driven testing finds its purpose.. APIs do not have a GUI, therefore all the work is done using the command line.

APIs find most of their uses in application logic. In application layer, APIs serve as the primary interface to application logic since GUI’s can be difficult to take care of in short release cycles.

Requirements for Test Automation

There are various fields where test automation can be put to use. Product installation, test data creation, GUI interaction and problem detection are just a few of these fields data can be generated in an automated manner without queuing them in an end-to-end fashion. However, there are certain requirements which one must take care of before making use of test automation:

1. Platform and OS independence.

2. Data-Driven Capability

3. Reporting in a customizable manner

4. Debugging and logging in an easy manner

5. The tools should be extensible and customizable for the APIs

    to be able to integrate with other tools.

6. The inclusion of minimal binary files for friendly version

    control

7. There should be a common driver for the tests to combine

    with the developer’s workflows.

8. The unattended tests should be supported for integration with

    build processes and batch runs.

Difference between RPA and Test Automation

Often, people confuse robotic process automation and testing to be same. From a conceptual point of view, the two processes might appear similar as they both involve automation for offering the same advantages of reducing manual intervention and delivering quality work. However, these two terms signify and mean two quite different things.

A difference in RPA and Test Automation would be that they work across different environments. Test Automation is usually seen running in environments such as QA, UAT etc. On the other hand, RPA runs in the production environment.

Test Automation is a very useful piece of Robotic Process Automation technology which can help a business to automate the tasks occurring multiple times thus helping a firm, save its time and retain the quality of the product. However, it is completely different from RPA which helps individuals across the world to make more diverse use of the technology.