Mercury Test Director vs. Selenium: Compare and Contrast

Test Director is supposed to be a an encompassing application that helps with all aspects of testing from test case management to down to running your automated tests. It then reports on all of this.

If you have a lot of money then it may be the right option for you.

Selenium is a UI test automation framework that is people use instead of HP Quick Test Pro (QTP). QTP, like Test Director, costs a small fortune to setup and get it going. Selenium is very good at testing at AJAX applications where QTP can cope with it. Selenium runs in the browser so doesnt rely on UI maps and doesn't need to have a object store for the page. The Page Object Pattern for UI testing can handle this in a more intuitive manner. With Selenium 2 (now in alpha) there is going to be better support for more native actions like key strokes which QTP is slightly better but once it has fully released then I feel Selenium 2 will be the best Web Test Automation framework out there. QTP will still be able to do desktop applications but with more and more applications going into Browsers it will have less and less marketshare of all applications out there.

Thanks a lot for the feedback, AutomatedTester. Does Test Director have the recorder ability of Selenium? Or is that solely under the purview of QTP?

marc esher 2010-01-07 11:31:38

as far as I can remember its only in QTP since Test Director is a test management application

AutomatedTester 2010-01-07 11:38:14

Thanks a lot, AT. Much appreciated.

marc esher 2010-01-07 15:16:18

Yes, recording functionality is only a feature of QTP. QTP is a functional test automation tool, like Selenium. TestDirector/QualityCenter, on the other hand, is a test management platform, allowing you to organize requirements, test cases, test scripts and defects, execute manual tests and kick off automated test runs (QTP actually executes the tests, but TD/QC is responsible for launching QTP on remote hosts). TD/QC would be compared directly to IBM Rational Quality Manager or Microsoft Test and Lab Manager, for example.

Tom E 2010-04-01 14:25:38

From a usability perspective, Test Director is a great steaming pile of stink. It doesn't work with any browser other than IE6. It has a ridiculous number of hoops to jump through to move issues through a queue. On the other hand if you use an offshore company for testing and you want to keep them busy for months chasing their tails, use Test Director.

grenade 2010-04-28 14:45:40

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Mercury Test Director vs. Selenium: Compare and Contrast

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