Biggest challenge before automating any application is to identify a good automation tool first. For that first we need to understand the application we need to automate like what all technologies does the application use in background, and then based on that information we need to identify an automation tool which supports all those technologies. After that, we look for following features in any automation tool:
1. Does tool provides simple 'record and replay' and facility
2. Does tool provide recorded script either in XML format or in any other scripting format, so that can be edited if required and saved and then replayed, without the need to re-record and replay
3. Does the tool can be used for: a) Functional Testing b) Load Testing?
4. Does it identify any change on the webpage like e.g., if any button for submitting form has been moved slightly from it's position, then does the tool still identifies that button based on it's id in the HTML script and runs executes successful or does the script fails. If it identifies and executes successfully then, the tool can be used for load testing and if it fails then it can be used for UI and functional testing.
5. Does it capture screenshot at each step while replaying automatically?
6. Does it provide to add dynamic wait time to the script? By dynamic wait we mean that the script should wait at a step and should not go to next until current step is executed and page has been loaded completely. Else it may give is wrong results at the end
7. Does it allows to read text from the excel/csv/text files saved at a location of disk/server and assign values to a variable
8. Does it allow triggering and scheduling of any recorded script?
9. Does it maintain log for each execution of script.
The tool which satisfies most of the features given above is a suitable tool to use for automation.
