HP UFT Software and the Benefits That It Provides While Testing

HP Unified Functional Testing (UFT) software helps enterprises to automate functional testing of variety of applications. It comes with tools to help users to test web applications, mobile apps, APIs and packaged applications. At the same time, businesses can further use UFT to automate functional and regression testing of both applications and environments. HP has been updating the software on a regular basis to help users to test modern software applications in a quick and effective way. There are also a number of reasons why HP UFT software is hugely popular among modern QA professionals.

Features of HP UFT That Help Testers to Test Software More Efficiently

Supports Many Commonly Used Technologies

The latest version of UFT supports most of the commonly used technologies. Along with .NET and Java, it also supports REST, SOA and other web protocols. So the QA professionals can use a single tool to test the functionality of variety of applications including complex enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) software. They can even avail the cross-browser testing feature of UFT to write the test script once, and execute the same script to assess the functionality of a web application across major web browsers.

Simplifies Manual to Automation Conversion

Often QA professionals find it challenging to switch to a new test automation tool. But they can learn and use HP UFT without investing any extra time and effort. UFT further makes it easier for them to create new automations by importing the existing recordings and other manual testing assets. The testers can avail HPE Sprinter, an advanced manual testing solution, provided by software to convert the manual testing assets into automation resources, and reuse them to conduct functional and regression testing effectively.

Supports Keyword-Driven Testing

Unlike other popular software testing tools, HP UFT supports keyword-driven testing. The feature makes it easier for QA professionals to create and maintain test scripts. They can use the software to capture the flows from the application screen directly, and convert the captured flows into test scripts through the record/replay options. The scripting and debugging environment included in UFT further enables users to access the tests and object properties, and incorporating the required changes. The environment further helps users to create tests rapidly by providing features like auto-completion of code, built-in code snippets, and tools to validate specific activities.

Facilitates Mobile Application Testing

The users also have option to test a variety of mobile apps through UFT Mobile. They can use the solution to create a virtual mobile device lab or leverage a wide variety mobile device on the cloud. Thus, UFT Mobile helps businesses to assess the functionality and performance of their mobile devices across many devices. At the same time, the software allows QA professionals to write the test script once, and execute the same script automatically to test the mobile application across multiple devices, platforms and browsers.

Provides a Visual Interface for Web Services and API Testing

HP UFT provides a visual interface that makes it easier for users to test web services and APIs. As the interface enables QA professionals to test the web services and APIs at the headline layer, they are not required to write longer lines of code. The interface displays the GUI and API tests in the graphic area, and allows testers to assess the test flow accurately. The visual interface further simplifies assessment of complex application compositions and custom business processes by providing useful information like   activities, actions, test flow and test logic. At the same time, it effectuates API testing by helping users to generate HTTP, web and SOAP requests without writing any extra code.

Facilitates Integration and Collaboration

While testing software applications in agile environment, the testers can avail the built-in continuous integration tools provided by the software. The tool makes it easier for them to create reusable test plans, manage different versions of the test plan, and share the test plan with different members of the team. The UFT object repository manager is also designed based on an open XML format. It helps the manager to share application object definitions, assess definitions, and function libraries with different testers. The collaboration and integration contributes towards reducing the testing time significantly.

UFT is a commercial test automation tool. So businesses have to incur additional expenses to take advantage of the features provided by the software. Also, HP UFT can be used only for testing applications running on Windows Platform. However, a business can always speed up and effectuate functional testing by investing in the most recent version of UFT. 

What is SoapUI and How Does It Help in Web Services Testing?

Nowadays testers plug in a variety of web services into a web application to boost its functionality and performance without writing any additional code. Web services make the web application communicate with third-party services smoothly regardless of the technology and system architecture. But testers often find it a daunting challenge to assess the functionality and performance of individual web services in an exact and accurate way. As an open source application, SoapUI helps programmers to test web services accurately without putting any extra time and efforts. There are also a number of reasons why a large percentage of web testers use SoapUI for web service testing.

Why SoapUI is used widely by Testers for Testing Web Services?

Supports Many Protocols

SoapUI makes it easier for QA professionals to test a wide variety of web services by supporting major protocols. In addition to SOAP, WSDL and HTTP, the application also supports REST, AMF, JDBC and JMS. So testers can use a single tool to test applications and services written in different programming languages. Also, they can assess all aspects of the web services accurately regardless of the underlying technology.

Provides a Graphical Interface

The graphical interface provided by SoapUI enables users to test web services without having adequate technical expertise. They can further use the graphical interface to test web services based on both WSDL and SOAP. The web service client provided by the graphical interface can further generate web services and requests automatically.

Provides a Command Line Option

The experienced QA professionals also have option to use the command line option provided by SoapUI. So they can run the tests directly from the task scheduler. The option enables them to execute the automated tests in batch files. The testers can further use the command line option to customize the execution of tests, and having control over tests, output and parameters. 

Facilitates Regression and Functional Testing Automation

The testers can use SoapUI to automate their functional and regression testing efforts without putting any extra effort. They can simply avail the features provided by the application to validate the quality of web services. Further, they can easily write functional tests, create test suites, add test cases to the test suite, and add assertions to the test cases. The users can further take advantage of the drag and drop action to simplify creation and execution of complex test scenarios.

Allows Testers to Replicate Web Services in Advance

Often developers find it daunting to test the web services in the implementation stage. Many developers even put additional time and effort to replicate the full-scale production environment to test the web services effectively. SoapUI makes it easier for QA professionals to test web services without replicating production environment. They can use the application to test web services before their implementation. SoapUI further helps testers to mimic the behaviour and features of both REST and SOAP APIs through the SoapUI Mock Services.

 Supports Multiple Environments

SoapUI can be used for performing functional and regression tests in both staging and production environments. So the testers can use a single tool to assess the web services in multiple environments. At the same time, they also have option to change the test setup smoothly according to the environment.

Comes with Advanced Security Features

SoapUI further comes with features to protect the web application and services from various security threats. It helps users to secure their databases by creating and submitting malicious SQL statements. Likewise, the QA professionals can conduct XML bomb scans to check if the website’s performance is affected when users try to submit larger documents. They can further prevent cross site scripting (XSS) attacks by checking if the parameters used in its messages are being exposed by the web service.

Despite being an open source tool, SoapUI is being updated at frequent intervals. The SoapUI 5.2 comes with JSON based assertions and three distinct built-in functions. At the same time, enterprises can also invest in SoapUI Pro to avail a number of additional features and enhancements for web service testing.