Commercial Tools converging to Open Source counterparts!

SmartBear recently announced the launch of TestComplete 10.5 and QAComplete 9.9.5. The major change, to look for, in this new parcel is the support of Selenium WebDriver, the most used open source web testing automation tool. 

The way Selenium has appealed testers worldwide has attracted SmartBear's attention and they want Selenium's existing users to be able to switch their existing scripts to TC, without much of effort. Well, how much of it is true, time will only tell.

It's obvious that SmartBear wants to extend their user base and this move will actually help them achieve the goal but what impact will it make for the Selenium users? Will they be really interested in moving from totally open source eco-system to a paid one. Well, it again depends on what SmartBear offers to test teams through TC. They believe that Selenium lacks certain qualities like test case tracking, reporting, pass fail analysis, etc. Through this integration, SmartBear claims to provide testers use most of existing features of TC on existing scripts of Selenium.

On a high level they claim:

• Ability to debug failed Selenium scripts quickly using screenshots.
• In-depth reports allow testers to get more insights into code coverage and quality
• Perform test case prioritization by checking for traceability between requirements, manual test cases, automated tests including Selenium, and defects.
• Spend less time creating and maintaining Selenium scripts by reusing existing Selenium tests

The power of open source tools, in this case Selenium, can not be ignored. It's usage is very heavy in the industry because of ZERO licence cost involved (for management) and it's rich library of functions (for techies). But again, it fails to satisfy end-to-end needs of test teams. For example, Selenium doesn't offer in-depth reports and thus teams have to look for integrations with other 3rd party tools. SmartBear through this support claims to fill in that gap for all teams. 

Let's hope that TC actually fills this void through this integration, thereby, making difference to the lives of real testers who face various issues due to non-availability of certain rich features in Selenium.