Sencha Test vs Selenium — Choosing Your Automation Saviour
By: Walkingtree Technologies
Tags: Selenium, Automation, Software Testing, Sencha Test, Walkingtreetech

Introduction

In this age of cut-throat competition, the survival of an enterprise application/product clearly depends on the ‘lead time’ it needs to reach out to the end users with a gamut of new features embedded. The more often the product reaches out to the right customer (of course with good quality), the more is the chance of its success.

Without an automation testing schedule in place, there is no way that we can reduce the length of the release cycle. Undoubtedly, test automation is an important process, but identifying the right automation tool or framework is crucial. At times you might have experienced the need to recommend an automation tool. You may also have wondered why a solution architect chose a particular framework for automation. Through this blog, we will understand the comparison between two important test automation frameworks i.e.Selenium and Sencha Test that will answer this question.

Selenium has been the favourite automation framework of web application developers for the past decade. It started off by providing support to server-based web applications moving on to provide support to modern-day single-page applications (SPA). Selenium is the one-stop solution for all web application automation irrespective of the underlying technology that the product was developed with.

Testing Sencha started with a solid background in its UI experience.

If you need to automate a general web application which is developed with a dev framework other than Sencha, then, the ideal choice of a test automation tool among Sencha and Selenium would be the latter with obvious reasons.

But choosing between Sencha and Selenium becomes tricky and icomplex if the application is intricately developed using the Sencha framework. We have analyzed both the tools in the context of a Sencha-based application and derived the following comparison

Classification

We have broadly classified the key differentiating factors into the following high-level characteristics:Comparison

Ease of Adoption Ease of Test Scripting Easy Maintenance/Execution Scalability/Test Strategy Compatibility Platforms and OS

Test development Platform

It supports Windows (Win 7+),Mac OS X,Linux 32-bit / 64-bit

It also supports Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, Linux.

Reports and Coverage Other Tools Integration

ALM

Sencha Test is integrated with JIRA (defect tracking tool), where a user can take advantage of publishing and reviewing bugs

It is not integrated with any defect tracking tool. Requires additional libraries.

CI Integration

Sencha test supports Popular CI tools like Jenkins and TeamCity

Selenium supports various CI tools like Jenkins, Bamboo, Cruise Control.

Database connectivity

From sencha test 2.1 we can connect to the database using external node modules

Selenium supports database verification by using JDBC (“Java Database Connectivity”).

JDBC is a SQL level API that allows us to execute SQL statements

Our Recommendation

If an application is developed with a framework other than Sencha, then, Selenium will be the wisest choice. Sencha test comes with a certain cost involved which may not be justified just for automation scripts. However, if the product is built on top of the Sencha framework, then it is not going to be an easy task to choose between Selenium and Sencha Test if your product goals and operating guidelines are generic.

However, if certain goals and guidelines of the product are clearly defined then, decision-making becomes easier. If your product has goals like automated unit testing(sencha test), code coverage, and test driven development, then the sencha test is the preferred tool. Sencha Test will allow you to prepare the functional automation scripts in parallel to development which will save a substantial amount of testing time that post-development endeavours require. If your product is being developed on Sencha, but only a limited set of Sencha features are used, then Selenium would be the right choice.

Get in touch with our industry experts for guidance on choosing the right automation testing framework for your applications.

Summary

This blog covers the different import attributes that we need to focus on while choosing the test automation framework and it also compares Selenium and Sencha Test w.r.t. how they fare in terms of each attribute. The write-up also provides recommendations on the modalities to choose from among the two automation testing frameworks. Do leave us a comment below about the blog.