Software development practices change over the long run, so do the tools and technologies. Main aim of these changes is to improve productivity, quality, customer satisfaction, tackle ever-shorter delivery time and deploy successful products and services. Software testing plays an integral role to achieve these objectives. Each type of testing tests the product in a different way and functional testing is one of them and it should be done with the right tools. Before digging to the functional testing tools, let us see what is Functional testing.
This is a type of testing that validates the software system against functional requirements/ specifications. Main purpose of functional tests is to test each function of software by providing appropriate input, verifying the output against functional requirements. It involves black box testing and checks user interface, APIs, Database, Security, Client/Server communication and other functionality of application under test. Functional testing can be done either manually or using automation.
Test result is just an observation of output compared with a requirement. Generally it can be expressed as a simple “pass” or “fail”. Functional testing tools may be triggered manually, but for quality assurance at speed, advanced functional testing tools provide automated testing.
Know the comparison of unit testing and functional testing at- Unit Testing Vs Functional Testing – Know The Comparison.
UFT(Unified Functional Testing) is a popular commercial testing tool for functional testing which provides a feature set for API, web services, and GUI testing of desktop, mobile and web applications across platforms. This tool has advanced image based object recognition feature, reusable test components and automated documentation. It makes use of a Visual Basic Scripting Edition to register testing process and object control. UTF is integrated with Mercury Business Process Testing and Mercury Quality Center. This tool supports CI through integration with CI tools like Jenkins. UFT got the highest views and followers on IT Central Station in the functional testing tools category.
It is a popular open-source automated testing suite for web apps. Selenium includes several components with which each performing a specific role in aiding the test automation. It supports various system environments and browsers. Also it provides a test domain-specific language to write tests in programming languages like PHP, Java, Perl, Groovy, Python, Ruby, Scala, C#. Testers have flexibility with Selenium and they can write complex and advanced test scripts to meet different level of complexity, it needs advanced programming skills and effort to build automation frameworks and libraries for particular testing needs.
It is an effective end to end functional testing tool with Latest version v9.0. It makes use of a modern model-based approach that is tested in Agiles method development. This tool creates test cases that are independent of software technologies and provides it in a business language that anyone can easily understand. So the test cases are created within less time and can be used as manual tests or automated test scripts. It has an effective approach in maintaining tests with recurring changes throughout the sprint cycles of Agile methods. It covers maximum business risks and can be easily maintained by non-technical users. Test module can be used for different technologies and platforms.
This is a good testing tool for web, mobile and desktop testing. It supports scripting languages like VBScript, Python, Javascript, and C++Script. Testers can perform data-driven and keyword-driven testing with TestComplete. TestComplete offers easy-to-use record and playback features. GUI object recognition capability can automatically detect and update UI objects. This reduces the effort to maintain test scripts when the AUT is changed.
It is a simple and user friendly testing tool that provides functional, exploratory, performance and load testing solutions. This tool comes with a Visual Studio plug-in, so one must know the visual script so as to bring the best out of this tool. It supports various browsers and test maintenance cost very less. All the locators are inbuilt and centralized, and its test scripts can be used again.
It is a commercial Windows GUI test automation tool and supports functional UI testing on desktop, web and mobile apps. Ranorex is easy to use for beginners with codeless click and go interface and helpful wizard. It is powerful for automation experts with full IDE. This tool supports reliable object identification for web elements with dynamics IDs too. It has shareable object repository and reusable code modules for efficient test creation and less maintenance. It can integrate with tools like Jira, Jenkins, TestRail, Git, travis CI and so on.
It is an automated functional testing tool for web apps, GUI applications and has inbuilt features to support different technologies, browsers and environments. Some of those features are drag-drop IDE, data-driven testing, hybrid applications, API testing, object manager etc. It works with Spira Test for test management and distributed testing. It’s basic test scripts are customized and written in JavaScript. This tool is very fast, flexible and good for GUI application testing. It supports Agile software projects testing and is available in cloud version in Amazon web services with payment for usage.
This testing solution is for functional testing, load testing and stress testing. Testers can use the same functional test scripts for performance and stress quality of an application. Similar to other tools, this tool supports technologies like HTML 5, Ajax, .Net, Active X, Oracle Forms, Infragistics controls, QT and so on. QA Wizard supports cross-browser testing using the same script.
SoapUI is a great tool for functional, load, compliance and security testing to test/work with REST web services and SOA(Service oriented architecture). This tool is very simple to use for technical and non technical users. It includes advanced functionality such as powerful HTTP monitor, easy data driven tests and a comprehensive view of project. It’s pro version SOAPUI PRO is a commercial version with extra features to improve productivity. It is a cross-platform and also supports IDEA, NetBeans and Eclipse. This tool can also be used in inspecting, development, invoking, simulation and mocking.
It is an open source record and playback tool for testing web application and is independent of the OS/browser. With this tool one can run a single script across various browsers and OS’s. It makes use of a simple Javascript to execute events in browser. It’s “smart accessor” feature prevents test script to fail though there are some changes in UI.