Today, automated testing tools have emerged as a cornerstone for developers, enabling them to verify the functionality, performance, and responsiveness of their web applications with precision and consistency. Among these tools, Selenium stands out as a preferred choice for web application testing, offering a robust framework to emulate user interactions across diverse browsers. However, as the breadth of devices and browser combinations proliferates, testing locally becomes an ever-growing challenge. This is where AI-powered test orchestration and test execution platforms like LambdaTest step in, allowing testers to boost their Selenium test coverage exponentially. This article delves deep into harnessing the power of Selenium on the cloud and exploring the unique benefits of the LambdaTest approach.
What Is Test Coverage?
Test coverage gauges the extent of your application that undergoes testing. It isn’t solely about the number of tests conducted but also encompasses the actual devices, browsers, and versions of operating systems you assess. Elevating your test coverage means checking more code across a broader range of device and OS combinations.
It’s essential to understand that achieving 100% test coverage is often impractical. Aiming for coverage of around 70% might suffice in many scenarios. However, striving for higher coverage can prolong the app’s launch. It’s crucial to evaluate your requirements and weigh the risks tied to reduced test coverage to pinpoint the ideal percentage for your needs. Through this assessment, you can decide the necessary test coverage level to ensure a dependable and consistent application release.
By understanding your app’s test coverage, you can identify overlooked sections in your code that remain untested. This not only provides insights for enhancing test coverage but also reduces the chances of launching a faulty app. Furthermore, it aids in better time and cost projections, enabling more strategic resource allocation.
A Bit About Test Coverage Techniques
Test coverage evaluates how comprehensively different sections of an application are tested. This leads to the development of specific test coverage methodologies, primarily:
Statement Coverage: Statement coverage aims to confirm that every statement in the source code has undergone testing at least once. It offers insights into both executed and unexecuted segments of the total code blocks. It’s vital to note that, as a foundational level of coverage, statement coverage doesn’t ensure a complete 100% test coverage.
Decision/Branch Coverage: Given the complexities of coding, developers can’t always maintain a linear coding structure. At times, they need to branch out the code to fulfil certain functional specifications. These branches represent jumps from one decision juncture to another. Branch Coverage ensures that each potential pathway or branch in the code gets tested. Its calculation involves determining the least number of pathways needed to verify that all potential code routes have been examined.
Compatibility Coverage: Compatibility coverage shifts the focus from executing each line of code or individual branch to examining software performance across varied operating systems, versions, browsers, and the like. Essentially, it gauges how adaptable our software is and how many different systems it can effectively function on.
Given the multitude of devices currently on sale, achieving comprehensive compatibility coverage using tools on a standalone system becomes challenging. An optimal approach to address this is to leverage cloud-based solutions equipped with a vast array of systems ready for testing. For those venturing into this realm, LambdaTest is a commendable starting point, offering an intuitive user experience and supporting contemporary testing methodologies.
Risk Coverage: Risk coverage is centred on addressing the potential hazards linked to a software application. Every software piece comes with its own set of risks, influenced by factors like its type, the modules it uses, its target audience, and more. Testers have the responsibility to pinpoint these high-risk zones and concentrate their efforts there, ensuring they curtail any unforeseen issues for the end-users.
Product Coverage: Product coverage assesses the entirety of the product and gauges the extent to which test cases scrutinize it. The depth of this coverage is influenced by the software’s functionalities, stipulated requirements, modules, and other key criteria established by the team and stakeholders. Within product coverage, the focus remains on the detailed software specifications spread across various areas, including functionality specifications, unit specifications, and the like.
Benefits Of Test Coverage In Software Testing
Test coverage serves as a crucial indicator for gauging the comprehensiveness and thoroughness of your testing processes. Here’s why test coverage is valuable in software testing:
Early Detection Of Issues: Through test coverage, you can spot discrepancies in requirements, test scenarios, and defects early on in the product development life cycle, thereby preventing complications down the line.
Highlights Untested Regions: Test coverage aids in pinpointing sections of a program untouched by your test suite, ensuring you fortify your software and minimize errors.
Elevated ROI: Fewer flaws during production phases and reduced defects in user acceptance testing mean that test coverage positively influences the ROI. Resources previously allocated for defect resolution now contribute directly to your bottom line.
How To Boost Test Coverage?
You might be wondering how to enhance your test coverage. How can you optimize your team’s testing efforts and present high-quality apps to your users? Here are some guidelines to boost the test coverage of your application.
Never Start Without Planning
To enhance your test coverage, a well-structured plan is imperative. Outline the specific elements of your testing approach to ensure clarity and direction for your team. For instance, specify the devices, operating systems, and their respective versions you aim to test. As the tech landscape evolves, with new devices emerging and old ones becoming obsolete, update this list accordingly. Moreover, prioritize based on your users’ preferences! Concentrating on the platforms predominantly used by your audience ensures they have an optimal experience with your offering. In essence, delineate your app’s device testing scope.
Yet, there’s more to strategize about! Consider the frequency of your tests. Do you also scrutinize how your app performs in various real-life scenarios? Like, testing under diverse network connectivity conditions? Account for the duration these tests might consume and gauge their feasibility. More often than not, you’ll find yourself balancing potential risks against the resources at hand when determining the testing extent and frequency. Remember, even 100% test coverage doesn’t equate to a perfect product. Hence, continuous testing, even after launch, remains paramount.
Moreover, always set clear targets. What is the desired test coverage percentage for your app? Set a clear benchmark for device and code coverage that testers must achieve before rolling out the app to the users. Continually refine your strategy, assess outcomes, understand what’s effective and what’s not, adjust your approach, and align your team. By doing so, you’re on a path to consistently amplify your test coverage!
Keep Removing Dead And Redundant Code
Total coverage is calculated as the proportion of covered code to the total code (covered_code/total_code). A strategy to boost this coverage involves reducing the denominator – the total code. This can be achieved by eliminating the Dead or Zombie code. Typically, Dead code emerges from historical code changes where features were added, removed, or disabled or when debugging code was introduced and later deleted. By addressing this, you can enhance your overall code coverage without introducing new tests.
Identifying Dead code can be done through manual testing or automated tools like Selenium. However, before discarding any dead code, it’s crucial to carry out functional testing to ensure the rest of the program still operates as expected. Additionally, static test coverage analysis tools can help pinpoint unused dead code within the source. While the efficiency of static analysis varies based on tools, programming language, and system architecture, it serves as a beneficial starting point.
Moreover, similar to dead code removal, eradicating redundant or cloned code can also amplify test coverage ratios. Larger programs often have foundational code with replicated code blocks elsewhere. Detecting and eliminating these duplicates not only reduces the program’s size but also provides an inadvertent boost to testing. By removing such cloned code, you can potentially elevate your test coverage by 5-10%.
Use Automation Tools Like Selenium
Test automation offers the advantage of executing more tests in a shorter time frame. Solely depending on manual testing can create bottlenecks, extending your product’s time-to-market. Implementing continuous integration and continuous deployment through test automation allows early identification of issues and impediments during the development process. Additionally, by mechanizing recurring test cases, your team is freed up to tackle more intricate and engaging challenges.
Of course, test automation might not always be the best fit for every testing need. There are specific scenarios where manual testing, especially on actual devices, outshines automation. For instance, ensuring your app’s aesthetics and user experience are top-notch requires hands-on testing. But for most other contexts, especially routine or outcome-specific tests, automation is the way to go.
Chances are, a significant chunk of your tests are already automated. To elevate test coverage, capitalize on automation wherever practical. The time saved can then be redirected to test on an expanded set of devices or to broaden your code coverage. Automation frameworks, like Selenium, empower teams to simultaneously run tests for web and mobile applications, making it a fitting cornerstone for your test automation approach.
Improving Test Coverage With LambdaTest
Modern applications, given their vast scale, can be challenging to assess on local systems. Working on-premise presents multiple hurdles. First, when you allocate a single system for testing and store all relevant data on it, there’s a risk: what happens if this system malfunctions? Moreover, the various tools and plugins used consume a significant chunk of system resources. Given that no single tool or framework can handle all of today’s testing needs, allocating resources to these individual tools can decelerate the process.
Additionally, on-premise systems fall short when there’s a need to perform test coverage across varied operating systems, devices, and browsers. Fortunately, modern tools have emerged, enabling testers to bypass these minor obstacles and concentrate more on core testing. LambdaTest is a prime example.
LambdaTest, a cloud-based test automation platform, offers a plethora of contemporary testing methodologies without necessitating any local system downloads. For those aiming to broaden and enhance their test automation cycles, particularly in light of burgeoning software sizes, LambdaTest appears to be a top-tier choice. The platform boasts over 3000 screens and actual devices, streamlining compatibility coverage and facilitating cross-browser testing.
It’s crucial to note that while test automation tools like Selenium excel at script execution and leveraging their modules for efficiency, they don’t automatically craft unique test cases to amplify test coverage. However, platforms like LambdaTest simplify the automation test script creation process, which can, in turn, boost the overall test automation coverage.
Conclusion
Test coverage is a pivotal metric during the testing phase, playing a crucial role in evaluating the comprehensiveness of tests and identifying system vulnerabilities. Although it’s often mistaken for code coverage (which is akin to statement coverage), its complexities extend beyond that. Therefore, if your goal is to enhance test coverage, combining Selenium and LambdaTest is the most effective strategy to achieve productive outcomes in your application testing procedure. With this, we extend our best wishes for your testing process. Happy testing!
