Scriptless Testing vs Scripted Testing: Which One Is for You?

Scriptless testing - a way of test automation that does not need scripting -  is a new method. It aims at minimizing a tester’s load in terms of learning to code and script! Just like in-sprint, scriptless testing is also a new and popular paradigm. If you have stumbled on this post, I am sure you must have heard about scriptless testing and are fascinated by its working. Or you are wondering whether you should go for scriptless or scripted testing? What’s in store for you if you choose one of them? Don’t worry. This post is just perfect to clear out your confusion. However, this post will not dive deep into scriptless testing and if you are interested in that solely, you may visit What is Scriptless testing and how it works.

Scripted Testing - Standard and Powerful Method

Scripted testing has been a standard method of automated testing for software and is today used in the majority of software development cycles. The following table shows the growth of the automation testing market over the years in billion dollars:

Source: MarketsAndMarkets

Automation took a new turn in software testing as Agile got mixed up into the teams. Scripted automation could perform better and costs generated were minimum. For some of the tests, you could create and run the tests overnight and check them the next day. It required careful planning and test script creation were written, monitored, and maintained by QA testers.

Scriptless Testing - New and Adapting

A recent shift in test automation is seen - from scripted to scriptless testing. Scriptless testing, as is clear from the name, means a type of test automation that won’t involve scripting. There are multiple ways that scriptless test automation can be achieved today, here is an article that covers all of them: Scriptless Testing Is Not Just Record and Playback: Top 10 Scriptless Testing Approaches

There are tools that let you use scripting/coding for complex scenarios while there are tools that would let you automate complex scenarios via scriptless methods too.
In the next section, we will try to compare scriptless testing and scripted testing in detail.

Scriptless vs Scripted: Head to Head

The following table demonstrates the comparison between scriptless and scripted testing on various parameters:

The above table mentions the point-wise analysis on various parameters. Let’s explore these points in detail.

Script Writing

The most common comparison parameter that comes first to mind is the scriptwriting process and how intensive it is. Scriptless testing, as discussed earlier, does not involve writing scripts to test a function or a big module. Although, it may not be purely scriptless or codeless all the time the coding requirements will be minimum. 

Scripted testing requires test scripts for each module and functionality. These scripts can be complex or simple depending on the chosen testing framework.
Therefore, if you have a team that is trained in scripting then you can choose to stay scripted. Otherwise, scriptless testing can be easier to start.

Programming Knowledge

Scriptless testing does not require programming knowledge as the construction of the test script is a bare minimum. You can have a manual tester or people from other fields to start scriptless testing without any prior programming knowledge.

Selenium code for scripted automation. Source: Guru99

Scripted testing is done through writing scripts in a programming language. Hence, good programming knowledge becomes a necessity in this case. Here, the choice depends on the current situation of the company. If you are a new startup, scriptless testing would probably be a good place to start, as automation testers will cost you more. For an established firm with a lot of automation testers on board, scripted testing can be a good choice.

Script Management

Now that you have written the scripts (or not) and executed them, the next part comes in maintaining them. Maintenance of scripts is the effort you have to make in changing them when some existing functionality changes or dependencies occur with newer functionalities. Scriptless coding relaxes the team in this regard. If functionality is changed, you probably would have to drag and drop something, record, and replay once or change the NLP-based language. Any of those processes won’t take much time.

Scripted testing on the other hand sometimes brings a nightmare when functionality changes in the software. The automation test script becomes too complex over time along with the module. The dependencies and the flow of these test scripts require time for the tester to understand them even if the tester is the one who wrote these scripts. Time, which has become one of the most precious resources of software development, will be put to the test while maintaining the test scripts in the long run.

People Involved

Involving people in the testing process can bring out refinement and better inputs to the quality of testing. The more diverse your team, the better it is for testing and maybe the reason for the popularity of BDD today. Scriptless testing wins the hand here as the testing is codeless - people can easily be involved in it. Scriptless testing can involve people from the business team, management team, stakeholders, or even the clients. These people with little or no programming knowledge can understand the testing flow and can improvise and suggest changes in the process.

Scripted testing however has everything written in the programming language. Therefore, people cannot be involved to directly understand the test scripts and suggest any changes. Only QA testers can do that. Analysts, managers, and clients however help the QA testers in defining the requirements and the end-goals of the modules. But, the actual testing process can be done by the QA team only.

So if your clients want to be involved and there are no QA testers that can work on test automation then scriptless testing would be a better choice.

Learning Curve

The learning curve is the effort you need to put in order to learn the testing process from scratch. Scriptless testing has a very shallow learning curve. Although different tools provide different methods of scriptless testing, the documentations are detailed and the process is not too complex. 

Scripted testing on the other hand has a very steep learning curve. Documentations are thorough but involve heavy programming-dependent sections. To start the scripted testing, the tester has to learn a programming language from scratch. Then, he must be able to apply the logic through the programming language as English-based tests will not be accepted. Finally, the tester has to choose a software that supports his programming language and learn the software and its functions to perform testing. All this takes time and effort resulting in a steep learning curve.

Test Setup and Execution

The test setup and execution is the time it takes to create the tests and execute them to generate the final reports. Scriptless testing, as you know, does not contain complex code and hence are quick to form the test cases and generate the results.

Scripted testing test creation takes time, sometimes days. Hence, the overall time taken is large comparatively.

Scope

Sometimes, with Scriptless testing, it is impossible to automate complex scenarios. That is why most of the scriptless test automation tools allow the use of code, when needed, too.

Scripted testing, contrary to the scriptless, can be applied to every type of complexity and part of various testing methods. These can include unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests, etc. If your only requirement is UI testing, scriptless testing is a good choice otherwise scripted testing should be preferred or maybe a mix of both would work too.

Tools

This was all about the basic differences between the scripted and scriptless testing that will help you decide which one to choose. Once you do, you will need a tool that can establish the required task. Scriptless testing has fewer tools but they are effective and do their job perfectly. These tools have different methods of defining the tests and managing them later on. You can learn more about a variety of codeless automation tools and decide the one that suits you the most.   

Scripted testing is a more popular method with Selenium a good tool to start with. Selenium comes in a lot of different languages so you don’t have to adjust according to the software. Selenium is open source, powerful, and has a very vast community to help you in every way. 

Scriptless or Scripted? Which One To Choose?

With the above careful analysis, I am sure you might have made up your mind about which type of method to choose from. Both the methods are great and bring different things to the table. Scriptless testing is easier, quicker to construct tests, and can involve people who have never written a single JS code. But scriptless has limited scope and in cases where captcha or barcodes needs to be tested, it fails. Scripted is older, mature, and brings quick results. This can be applied to small modules and the software which are sensitive and require exhaustive precision testing. But they have their own loopholes too. 

The type of testing to choose is better to know when you consider all the above points with respect to your own situations. You can either divide the tasks, train the team or spend more money, it depends on your projects, situation, and organization. However, we would love to hear from your side and the reason you adopted a method. Hope to see some great comments! Have a nice day!