Selenium is one of the widely used software test automation tools. It is an open-source automation testing tool.There is a mass movement towards automation testing in the software testing industry.
Packages of selenium
There are 4 packages. They are
- Selenium Integrated Development Environment(IDE).
- Selenium Remote control.
- Selenium Web driver.
- Selenium Grid.
1. Selenium Integrated Development Environment(IDE)
Selenium IDE was developed by shinay Kasatani. In the year 2006 selenium IDE became a part of the selenium package. This selenium IDE turned out the great value and potential to the community. Its record and playback features make it exceptionally easy. In selenium when compared to all the packages, selenium IDE(Integrated Development Environment) is the simplest and easiest package. Selenium IDE is a cable of recording and playing back the user across on a firefox instance to which it is plugged in. And selenium IDE is cable of converting into java, HTML, c# and so many other languages. It is flexible and extensible. But it does not support error handling. And does not support database testing. Iterations and conditional statements are not supported by the selenium IDE(Integrated Development Environment).
2. Selenium Remote Control (RC)
Selenium RC is a language which is written in java. It allows the user to construct the test scripts for the web applications in any programming language. This selenium RC(Remote Control) is a result of the disadvantages of selenium IDE(Integrated Development Environment). And one of the main disadvantages of the selenium IDE is the same-origin policy. This selenium Remote Control(RC) supports a wide range of browsers and platforms. And it also supports data handling and database testing. It supports logging and capturing screenshots. Supports TestNG and Junit testing frameworks. Supports programming languages and constructs. Unable to handle alerts and navigations efficiently. It does not support android/iPhone testing. Unable to handle Ajax calls efficiently.
3. Selenium Web driver
Selenium web driver was invented in the year 2006 by Simon steward. It is an object oriented framework. Selenium web driver is a web-based testing tool. There is a hair-splitting difference between selenium web drivers and selenium RC. Without using any peripheral entity it utilizes the browser’s native compatibility to automation. Before executing the test scripts do not require a selenium server at starting. When compared, the selenium RC selenium web driver is faster. But it does not support mobile testing. And the API is more complex. Directly communicates with the browsers.
4. Selenium Grid
selenium Grid was introduced by Pat Lightbody in order to address the need for executing the test suites on multiple platforms simultaneously. There are 2 major components in the selenium grid. This hub routes test commands which are in JSON format to the multiple registered grid nodes. Node is a remote device that consists of a remote web driver and a native operating system. In the form of JSON test commands node received the request from the hub and executed them using a web driver.
