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Selenium - What Why Who How?


What is Selenium?
Selenium is an open source automated testing suite for web applications across different browsers and platforms. It is quite similar to HP Quick Test Pro (QTP) only that Selenium focuses on automating web-based applications.
Why use Selenium?
Selenium is fast and it supports programming in multiple languages like Java, C#,Python and Ruby. 
So development of automation scripts can be done in your language of preference. Selenium works well with AJAX testing. Selenium Grid supports execution of test cases in multiple platforms and multiple browsers in remote systems as well. 

The support for different programming languages gave selenium the power to harness the capabilities of those programming languages. 
For example, using JAVA as the programming language to code selenium scripts enables selenium to use JDBC for database access and testing.All the APIs supported in Java also become the advantage of Selenium like Log4j API, Apache POI.

 Its free!!!!

Who should use Selenium?

Selenium is mainly used across organizations trying to reduce Automation costs. 
Selenium should be used by people who want to test Web applications in multiple operating systems across multiple browsers.

How Selenium evolved and How to use Selenium?

Selenium is not just a single tool but a suite of softwares, each catering to different testing needs of an organization. It has four components.
  •          Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
  •          Selenium Remote Control (RC)
  •          Web Driver
  •          Selenium Grid

Selenium IDE


Selenium IDE is a Firefox extension that can automate the browser through a record-and-playback feature.
Once you click on record, the actions you perform in the Firefox browser are recorded and a test case is created. This test case can be exported to the supported formats and languages preferred by the user. The exported test cases can be used in Selenium RC or WebDriver.

Selenium Remote Control

Selenium Core is a JavaScript program that works by injecting JavaScript into the html page which performs actions like the end user. The disadvantage of this is because of same origin policy, users had to have the AUT and Selenium Core installed in their local machine.
To overcome this, another engineer created a server that will act as an HTTP proxy to "trick" the browser into believing that Selenium Core and the web application being tested come from the same domain. This system became known as the Selenium Remote Control or Selenium 1.

WebDriver

When browsers and web applications were becoming more powerful and more restrictive with JavaScript programs like Selenium Core, WebDriver was the first cross-platform testing framework that could control the browser from the OS level.
WebDriver was faster because it eliminated the need of the HTTP proxy aka server between the script and AUT.

Selenium Grid

Selenium Grid was developed to address the need of minimizing test execution times as much as possible. He initially called the system "Hosted QA." It was capable of capturing browser screenshots during significant stages, and also of sending out Selenium commands to different machines simultaneously.

Selenium 2

Selenium RC and WebDriver were merged to make a more powerful tool called selenium 2. Its fast and it supports programming in multiple languages like Java, C#,Python and Ruby. 


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