A Comparative Survey on Software Testing Tools

Abstract

Testing the software is an important part of the Software Development Life Cycle. In present day, the software industry’s focus is on developing quality applications. In order to save time and costs when evaluating a program, most testers have moved from manual testing to automated testing. A large variety of software testing tools, open-source as well as commercial, are available in the market. It is quite a challenging task to select a testing tool that fits best to their software, as the choices keep getting wider. With more choices comes also the increased spectrum of software testing tool features with cost variations. Web application tools help the developers to test their software quite comfortably and are widely used today. With the integration of testing tools and web browsers, testing has become modular. When choosing an appropriate software testing tool, there are many factors which come into play to make this decision apt for a particular software to be tested. Testing tools are either automated or manual. The tool selection is done on parameters which best suit the tester. The purpose of this study is to identify and compare the popular testing tools and provide a review based on parameters which are suitable. This paper provides a comparative review of features of open source and commercial testing tools in a tabular format, based on these different parameters. It also lists down descriptions and features of various testing tools so that users and developers can opt for the appropriate tools based on their demands and requirements.