Web Driver with TFS MTM

In open source software testing, you typically have two components in your supporting frameworks, you have your assertion framework, and your testing framework.

Your assertion framework is the framework responsible for identifying, executing, and reporting the results of the executed tests with in a class project. (ie. nunit, junit, MUTF, MBunit)

Your testing framework, is the framework that is used to perform the actual automation, the interaction with computer, or server. (ie. WaTiN, Web Driver, Selenium, UI Test)

Microsoft MTM has a very good and robust solution for testing software, however the testing framework: UI Test lacks in simplicity and maintainability when automating web applications. For some of us this lack of functionality causes us to abandon the MTM solution.

There is another solution however, ditch the UI Test, but keep the Microsoft Unit Testing Framework (MUTF). MUTF has some great features and functionality that can work with just about any open source framework and will still allow us to take advantage of all the great functionality in MTM.

Web Driver is slowly becoming the most popular framework in the QA industry. Being partially supported by the brains at Google, Web Driver has become more versatile, stable, and faster than any opensource framework out there, even beating out many commercial solutions.

The trick to creating a Web Driver/MTM solution is understanding all of the benefits of the Unit Testing Framework and using those benefits to work with MTM.

Benefits of Microsoft Test Management Solution:

• Supports Load Balancing, allowing you to run your suite of 1000 tests, across multiple machines cutting down on run time.
• Supports video capture of tests, aiding in the troubleshooting of failed tests.
• Tight Integration with Test Cases, you can associate your automation directly to a test case, allowing you to run the automation for that test case any time, and also allowing you to store your parameters for running the automation in the Test Case.
• Upload additional files with your results (you can upload a variety of files that can be stored with your test results, I often use this feature to capture screen shots on failures
• History of automation results. (I can look at a test and see the history of pass/fail for every time that test has been run)