Published: 30 Jan 2017
Migration from HP UFT to Selenium – What are the Returns?
Last Updated: 29 Jul 2022
Test Automation has been facilitating enterprises to accelerate the process of testing and realize maximum test coverage. Enterprises have made significant investments over a period of time in buying tools and building test automation suites. As the application landscapes grow more complex with the introduction and expansion of digital systems, the licensing costs for COTS tools become increasingly high to justify the RoI.
Contents
1. What is HP UFT?
2. What is Selenium?
3. Migration from HP UFT to Selenium
4. Difference between UFT and Selenium
5. Migrating to Selenium? Know its Challenges
6. How to Migrate from UFT to Selenium
7. How Can TestingXperts Help?
What is HP UFT?
UFT stands for Unified Functional Testing. Initially, it was commonly known as QTP (Quick Test Professional). UFT or the QTP is the automated functional testing tool developed by Micro Focus. In this tool, automated test cases are used to identify bugs in an application; also, it is primarily used for testing on service, functional and regression. With a planned automation testing practice using UFT, a tester can enhance the application development and reduce the cost and time.
The latest version of this tool is HP UFT 11.5; and it supports several languages and platforms such as SAP, Oracle, Web, .Net, web services, etc.
Features of UFT
- This tool can support for Windows 8.1 and Windows server 2012; run tests on safari browser
- This tool supports latest technologies such as XenDesktop 7, JDK 1.8, and SAP Web Dynpro ABAP
- This tool supports to record, run tests and create object repositories with Windows Runtime Application
- The UFT extension which is available on Chrome can receive updates automatically
- This tool can be used by both technical and non-technical testers
- The testing is completely based on scripting language VB script
- This tool enables to test the cases of both desktop and web applications
What is Selenium?
Selenium is an open-source test automation tool for testing web applications across different browsers and platforms. There are many such tools available but this tool is becoming a choice for many enterprises because of its speed and efficiency. This allows the tester to use multiple programming languages like C#, Python, Java, etc. for creating Selenium test scripts.
Features of Selenium
This tool is an open-source and portable web testing framework
- It is simple to understand and easy to use interface
- This tool supports different browsers, operating systems, and programming languages
- It can get integrated with frameworks like Ant and Maven for source code compilation
- Selenium Remote Control, which is in conjunction with WebDriver API known as Selenium 2.0 supports vibrant web pages and Ajax
- It can get integrated with automation testing frameworks like TestNG to generate reports and application testing
- The different commands that are categorized in different classes make any user easily understand and implement
- This tool supports parallel execution and thus enhances the efficiency of the tests and decreases the testing time
- Compared to other automation tools, selenium requires less amount of resources
- The playback and record feature of Selenium IDE helps to authorize tests without the requirement of learning test scripting languages
- There is no need for server installation for the web driver. There is a direct interaction between the test scripts and the browser
Migration from HP UFT to Selenium
Nowadays enterprises are progressively inclining towards open source frameworks instead of investing in licensed testing tool, especially for digital applications for which open source tools provide excellent support. Open source performance testing tools are loaded with significant features that allow swift automation testing of software applications, including web portals, mobile applications, and APIs.
HP Unified Functional Testing (UFT) is and has been an eminent force in the test automation space. However, Selenium seems to be quickly gaining supporters and becoming a more proficient open source entrant for digital applications. There are various visible distinctions between every testing tool that makes picking one or the other a forthright decision in most cases.
Difference between UFT and Selenium
Testing Applicability:
Selenium is mainly for testing web-based applications whereas UFT(HP Unified Functional Testing) can test desktop and client-server applications as well.
Cost:
Selenium is a totally free open source download and will always remain like this whereas, UFT requires a license fee for procurement and additional fees for add-ons and upgrades.
OS Compatibility:
UFT works only on windows whereas selenium works on all major OSs including Linux, OSX, Windows, Android, Solaris and, iOS.
Language Compatibility:
Selenium tests can be written in languages such as JavaScript, Perl, PHP, and Java whereas UFT tests are only written in Microsoft’s VB Script.
Cloud Ready:
Selenium grid is precisely designed to run simultaneous tests on different machines with different operating systems and using different browsers in parallel making it a perfect match for cloud-based testing services. Whereas, UFT has a one machine/ one-script execution model which cannot make an efficient use of distributed test execution with cloud infrastructure.
Object-Repository:
There is an in-built object repository in HP-UFT, whereas there is no object-repository in Selenium. But, the object is managed with the help of UI element user extension.
Ease of Execution:
Selenium can execute multiple tests simultaneously on a single machine whereas UFT tests one application per machine.
Active User Community:
Selenium is having an active user community, but it doesn’t have a dedicated team to support the users; whereas the UFT tool provides the facility of dedicated technical team to support the users. Also, there are paid services that can effectively help in resolving the issues faster.
Migrating to Selenium? Know its Challenges
Selenium is filled with advantages, but it also comes with some technical restrictions:
It is not uniformly compatible across all browsers; Selenium is most compatible with Firefox. Therefore, the scripts developed for Firefox might need some modifications to run in Chrome or IE.
• It does not come with an inherent support for data-driven testing.
• There is a limited dialog-box support.
• It is harder to accomplish image-based tests
• Coding is required for HTML tables and other elements.
These challenges can be taken care of with the help of frameworks compatible with Selenium. Though, they may add upfront development cost and effort while integrating or developing with a framework like this. It is advisable to look for already available proven Selenium frameworks with partners/ other internal teams rather than building one ground up.
How to Migrate from UFT to Selenium
• Leverage specialist capabilities from partners/ internal teams with experience in Selenium frameworks and UFT to Selenium migration
• Identify key UFT assets, the criticality of test automation suites, current investments, and RoI
• Assess the technical capabilities and of the team and choose a scripting language for the Selenium framework
• Select a test suite for POC and migrate sample scripts to Selenium
• Take learning from the POC forward and expand the conversion to Selenium gradually
• Optimize scripts for reliability, maintainability, and performance
• Execute Selenium and UFT scripts in parallel, validate and sign-off
How Can TestingXperts Help?
TestingXperts has a ready solution for converting up to 60-70% of your UFT scripts to Selenium in an automated manner. Our Test Automation framework, Tx-Automate which is an ‘out-of-the-box’ solution for Test automation providing customized reports and various third party integrations. With the experience of executing multiple UFT to Selenium projects along with the ready accelerators, Tx can help you significantly reduce your tool licensing costs, increase release velocity and achieve faster feedback with continuous integration and deployment.