What Makes Katalon a Fantastic Tool for Test Automation

Today there are many test automation tools available in the market.

But, why do we need an automation tool for testing at all?

What makes use of automation tool a “must-have” in the Software development industry?

In today’s software world, demand for high-quality apps and products within very tight deadlines gives very less time for testers to perform quality testing. It is just impossible to test the complete application/product manually every time there is a bug fix or new releases.

Also, when it comes to testing scenarios like a large number of users access the website or an application simultaneously, it leaves no choice for an organization than to hire several hundred thousand testers (and test machines too) to do a manual test.

However, these challenges can be overcome by a tester or an organization if they choose an appropriate automation tool that fits their testing requirement. Choosing the right automation tool helps in saving resources, time, effort and cost. It can also help in effective testing delivering a high-quality product meeting the deadline and thereby increasing organization revenue and achieving customer satisfaction.

Katalon Studio is one such test automation tool that provides advanced test generation capabilities, faster execution and excellent reporting features. With the evolving features, leveraging in-built features and templates, Katalon is becoming tester’s favourite automation testing tool.

What is Katalon?

Katalon is a free-license automation solution for testing web and mobile application. It is developed by Katalon LLC. Katalon’s first release to the public was in September 2016.

Katalon Studio is built on the open-source automation framework Selenium and Appium. It is a very user-friendly and simple tool with an intuitive interface. Katalon is becoming the number one testing tool in the software testing field. While with other test automation tools, it takes weeks to automate test scripts, Katalon Studio requires just a few hours to achieve the same.

Why Katalon?

What makes Katalon so powerful and unique in comparison to other test automation tools?

The main advantage of Katalon over other automation tools is that it requires very little coding experience.

While several other test automation tools require testers to have technical skills to design test scripts, Katalon Studio’s specialized IDE and simple interface make it very user-friendly for testers who have no prior coding experience. Testers with some development knowledge can use the advanced features of this tool for the automation purpose. Even a black box tester can use this tool efficiently for the automated testing of web and mobile applications.

The time and efforts required to design test scripts are greatly reduced using this tool. Reusability/ scalability aspects are some other major features of Katalon Studio. Katalon makes use of several of Selenium features, you can still leverage the features in Katalon Studio to build your own scripts.

Highlights/Features of Katalon

Katalon Studio plays an important role in DevOps toolchain. Tests can be easily integrated with CI tools like Jenkins and TeamCity using Console Mode Execution or non-GUI mode in Katalon studio. One can make avail of command-line mode execution by installing the Katalon Studio plugins using Katalon Store’s API keys. This is a very powerful feature supported by Katalon.
Katalon Studio supports dual scripting interface. The black box testers with limited or no coding experience can use its simple interface to create test scripts. The tool has record and playback and manual mode for non-programmers. Katalon Recorder records the test actions, captures the web elements and plays the recorded steps. Testers can play their recorded scripts as many times as they want for their testing. The learning curve is very less as testers do not essentially need any coding experience in this case.
Testers with an advanced level of coding experience can use the scripting mode for test script creation. Those who have knowledge in Groovy can easily edit the test scripts in scripting mode. Katalon Studio allows reuse of these automated test scripts.
The tests recorded in Katalon Studio in one browser can be executed on multiple browsers (in parallel or sequential) speeding up the test cycle thus improving test coverage.
Using its well-structured framework and leveraging built-in features, Katalon Studio enables to provide high-quality applications. For example, Katalon supports parametrizing test objects dynamically which means users can control the object dynamically (sometimes the properties of an object might change due to business rules). The Test Objects can be handled in both manual modes and in script mode. Katalon provides systematic and neat UI with menus, tree views and tables so that one can organize well their test cases, objects and data files. This makes Katalon well-structured framework.
Features like Spy web utility is a great add-on in Katalon Studio. Using Spy web utility, object properties and locating method can be defined by the user themselves. This makes Katalon an intelligent tool.
While we must use other third-party libraries to generate reports in other automation tools, Katalon provides reports in graphical format. Also, it generates reports in HTML, CSV or PDF format.
Failures are reported with screenshots and logs.
Script creation time is very less when compared to other test automation tools.
Katalon Studio can be launched on Windows, Linux and Mac OS.

Cons of Katalon Studio

Katalon Studio supports only Apache Groovy for test script creation. However, it supports Java libraries and Java-compatible languages for test script execution.
Katalon is not open source, it has closed source code leaving no option to the community to customize or use community-built packages.
Katalon Studio does not support distributed testing currently.
Katalon Studio is more focused on functionality testing and does not support any load or performance testing.
Katalon Studio supports only web, mobile and API testing and does not support automating desktop application.
Sometimes the tool just slows down and freezes, mobile automation testing takes even more time to record scripts.

Choosing a test automation tool depends on the testing requirement of an organization. If the organization is looking for a tool to test the functionality of their web/mobile applications, Katalon would be the right decision. Katalon Studio mainly focusses on functionality testing, but with very little focus on testing of design aspects like screen size, orientation etc.

Katalon: The future

As the tool is new and in early stages in the market and the features are still evolving, it sometimes throws some bugs and just gets stuck during test script execution. More updates and bug fix releases are expected in future to make it more stable and smooth-running tool.

Also, support to more scripting languages for test script creation would be a great plus.

However, with all the great benefits provided by the tool and with its simple UI, the tool has already won the hearts of testing engineers. In spite of the drawbacks, Katalon Studio is becoming an emerging tool for test automation and is gaining popularity in the software development industry. Overall Katalon is an amazing tool and has a great future.

– Susan

October 25, 2022November 29, 2022

Performance Testing Using JMeter

If you’ve ever done performance testing on a website, you know that there is not really an effective way to manually create enough load on that website.

Getting actual users to execute web application operations over and again is nearly impossible. For that, we need virtual users that can open multiple connections in parallel.

When bulk users attempt to access a website (say commercial websites) at the same time, there are high chances that the website suffers slowness and poor usability. Speed is one of the most important attributes of an application. A slow running application will lose many of its potential users.

Performance testing is done to ensure that the web application performs well under their expected workload.

In today’s competitive world, support for features and functionalities are not the only priority, the speed with which the website responds is also of great concern. The goal of performance testing is not to find bugs, but to eliminate the performance bottlenecks. A web application attributes like its response time, reliability, source usage and scalability do matter a lot. So, in order to test different aspects of a web application, we must test it in different ways. Different performance testing types are as follows:

Different Types of Performance Testing

Load

Load testing is performed to determine how a system behaves when multiple users access it simultaneously.

Stress

Stress Testing is done to ensure that the system would not crash in difficult situations.

Endurance

Endurance testing is done to evaluate how the system behaves when a significant load is applied over a long period of time.

Spike

In Spike testing, the web application is tested with extreme increments and decrements in the load.

Volume and scalability

Volume testing describes the ability of an application to handle additional user loads without affecting the performance. Scalability test is done to find the minimum and maximum loads at software, hardware and database levels. This gives the idea that the system is scalable after a load.

There are many robust testing tools available in the market that are capable to handle the various types of performance testing. Few of them have become the industry standard. The recent trend shows that most of the big players in the industry have taken tools like JMeter for all their performance testing needs.

JMeter

Apache JMeter is a load testing tool that is based on Java. This open source software is used for testing the performance of most of the web-based applications. Performance is an inevitable factor for both mobile and web application as the user strength is very huge.

Advantages of JMeter

Open source and built-in Java platform. It is highly extensible and platform-independent.
User-friendly- JMeter has got comprehensive GUI and it can easily create a test plan and configure the elements.
Support- Basically JMeter is designed for performance testing. But it can also be used for non-functional testing such as stress, distributed and web service testing by creating a test plan.

JMeter provides support for protocols such as FTP, SOAP, JDBC, HTTP

Documentation- Because of its robust documentation, user can have a clear idea on every step starting from the installation and configuration of test settings and generating the final report.
Recording- JMeter allows the user to record HTTP or HTTPS to create test plan using the recording facility. It uses a proxy server that allows JMeter to watch and record user actions while the user browses the web application with any normal browser. Once the recording is complete, we enter the number of threads, time and Start test. It is advisable to use the Non-GUI mode of JMeter if the user count is large.
Reporting- JMeter supports dashboard report generation. These reports help the user to understand test execution results.

Installation of JMeter

Before installing JMeter, it is essential to check that Java is installed in the system. JMeter is a pure Java desktop application. It needs fully compliant JVM 6 or higher to perform its tasks. User can download and install the latest version of the Java SE Development Kit.

The latest version of JMeter available is JMeter 5.1

JMeter can be downloaded from the official website Apache.

From this website, user can download JMeter PGP or zip file under the Binaries section and then unzip the zip file into the directory where JMeter is to be installed. JMeter directory structure includes the following directories and files.

Bin: holds JMeter script file to start JMeter
Docs: holds JMeter documentation files
Extras: related extra files
Lib: holds the required Java library for JMeter
Lib/ext: includes core jar files for JMeter and its protocols

A test plan is stored in XML format.

Elements of JMeter

Thread Group

Thread group is the collection of threads. Each thread represents 1 user using the application under test. Basically, each thread simulates 1 real user request to the server.

Samplers

Samplers indicate which type of request is sent to the server. It can be HTTP, FTP, JDBC requests.

Listeners

Listeners display the result of test execution. It can show the result in different formats such as tree, table, summary report, log files and graphs.

Configuration Elements

Config elements in JMeter are used to configure the sampler requests sent to the server. Commonly used config elements are CSV data set config, HTTP Cookie Manager, Login Config Element HTTP Request Defaults and FTP Request Defaults.

Assertions

It is used to validate the response of the request that the user sent to the server. Here user can verify the expected result with the actual result. If a user wants to check assertion of a sampler, then assertion must be added as child of that sampler. User can view Assertion result by adding Assertion Listener to the thread group.

Testing in non-GUI method

In non-GUI mode, JMeter can handle more requests per second. Increasing threads after a certain limit will result in JMeter crash in GUI mode. The following command is used to run the test plan in non-GUI mode.

jmeter -n -t -l -e -o

Report Generation

A result log file can be generated in CSV or JTL format after running the load test.

Hope this article gave a real insight into the importance of performance testing in today’s web world and how modern testing tools like JMeter helps you to execute performance testing efficiently.

Happy Performance testing!

– Sneha Mohan

October 25, 2022November 29, 2022

Not Sure About the Quality of Your Mobile App? 5 Key Considerations

The success of your app is directly proportional to its quality. If a user’s initial experience is positive, then they’ll want to use the app again. Here are a few major points that if taken care of can help your app stand out from the crowd:

Visual Design and User Interaction

Few key areas that your app must have:

Alignment of buttons, labels, text etc.
Color combination used in header, footer, various elements, links etc.: Color combination can be used to focus user’s attention to important or actionable elements. Make sure not to highlight too many elements otherwise important elements might lose focus.
Spelling: Ensure that your app does not have any spelling mistakes. This is something that can also adversely affect your search ranking. Spelling and grammar play an important role in the evaluation of the quality of a site and its content.
Auto Focus on Input: This will speed up things because the user does not have to click on individual input fields to type. This may be implemented in input submission, search forms etc.

Speed

Does your app load quickly? Everybody expects a fast web experience. A fast site increases the overall quality of the app and increases user satisfaction.

Courtesy: www.techcrunch.com

A major reason that can severely affect the performance of your app is:

Size of individual files and images: Huge files and high-resolution images can take double the time to load and can drastically affect the performance of the app. Ensure that your high-resolution images are first compressed using default compressor and re-load these compressed images instead of uncompressed ones.

Scalability

Ask yourself following questions

How many visitors are accessing my app every day?
What is the peak number of visits that my app can support?
What areas of my app are most accessed by visitors?
What is the average response time of most popular pages of my app?
How efficiently can my hardware/software support the current volume of visitors?
How much infrastructure (hardware/software requirements) is required to handle these volumes?

Slow apps will frustrate the customer tempting them to leave soon.

Standards

Is your app built on provided standards? You have to understand who would be using your app. Identify their key tasks and key priorities that they want to accomplish through your site. Find out their goals and focus on how it relates to your business’ goals. Interacting with end users by conducting Surveys, User Testing sessions etc. can help you understand how closely user’s needs have been met by the app.

Also, your app must be built on a platform that is supported by standard skill sets across the organization and in the public domain. It must be flexible enough that is capable of integrating various systems for development and also the common set of functions and features must be sharable by different applications.

Security

Since mobile apps are running outside the security of your internal networks, you always have to make sure that the app is not vulnerable to security threats. One basic thing you can do is to encrypt traffic to the backend—at a minimum, by using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption. However, SSL by itself isn’t enough because of the nature of how mobile devices connect. One solution would be to rely on WebKit to handle SSL.

– Susan B. John