QTP vs Selenium | Differences Between QTP and Selenium

Software testing is one of the mainstreams in the recent past. Testing the system against all odds make the entire process easier. So, the market for software testing is mainly dominated by powerful and dynamic tools like Selenium, QTP, and many more. So, in this QTP vs Selenium article, we’ll be discussing the major differences between the two automation testing tools.  

Before we see what is QTP, we’ll understand the history of QTP.

QTP is an acronym for Quick Test Professional which was originally developed by Mercury Interactive and was later acquired by HP (Hewlett Packard), and they called it UFT (Unified Functional Testing). This UFT was combined with the HP QTP and HP Service Test into a single software package which was apparently available till 2016 until the whole division was sold to Microfocus. 

So, let’s first learn about QTP and understand its functionalities. 

QTP vs Selenium: What is QTP?

QTP is an automation testing tool that helps testers to perform automated functional testing seamlessly, without monitoring the system in intervals.

• QTP/UFT is basically designed to test various software applications and their environment.
• It is licensed and the cost of this tool is very high.
• QTP is used to test UI-based test-cases and can even automate non-UI test cases such as file operations, database testing and so on.
• The user needs to have the knowledge of VBScript to run test cases.
• This Scripting engine installation is not required explicitly as it is available as a part of the Windows OS.
• QTP works only on the Windows platform and cannot work across other browsers like Chrome, Firefox and so on.
• It also helps in providing quality assurance to the software under test.
• It is easy to use because of its ease of navigation, result validation, and generation of reports.

Now, let’s understand about Selenium.

QTP vs Selenium: What is Selenium?

Selenium is an automation tool used to test web applications.

• Selenium is an open source portable framework used to automate testing of web applications.
• It is highly flexible when it comes to testing functional and regression test cases.
• Test scripts in Selenium can be written in different programming languages like Java, Python, C# and many more.
• These test scripts can run across various browsers like Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera and also provides support across various platforms like Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Solaris.
• Selenium also supports cross browsing where the test cases run across various platforms simultaneously
• Helps in creating robust, browser-based regression automation suites and perform tests.
• Elements on a web page can be easily found using the element locators like name, XPath, class, CSS selector and so on.
• Selenium can be integrated with tools such as TestNG & JUnit for managing test cases and generating reports.
• It can also be integrated with tools like Maven, Jenkins, Docker to achieve Continuous Testing. 

QTP vs Selenium: Advantages of these tools over each other

We’ll first see the advantages of Selenium over QTP.

• QTP is licensed and the license cost is way too high.

• It supports only VBScript programming language and the test scripts cannot be written in any other languages.
• These test scripts run only on windows environment and do not provide support across all the browsers.
• QTP does not support different IDEs. It works only on QTP developed IDE.
• It allows only limited add-ons to the process.
• It can also execute parallel testing like Selenium but only using Quality Centre, which is again a paid product by HP.

Now, let’s see what are the advantages of QTP over Selenium

• QTP can test web, mobile, and desktop applications.

• It has its own in-built object repository that helps in organizing the data in the application.
• The rate of automation is fast compared to that of Selenium.
• QTP can also handle controls within a browser like favorite bar, address bar, back, and forward buttons, etc.
• It also provides enterprise support if the user faces some issue.
• Test reports are automatically generated.

QTP vs Selenium: What are the differences between them?

QTP and Selenium are the two predominantly used automation testing tools which are widely used by all software testers.

We’ll compare these tools based on certain parameters –

• License
• Flexibility
• Programming language
• IDE basis
• Repository
• Environment

We’ll first start comparing them based on their license.

License: QTP is licensed and the cost is way too high and the user has to pay for all the versions of this tool whereas Selenium is an open source tool and the user does not have to pay for any of the versions of this tool. 

Flexibility: QTP is not very flexible when it comes to executing the test cases across different platforms. It mainly supports Windows and executes the tests there. It also tests Web, Mobile, and desktop applications whereas Selenium is highly flexible because the test cases can run across different platforms like Chrome, Firefox, IE and so on. It can only test web applications and cannot test mobile or desktop applications.

Programming language: QTP test scripts are written only in VBScript which is an active scripting language developed by Microsoft and the test scripts cannot be written in any simple programming language whereas Selenium test scripts are written in the simple user-friendly programming languages like Java, Python, C#, Scala, Ruby and so on but the most commonly used language among these is Java. 

IDE basis: QTP test cases only work on QTP developed environment and not on any other IDEs apart from this whereas Selenium test scripts are integrated and run across different IDEs like Eclipse, NetBeans, .Net and so on.

Repository: QTP has an inbuilt object repository which is a common storage location for all objects, and is a collection of all the objects and its properties with which QTP will be able to recognize them and act on it whereas Selenium does not have any inbuilt repository as it uses the web elements in the user interface to test the applications.

Environment: QTP supports different environments like SAP, Oracle, and so on and it does not support additional plugins to the software whereas Selenium supports all additional plugins alongside its features.

So, these are the major differences between the two most predominantly used testing giants, QTP and Selenium.

Conclusion

Each tool has its own pros and cons. It completely depends on the user as to what he wants to test and how he wants to carry out certain operations. These tools have advantages and disadvantages over each other. Selenium is ahead of QTP based on certain parameters and also QTP is ahead of Selenium, based on a different set of parameters.

Now with this, we come to an end to this “QTP vs Selenium” blog. I Hope you guys enjoyed this article and understood what is QTP and what is Selenium, and also their major differences. If you want to add more to your knowledge, you can go ahead and read similar blogs here

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