Using Ruby/Watir for test automation
Submitted by RickW on Wed, 02/27/2008 - 4:52pm.
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Any QA folk out there?
During my extend period of un-employment, I've been looking and Ruby and Watir for testing automation. It seems to be getting some play around the country, but the recruiters/hiring managers I've talked with recently don't seem to know much about it.
Has anyone on here used it? Good, bad or indifferent, I need comments.
Any other open source tools being used?
Thanks for the input!
Ruby is starting to get some traction out there... Specifically Ruby on Rails.
Your best bet to find interest in what you are working on is from a shop that is using RoR.
Watir looks like it is similar to, for example the LWP or libcurl libraries for Perl. Perl/LWP is probably one of the most popular choices for open source developers to script web testing automation. There are similar libraries for other languages such as Python, and believe it or not I've actually seen people write voluminous amounts of Java to do it. I imaging that in the closed source MS world that people do it in C# or even scarier VB. Worse than that I've actually known people in the MS world to use libcurl from C/C++ or even Delphi. Yikes.
I've also seen people hack together code using things like using Expect scripts to automate lynx. Painful.
Oh... one more question... You are at least the 2nd or 3rd person who I've run into/seen around here who is recently ex-Catalis... Did they recently crater? Big layoffs?
Curious... I talked to them back in about 2003 or so, but at the time they were only offering very low salaries with most of the "compensation" being options. Unfortunately I'm not in a financial place (and wasn't back then either) to be able to do that.
Pretty much imploded. I think there is still a skeleton crew around. Most everything is going the outsourcing direction, probably.
They had some layoffs back in Nov (or late Oct.) last year, then laid off all but about 20 people on Jan 2 (that's when I got the axe). Then the following Monday they got rid of almost everyone else (except for maybe 6 or 7 people).
Ran out of money, which is a whole other saga!
Sorry to hear that. Unfortunately all too common a scenario. Despite what the media says a lot of health care IT companies aren't really doing that much better than others. When they say outsourcing, do they mean off-shore outsourcing or are they just planning to replace the FTEs with cheaper contractors, or do you know? How big were they at their peak? If they've gone from a 20+ company to 6 or 7 people that quickly, I'd be really worried that they've lost critical mass of knowledge of how their products work to the point that recovery may not be possible in any kind of reasonable time frame no matter how many contractors they throw at it.
Back in Oct there were 75 employees.
And the outsourcing is off-shore.
They've probably lost critical mass at this point, but if you've ever worked with doctors you should know that "they can fix anything"; even broken software companies ;>)
Wow... 75 to 7. Not good. Maybe you can take some solace in that the off-shoring will almost surely be a disaster and that those doctors will probably break things even worse.
Man, did this thread take a turn for the worse. Anyway, it's off to happy hour to commisserate with other ex-catalis folk.
Anyone else got info on test automation tools?
The most marketable test automation tool skills seem to be the Mercury Interactive (HP) ones such as WinRunner, XRunner, LoadRunner, Quality Center (formerly Test Director), etc. Unfortunately those tools are expensive and have a big learning curve (proprietary scripting languages, etc). The next most popular ones seem to be the Sylk toolset. After that people tend to roll their own, sometimes using frameworks in whatever tech footprint they use, JUnit, NUnit, PerlUnit, etc...
Hope you had fun at happy hour and I wish you and all of your former co-workers well in your job hunts. Sorry if I brought things down for you...
Softwarejanitor,
You didn't "bring things down" on me. I was just suprised where the thread headed. I know about the "runner" products; used them many years ago. And I'm quite proficient in Silk and 4Test. Actually the 4Test scripting language of Silk is very C++ like. But the trend seems to be towards the open source type of tools, as they are becoming better and don't have the cost footprint so that smaller companies can afford to invest in the learning curve, and don't have to invest in the license.
If you wouldn't mind, please send me an email (profile or linkedin should give it to you). I have a couple of questions I'd like to ask you "offline".
Thanks, and by the way, the happy hour was cool.