Open Source Automated Test Tools Written in Java

Well, I'm not a Java fun; though I have seen it growing from its inception.
However, I found this blog quite interesting for the testing tools based on Java.

Make extra cash from software testing...

I recently cross this site and thought it is interesting: http://www.utest.com/. I dont know how effective they are in qualifying customers and testers; and also I don't know how the compensation is determined, but it sounds a possible way of leveraging the skills in software testing for some extra cash. It may not be great $$, but I guess anything may be helpful if one doesn't have any income (which is the case for lot of people in this economic environment).

In addition, I feel strike is that I actually thought about the similar business model, inspired by the Rent-A-Coder. Well, I never had time/effort/resources to get it implemented; though I could do it better?

Selenium vs. Watir

One of the main testing activities I have been involved (or studied) in the last couple years is more or less related to testing web-based applications (either pure e-commerce, web-app, web-security or even appliance). For all of these related technologies, testing web-page is a norm and there are few methods to get the job done:

• Manual testing. The dumb way but still sometime the most productive way for the initial exploratary testing. I don't see any way to totally avoid it!
• Simple scripting…like wget. Sometimes, if one just needs check if a site is up and one or couple pages are there, using wget combined with some simple shell scriptsis probably one of the best choices.
• Regression Testing (or even functional testing); here we need some heavy-duty scripting tools. I did try the most expensive tools; like SilkTest, WinRunner, and also the so-called QTP (now part of HP); but I have never liked it: way too expensive and dumb (prietary scripting).

Well, the alternatives are available; and I believe they are quite useful and, even (IMO) better than the commercial QTP or like.

Our of all of the alternatives, two of them stand out: Selenium and Watir. There are lot of discussions and comparison between these two and here are my reasons of choosing Selenium over WAITR:

• Linux support: Selenium is much better than Watir; Watir was rooted for MS-IE-Ruby platform
• Python support: Selenium had Python support at beginning and Watir was a pure Ruby toy. Oh, why Python over Ruby? Speed!
• Doesn't Watir have anything better? Yes, Watir is better in supporting DOM objects, purely IMO. In addition, if the AUT is written in Ruby, there should be some build-in benefits,…, but dont quote me on it; I didn't go that far on this approach
• At last, if one has exposed to any unit-testing framewrok, like Xunit, Junit, and Selenium could integrate with the Python unit test: Pyunit.