Selenium is a brilliant piece of Opensource software that allows you to write automation tests (programs) that drive browsers. It supports most of the currently active browsers and does a great job. There is a firefox plugin (Selenium IDE) that allows you to record actions you perform on firefox and generates test programs in multiple supported languages.
You might be wondering, if selenium is so great then why do we need bqurious, or any other tool for that matter. Well, there is one big conceptual difference.
Selenium is a framework, with a set of APIs, built for programmers. If you know how to write a program in one of the many supported languages Or have a team of developers dedicated for this task, then Selenium is a great tool.
bqurious on the other hand is a comprehensive platform, that leverages Selenium APIs and other proprietary technology to eliminate the need for writing programs and bringing Test Automation to the realm of non-programmers like Business Analysts and Manual Testers. In the process, we built a holistic platform that fulfills most (if not all) of the Testing needs of an enterprise. From managing Test Assets to execution and reporting, everything comes out of the box with bqurious.
With this background, given below is a comparison of Selenium and bqurious only from Test Automation perspective.
| Selenium | Bqurious |
| Framework (a set of APIs) to drive browsers | EndItoIEnd suite for creating Automation Tests and managing Test Assets |
| Require programmers (knowledge of at least one of the many supported languages) to create tests | No programming is required. Tests can be visually written even by non-programmers. |
| Record Actions on Firefox browser using Selenium IDE. Characteristics Recorded Actions have hardcoded UI elements within Tests. This makes tests brittle since any change in the UI Element will render the test useless. To resolve this situation, you either have to reIrecord these tests OR manually change the element locators in generated code. Imagine the situation, when this single UI element change impacts multiple tests. This is one of the reasons Record & Play tools are not in favor now. Since Selenium Tests are Programs, you need to maintain two code bases. One for the application being tested, and the other for Selenium Automation Tests. | Record Actions on any of the supported browsers using provided Recorder. Characteristics Recorded Actions and UI elements are decoupled. UI elements are stored in a separate Object Repository with Tests only referring to these elements. If there is a change in any of the elements, one just has to update the element properties in the repository, and no change is required in the tests. bqurious brings the ease of Record & Play while still keeping maintenance effort very low. bqurious Tests are regular test assets, maintained within bqurious. No code. |
| If you are a seasoned Automation engineer, you will agree that for Selenium tests to be effective you need to plan it like a development project. This includes choosing and creating a framework (one of many I Keyword-driven, Library, Data-Driven, Hybrid, etc.) and rolling it out to the rest of the team for test development. So yet another development branch and a dedicated team to develop and maintain this framework. | bqurious comes prepackaged with a state-of-the-art Framework that includes all the good features of Keyword and Data-Driven frameworks. |
| Reusability is normally an afterthought when the cost of modification is higher. Its code refactoring after all. | bqurious tests are highly reIusable. Our approach of Business Components allows your testers to create and use building blocks effortlessly, at any time. Remember, No code at all. A lot of gain without pain. |
| Selenium has a very powerful component called the ‘Grid’, that allows you to execute tests on remote machines. In order to really use this feature to perform cross-browser, cross-platform testing, you will have to modify your test programs for running on platforms with appropriate capabilities. Characteristics You need to explicitly run Selenium Server and register with the Grid as a node on every machine for it to execute Tests. Moreover, you need to specify the capabilities of this node. This can obviously be scripted/programmed to avoid manual effort. But that’s more programming. | bqurious supports remote and parallel execution out of the box. No configuration or manual scripting required. Just install bqclient and you are good to go. In the GUI you are shown a list of connected machines with their capabilities, and execution is just a matter selecting desired machines and clicking on Run. Characteristics No special effort or configuration required. It just works. |