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Q1 Labs is a global provider of high-value, cost-effective, security information and event management (SIEM) products. They have been using Squish since late 2007 to test the Web UI of their entire QRadar-branded family of products.
Q1 Labs products are web applications that use JSP to render HTML pages with JavaScript used for dynamic elements. Their test automation takes place on several Windows virtual machine images, and using the browsers they support, such as Firefox.
We spoke to one Q1 Labs’ QA Engineers, Chris Fredericks, and asked him about their experience of using Squish.
Why Q1 Labs is using Squish
Q1 Labs first learned about Squish through web research. Chris told us that:
We were already using a GUI test automation tool but we were not happy with it, nor with the direction its development was taking. This made it essential for us to find a new tool that would suit our needs.
Several factors were influential in Q1 Labs’ decision to choose Squish over competing products. Chris summarized some of them for us:
- “We wanted scripting support, and Squish provides this with its support for four well-known and highly supported scripting languages. Some of the other tools we considered either provided their own proprietary scripting language, or no scripting support at all.”
- “We also liked Squish’s approach to interacting with the AUT via scripting—it seemed the most logical way. And in our case we chose to use JavaScript, since we already had a lot of experience with that language.”
- “We needed the flexibility to automate our testing, and Squish made this easy with its command line tools. We currently use our own in-house batch running and reporting tool, and it was easy to plug Squish script execution into our framework.”
- “We like to get value for our money—and we felt that Squish’s pricing met this requirement.”
We asked Chris more generally about Q1 Labs’ experience with using Squish, starting with the feature they found most useful:
“Given that our product contains quite a lot of data tables we would have to say that the inclusion of XPath has been a huge advantage for our automation effort.”
Squish’s support for XPath allows Squish/Web testers to perform XPath queries on arbitrary elements in HTML documents. (XPath is a standardized XML querying language that many consider to be more powerful and flexible than multi-property DOM queries as a means of navigating and accessing attributes in XML documents.)
We also asked what problems and challenges Q1 Labs had encountered in their use of Squish:
“We really have encountered no big challenges; Squish does the job we want it to do. The only issue we ran into was in the handling of Alert/Confirm windows—an area we know that froglogic is working to improve.
Squish’s technical support is something that many customers depend on. We asked Chris what his experience had been, and he told us:
“From the demo phase up until now the team at froglogic have worked hard to answer questions and work on issues. So yes, we are very satisfied with the technical support we have received.”
Scope and Benefits
Q1 Labs already have more than 800 test cases, with more in production. We asked Chris what benefits their automated testing had delivered:
One of the main benefits has been the decrease in the time it takes for our regression testing cycles. What used to take a few QA members weeks can now be done in a few days through automation. This also means that we can run full regression suites more often during our development cycle, instead of waiting until the end.
Chris also mentioned that recently Q1 Labs has extended its testing effort:
“Through the past couple of development cycles we have been automating some functional tests during the initial development phases. This has allowed us to thoroughly test new features as soon as they are available, and to raise bugs much earlier in the cycle.”
Chris also told us that although at present Q1 Labs use their own in-house batch test running and reporting tool, with Squish as the only third party product in their test tool chain, they are currently considering using some complementary tools.
“It’s good to know that from Squish’s end we’ll be able to integrate our current automation suites with, for example, Testlink, if we decide to go that route.”
Conclusion
Q1 Labs now has considerable experience with testing using Squish and has built up an impressive set of test cases which they are actively extending. And their experience of integrating Squish with their own in-house tools has given them the knowledge and confidence to integrate Squish with other tools if they decide to extend their tool chain.
Chris told us how test automation with Squish had enabled Q1 Labs to reduce their regression testing cycles from weeks to just a few days, with all the consequent benefits that such time saving and fast turnaround can deliver.
froglogic’s team would like to thank Chris for taking the time to share Q1 Labs’ experience with Squish, and we looking forward to a continued successful relationship.
