Test Automation tool

Migration–Commercial

to open Source

Abstract

Software migration is the process of

transformation from one operating environment

to another OR migrating the same software from

one piece of computer hardware to another or

changing both simultaneously. Automating the

HP’s UFT and Selenium are two critical

automation-testing tools that comprise more than

50% of the entire test automation industry.

Due to emerging open source market’s success,

selenium became one of the most widely used

software in the test automation industry.

Therefore, every customer started looking at

selenium as an alternative to their existing

commercial software used by quality analyst

teams. However, migrating from source software

This article will cover the different aspects to look

for before choosing the most eligible candidate

for migration, the challenges, methods and

solutions, and some tools to help undertake it.

“This white paper helps the QET department of any

IT organization to understand, compare and select

industry-standard test automation tools. It also

helps to evaluate migration from commercial to

open source tool.”

Below are the key insights of this white paper:

• Technical challenges to migrate from UFT

to Selenium

• How migration helps customer

• Introduction about LeanFT

• Advantages and disadvantages of LeanFT

• LeanFT advantages over Selenium

Commercial tool - HP Unified Functional

Testing (UFT)

UFT is Unified Functional Testing, an automation

functional testing tool to execute automated

language. UFT can be used by both technical and

non-technical users. It comes with a license.

When installed for the first time, a 60-day fully

functional demo license is given, after which the

license needs to be purchased.

2

Introduction

In simple words, Automation testing reduces the

development cycle, eliminates the repetitive task

and enhances the software quality. But success in

for this automated migration concept. HP Unified

Functional Testing and Selenium are commercial

and open source tools respectively. They have

been a hot topic in the automated testing tools

market and have acquired a majority of the tools

market share. Similarly, there are existing

commercially available migration tools introduced

at POC level but they do not satisfy 100%

seamless migration due to its complexity.

Framework migration:

application framework consists of a software

framework used by software developers to

implement the standard structure of application

software.

Test automation developers are following

standard frameworks or customized frameworks

beside the usage of test automation tool.

Such frameworks contain configuration files,

test data etc. that are required to do the test run.

Therefore, framework migration is a critical

write a basic automation script. Its related

add-ons give the flexibility and power to test

web-services and service virtualization.

• Object repository is one of the greatest features

of any commercial tool that automatically

suffices the need to be component-oriented.

This tool is at its best when it comes to

navigation, result validation, and reports etc.,

and organizations don't need to worry

about the integration of UFT with other

available to bank upon for services & solutions.

Disadvantages of UFT

• UFT is costly when compared with any

open-source or commercial tools and license

cost is entirely dependent on volume and the

types. Additionally, individual add-ins are

integrated based on requirement, then need to

invest further.

• The licensing cost is not done with one-time

purchase, but it stretches over years to come

the dollars spent on tool & effort spent by

automation resources. Hence, the organization

needs to spend continuously to upgrade UFT for

new features that support new technology.

• Even though the scripting time is less, the

execution time is relatively higher as it takes

the entire resource along pushing load on CPU

& RAM. Also, it primarily caters to windows

environment and a limited number of browsers

support means no support for other operating

programmers can be used from the

current market.

• OS compatibility– Selenium tests applications

on all major OS including Windows, Linux, OS X,

Windows.

• Support– Selenium is supported by a vibrant,

active user community, but it does not have

dedicated support resources, whereas

technical support for UFT from HP (Hewlett

Packard) is available. For some issues, paid

automation suites, current investments,

and ROI.

• Assess the technical capabilities in the

team and choose a scripting language for

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,

Technical challenges while migrating

from UFT to Selenium

Although Selenium has several meaningful

advantages over UFT, including its much

broader compatibility with a different app

and test configurations, it is not without

technical limitations:

• Selenium is not uniformly compatible across

• HTML tables and other elements require

• Image-based tests are harder to accomplish.

• Dialog box support is limited.

• In general, Selenium requires a higher level of

Some of the issues are resolved through testing

framework compatible with Selenium. These may

be added via additional development effort when

velocity and achieves faster feedback with

continuous integration and deployment.

LeanFT

LeanFT from HP is a new functional testing

solution having a set of APIs. LeanFT provides

powerful tools like object identification center

and application models. This tool is developed to

target test automation engineers and developers

from agile teams. Integrating LeanFT with Unified

Functional Testing (UFT) can support DevOps and

Major aspects where LeanFT did better

• LeanFT provides Support for multiple IDEs

• Application models in LeanFT are quite powerful

and are good for cross-browser support.

• LeanFT can be used with UFT with no

additional cost

• Not a steep learning curve from resource’s

point of view

• Good support from HP

• LeanFT also offers the capability to integrate

with Selenium. Therefore, LeanFT can adapt

with existing tests based on Selenium, and add

• LeanFT leads to more collaboration between

Developers and Testers so it is an obviously

logical choice if the project test cases have

already been automated with UFT and adapted

the DevOps model.

• LeanFT aims to improve the continuous

testing process

programmers can be used from the

current market.

• OS compatibility– Selenium tests applications

on all major OS including Windows, Linux, OS X,

Windows.

• Support– Selenium is supported by a vibrant,

active user community, but it does not have

dedicated support resources, whereas

technical support for UFT from HP (Hewlett

Packard) is available. For some issues, paid

automation suites, current investments,

and ROI.

• Assess the technical capabilities in the

team and choose a scripting language for

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,

Technical challenges while migrating

from UFT to Selenium

Although Selenium has several meaningful

advantages over UFT, including its much

broader compatibility with a different app

and test configurations, it is not without

technical limitations:

• Selenium is not uniformly compatible across

browsers. It is most compatible with Firefox, so

scripts developed for Firefox may need

• HTML tables and other elements require

coding to work correctly; it is very tough to

handle sometimes.

• Image-based tests are harder to accomplish.

• Dialog box support is limited.

• In general, Selenium requires a higher level of

coding skills

Some of the issues are resolved through testing

framework compatible with Selenium. These may

be added via additional development effort when

velocity and achieves faster feedback with

continuous integration and deployment.

LeanFT

LeanFT from HP is a new functional testing

solution having a set of APIs. LeanFT provides

powerful tools like object identification center

and application models. This tool is developed to

target test automation engineers and developers

from agile teams. Integrating LeanFT with Unified

Functional Testing (UFT) can support DevOps and

• Supports and integrates with standard IDEs

like Eclipse, Visual Studio and languages like

Java and C#.

• Best solution for DevOps, Agile, and Continuous

Testing Applications.

• Supports Windows standard, Web, .NET

Windows forms, Windows presentation

foundation (WPF), Mobile, Siebel UI, and Insight

image recognition.

• Scripts are executed at a faster rate.

• It provides good collaboration between

Developers and Testers teams.

Disadvantages

• IDE is used not only for the development of

tests but also for execution.

• Web services testing is not part of LeanFT

• It is used only for Mobile, Windows, Siebel UI,

and Insight Image Recognition

Advantages of LeanFT over Selenium

Selenium has changed a lot since its inception in

work for many clients

• Open source: It's an open source tool and free

to download and use

• Good user community: Community is

getting stronger

Selenium with XPATH

• Cross browser testing: Selenium is a clear

winner here.

from UFT to Selenium

Although Selenium has several meaningful

advantages over UFT, including its much

broader compatibility with a different app

and test configurations, it is not without

technical limitations:

• Selenium is not uniformly compatible across

• Image-based tests are harder to accomplish.

• Dialog box support is limited.

• In general, Selenium requires a higher level of

Some of the issues are resolved through testing

framework compatible with Selenium. These may

be added via additional development effort when

developing or integrating such framework.

continuous integration and deployment.

LeanFT

LeanFT from HP is a new functional testing

solution having a set of APIs. LeanFT provides

powerful tools like object identification center

and application models. This tool is developed to

target test automation engineers and developers

from agile teams. Integrating LeanFT with Unified

Functional Testing (UFT) can support DevOps and

continuous integration (CI). It supports multiple

6

Conclusion

The successful migration or the end state of test

to be considered for any automation.

Migration from UFT to Selenium is effective when

the below standards are followed in existing UFT

automation:

• Object repository feature from UFT is used

in majority

• Less or no descriptive program applied

• The descriptive scripts are well written with

coding standards followed.

Few customers have existing test automation

then UFT can be continued as Selenium doesn’t

support such environments effectively Or

commercial add-ons to be procured. If the

organization is ready to spend on technology

landscape due to swift releases in agile with CI

(continuous Integration)/CD DevOps Model,

then LeanFT is most recent choice. In a

nutshell when the testing is either lightweight

environments (web/windows/database) or testing

automation starts from scratch, then the best

Major aspects where LeanFT did better

• LeanFT support for DevOps and CI makes it a

holistic tool when combined with UFT. It takes

care of End-to-End automation–the Agile way.

• Application models in LeanFT are quite powerful

and are good for cross-browser support.

• LeanFT can be used with UFT with no

additional cost

• Not a steep learning curve from resource’s

point of view

• Good support from HP

• LeanFT also offers the capability to integrate

• Combining LeanFT capabilities in the existing

LeanFT with existing Selenium tests

• LeanFT leads to more collaboration between

Developers and Testers so it is an obviously

logical choice if the project test cases have

already been automated with UFT and adapted

the DevOps model.

• LeanFT aims to improve the continuous

testing process

About the authors

Swamynathan Ramalingam

Mandeep Kumar Singh

from UFT to Selenium

Although Selenium has several meaningful

advantages over UFT, including its much

broader compatibility with a different app

and test configurations, it is not without

technical limitations:

• Selenium is not uniformly compatible across

browsers. It is most compatible with Firefox, so

scripts developed for Firefox may need

tweaking to run in IE or Chrome.

coding to work correctly; it is very tough to

handle sometimes.

• Image-based tests are harder to accomplish.

• Dialog box support is limited.

• In general, Selenium requires a higher level of

coding skills

Some of the issues are resolved through testing

framework compatible with Selenium. These may

be added via additional development effort when

developing or integrating such framework.

continuous integration and deployment.

LeanFT

LeanFT from HP is a new functional testing

solution having a set of APIs. LeanFT provides

powerful tools like object identification center

and application models. This tool is developed to

target test automation engineers and developers

from agile teams. Integrating LeanFT with Unified

Functional Testing (UFT) can support DevOps and

continuous integration (CI). It supports multiple

Major aspects where LeanFT did better

• LeanFT support for DevOps and CI makes it a

holistic tool when combined with UFT. It takes

care of End-to-End automation–the Agile way.

• Application models in LeanFT are quite powerful

and are good for cross-browser support.

• LeanFT can be used with UFT with no

additional cost

• Not a steep learning curve from resource’s

point of view

• Good support from HP

• LeanFT also offers the capability to integrate

• Combining LeanFT capabilities in the existing

LeanFT with existing Selenium tests

• LeanFT leads to more collaboration between

Developers and Testers so it is an obviously

logical choice if the project test cases have

already been automated with UFT and adapted

the DevOps model.

• LeanFT aims to improve the continuous

testing process