No Automated Testing

Don't be taken aback if you see following changes in software testing (read people perception) in 2012 - Management's Disillusionments Tester != Bots Testing != Monkeying around Tester != Project delivery blockers More tester != More defect discoveries Testing != Just keep testing More tester != Less time needed for testing Automation tool != Less manual testing needed != Less testers needed Tester salary = Dev salary (sigh) Testing certificate != Expertise Automated tester !> Manual tester (though vice versa may be true)

You might find umpteen resources on learning to write UI automation. But rarely you find any guide on writing bad automation code. Bad automation code is not actually "bad" especially when you consider following - Bad automation code keeps you job safe. Well who can understand the code other than you. Gives you an opportunity to ask for more raise as you are the only one who can maintain the code you write Lets you keep your head up as you the geek of your company who knows that abstruse code  Now coming to writing bad automation code, here are some silver bullets - Record and Replay is the core or writing good (read bad) automation code. It has so many advantages which just out do many others. Biggest being you don't have to write any good code (read bad), tool does it for you. The way to convince decision owners in to enlightening is to let them know that record and replay does not require any special skills. Even your HR can do this.

Note: If you are new to java and selenium then start with selenium java training videos .   I prefer css locator over xPath but there are times when css locators don't fit requirement. One such requirement is when you want to navigate to parent element of an element and may be parent of parent and even more. Unfortunately css locators don't provide any mechanism to navigate to parent of an element. See this for more. Of late I came across a scenario when I wanted to click on a link depending upon the text in a text box. Herein parent of text box and parent of link were at the same location. More over there could have been many such combinations in application. Fortunately I just need to pick first such instance and Web Driver any way considers only first instance when multiple locators are found matching an element. Element in question is in following html - Here I need to click on highlighted anchor on the basis of input element (which is also hig...

My work at Yahoo! has come to an end and I must show gratitude to those who made my tenure at Yahoo! most memorable one. On my last day we went for team lunch and I was being asked to give a speech and I did not coz I was not feeling that it was any different day for me. Just seemed like an ordinary day. I wan to begin this post with a name which has disillusioned my cynical attitude towards managers - Padmaja Raghavendra who has been instrumental in having many Yahoo! properties see day of light and I was the fortunate one to have got the opportunity to work with her. She works painstakingly and yet most caring person I met at Yahoo! I wish Indian managers take a cue from her than our IT industry would not be as ill. Jithin and Partha, two most amenable developer I worked with. A few developers just never lose temper and know what is right under a given situation. It seems impossible that any one would ever be at daggers drawn with them. My other team members - Vinit, Anand, Ar...

There is great charm about on-site (read USA) work in employees of Indian IT service industry. This is also seen as great tactic by your employer to keep you engaged with company and not hop job. You are often offered an on-site trip if you are the project savior and decide to quit. And few of you indeed get to go to client place with great pride. But do you get to go on work visa? By and large answer is NO . And probably you don't even know that you are sent to work on illegal visa, famously known as B1 visa. There is nothing illegal about B1 visa per se but this category of visa allows only business meeting or attending seminars . This is why there is initial cap of 3 months to stay. Once it is stamped by your employer that you would travel on-site, this how whole story goes - You are scheduled for an interview with US consulate. Your HR comes to train you on how you should speak about supposed business trip and not utter a word about work

I must say I did not have an easy time trying to set up Selenium Grid 1.0 locally. Since I did not have access to multiple machines I was trying to setup hub as well as slave remote control and was following the doc available here . Though documentation is detailed it is tough to have it replicated with your set up. of late I posted about ant build file here and we need to add couple of target to it to be able to work with Selenium grid. I have taken these extra target from the Selenium Grid distribution, these are - Target - "launch-hub" is used to launch grid hub while target "launch-remote-control" is used to launch remote controls along with set of parameters like - host, hubURL etc, which would be serving to hub.