Turbocharge Your Automation Framework to Shorten Regression Execution Time
Asad Faruqui and Moni Mau say that their old regression automation used to take three-to-four days of execution time as they ran against different browser versions, locales, and currencies. They wanted to make the automation framework more efficient so features could go to market faster. Symantec explored Selenium Grid which could reduce the run time by offering some parallelism, but Asad and Moni wanted even more efficiency. They explain how they created both a framework in which they write modular test classes and an engine that can read test cases from a test repository (XML, database, or XLS sheet) and distribute the execution of these tests on virtualized images based on user requirements. If they don't have enough virtual machines, this creates a queue of outstanding jobs. The engine keeps track of results from execution of these classes, reports to the user when complete, and provides substantial error handling. Asad and Moni present this framework so you can learn from their approach and apply this framework to shorten execution times on regression automation.
QA director for trust services business unit, Asad Faruqui is responsible for leading the quality organization for market-leading SSL, malware/vulnerability scanning, and authentication solutions under the Symantec, Thawte, Geotrust, and Rapid SSL brands. Prior to Symantec, Asad worked at Cisco leading their routing protocol test teams under their central OS group. In all his roles, Asad has focused on increasing test automation, increasing test coverage, and measuring QA metrics around test efficiency.
Moni Mau, a senior principal QA engineer for trust services business unit, focuses mainly on designing and improving the test automation framework, integrating automation with Jenkins to support continuous integration testing, and executing performance testing. With more than fifteen years of software testing and development experience, he has led his automation team in developing an automation solution to significantly reduce regression time. Prior to Symantec, he worked at VeriSign and IBM as a software developer.