When looking into job descriptions for testers, test engineers, test automation engineers, etc.. I very rarely see anything mentioned about usage of TestComplete.... My focus is primarily on Netherlands. I do not have any info on TestComplete usages in nearby countries (Belgium, Germany, France)... When I speak to head hunters about my TestComplete background, and I ask about companies using TestComplete, I get the answer "never heard of it", almost all the time! :( I wonder why is it that so little companies in Netherlands use TestComplete for their test automation? What is populair (in job descriptions) nowadays here is Selenium and Coded UI frameworks.... Do you have an idea as to what is causing this? And how to "fix" this?

As has been said, the move to web based service has pushed a lot of testing Selenium's way. It's also free, has multiple language bindings, and has actually been adopted recently as a W3C standard. Which are all big factors in it's uptake I suspect. In my office, I was initially doing both web and desktop testing, now I focus almost entirely on desktop. The web based stuff is now done using fixtures written by the devs, and scripts written by the testers. To be honest, I wouldn't worry too much about adverts mentioning the specific tool. I'd never used TC before I started here 4 years ago. Indeed, I'd never heard of it either. My background was QTPro. But my current employer asked me to look at tools and select one I thought was best fit for them. TestComplete was it. Handles more technologies out of the box. Offers multiple scripting languages. And is a lot cheaper then QTPro (probably TC's closest competitor - I think so anyway). Both have their plus and minus points. But having used TC for a few years now, I do prefer it over QTPro. (Or whatever QTPro is called now. I know HP renamed it a while ago.) So just the fact that you know automation is the main thing. The concepts are the same in most. But the execution varies. And if you're familiar with the concepts, learning new ways to execute them is a lot easier than starting from scratch ....

Nope, not saying that at all. Case in point, the company I'm currently working for specifically did NOT want Selenium because a) it's web only and they have a mixture of web and desktop applications and want a SINGLE tool to do both and b) they want a tool that does not require coding skills to utilize but does support coding.We are doing a kind of hybrid environment. There is a framework that is being created in code with Script extensions, SQL database, etc. There is a role here where someone needs to develop, update, enhance, and maintain that framework. That person needs experience with the tool and experience coding AND needs to know what makes a good test in order to support tests in that framework. However, there are other roles here that do the actual creation of individual test cases which does not require major coding experience and, with regards to the tool, doesn't need to be a major expert in the tool. So... we're utilizing multiple roles, multiple layers of quality assurance personnel to test the applications.Yes, there is market pressure for Selenium but, as was the case a number of years ago with automated testing in general, I think we'll see a leveling out in the market place. It used to be that everyone wanted to jump into automated testing as "the thing to do" and it was seen as the silver bullet to solve all the testing problems of on-time delivery, bug free apps, etc. As James Bach wrote in an article back in the late 90's, there was a "snake oil" mentality many times put out by automated testing tool providers. "Buy our tool and all your problems will go away with simple click and record." When that didn't pan out, a LOT of companies that jumped on the test automation band wagon abandoned those projects. However, the companies that saw Test Automation not as a universal solution but as another stage in the software development cycle maintained their projects and now TestComplete and UFT both have some VERY robust tools that fit a variety of shops. As for Selenium being the "end all" for test automation... not every application is "Web"... we have mobile application testing now. And there are STILL desktop based applications that need testing. Also, not every test automation environment supports low-level coding. And the whole "it's free so it's good" will level out for the very reasons you point out of support and general source maintenance.Just stating the way the market is NOW is not necessarily endorsing a particular view of the future of the market. You're OP questions the footprint of TestComplete in the European business space. I've expanded that to point out that, in general, COTS tools like TestComplete and UFT are faced with a particular market pressure that comes from an economy that still hasn't fully recovered from the 2008 scenario. But these things move in cycles and I'd be willing to bet that, especially with some of the stuff that SmartBear has been doing (their new Environment Manager for one thing) is going to expand their share of the automated testing market and even make inroads into Selenium's share.

What Colin_McCrae said. :-)The best way to look at it is that, from testing tool to testing tool, the general concepts of test automation stay the same. Code languages are also fairly universal (both QTP/UFT and TestComplete support VBScript) and the general ideas of object identification and so on are also universal (object repositories, POM, NameMapping, etc). So, if you are job hunting looking for a position as a test automation person, that's your sell points: you know test automation, you know multiple languages, you know automation concepts and processes, etc. True, companies are still looking at "ramp up" cost for training someone in a new tool. But if you can show yourself to be a rapid learning, able to pick things up quickly, etc., that ramp up time can be minimized as well.

tristaanogre Regarding 1): is free really only the main criteria for businesses to select test automation tooling? Don't they make a serious judgment on costs/ benefits (what do you get for the money). Selenium is free (in terms of doesnt need a license to be paid for), but support is non commercial (so voluntary) and there is still no good support for solid Record and playback / or "keyword test" like of tests in Selenium. It requires 100% coding/scripting in Selenium; 2) Unfortunalely most companies (and most developers as well, unfortunately) do not understand what is the essence of Quality Assurance: meaning peforming validations (either manual, or automatically) on 'system under test'. This 'system under test' lives in an environment (has links to servers, talks to/ with interfaces etc), and therefore effectiveness of QA becomes much higher on end-to-end validation, which increases test coverage as well.

Colin_McCrae I've worked both with HP's UFT (Unified Functional Testing - the new name they made out of QTP), as well as with IBM's Rational Functional tester, as well as SmartBear's TestComplete. All provide solid bases for designing future proof, robust , data driven end-to-end test automation frameworks, and they differ (somewhat ;) in pricing regarding the license. That said, I agree the concept regarding above tools are more or less the same. I think Selenium has quite a different approach in the sense that it solely relies on scripting and requires much more effort to realize effective end-to-end validations.

TestComplete usage in the business market in The Netherlands (Europe)

12 Replies

baxatob
Community Hero
8 years ago
Yes, that's true.

Let check keyword statistics for USA on indeed.com:

Test Automation gives 22,100 positions

Selenium gives 5,263 positions

TestComplete gives only 90...

First of all companies are looking people for general processes and only then for particular tool.

Most of companies do not know what exactly they need. They only know that they need test automation. Some of them know about Selenium, because it is really good and (!) free.
- mgroen2
  Super Contributor
  8 years ago
  baxatob thanks for the reply.
  Searching on 'TestComplete' on indeed.com for Netherlands only give 12 results :(
  
  Recognizable : companies just shout 'we need to start doing testautomation', but have no clue as to how to start it on a mature level, and so they follow the rest of the herd and choose Selenium... but it is really good? It's good for developers, but requires specific skillset and it's not really practical for the 'non technical' QA kind of people....
  - tristaanogre
    Esteemed Contributor
    8 years ago
    To be honest, the trend is the same across the industry, even here in the US, especially for testing web applications everyone wants Selenium or similar experience. Two reasons that I figure this is the case:
    
    1) Selenium is free and the current global economy is all about doing the most with less capital. Especially with smaller companies.
    
    2) The industry is more and more heading into the web and the cloud for their software solutions and companies are looking for a "Web testing tool". TestComplete does web testing but it is not an exclusively web testing tool so any searching will come up with Selenium.

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TestComplete usage in the business market in The Netherlands (Europe)

12 Replies

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