QTP vs Selenium - Battle Between The Automation

Testing Giants
Neha Vaidya
Apr 4, 2019 · 7 min read

Selenium vs QTP

Software Testing is one of the mainstreams in the recent past. Testing the system against
all odds make the entire process easier. So, the market for software testing is mainly
dominated by powerful and dynamic tools like Selenium, QTP and many more. So, in
this QTP vs Selenium article, we’ll be discussing the major differences between the two
automation testing tools.

But before we compare QTP and Selenium, let’s take a look at the topics we’ll be covering
in this article

What is QTP/UFT?

What is Selenium?

Advantages of these tools over each other

What are the differences between them?

 Conclusion

Before we see what is QTP, we’ll understand the history of QTP.

QTP is an acronym for Quick Test Professional which was originally developed by
Mercury Interactive and was later acquired by HP (Hewlett Packard), and they called it
UFT (Unified Functional Testing). This UFT was combined with the HP QTP and HP
Service Test into a single software package which was apparently available till 2016 until
the whole division was sold to Microfocus.

So, let’s first learn about QTP and understand its functionalities.

What is QTP?
QTP is an automation testing tool that helps testers to perform automated functional
testing seamlessly, without monitoring the system in intervals.

QTP/UFT is basically designed to test various software applications and their

environment.

It is licensed and the cost of this tool is very high.

QTP is used to test UI-based test-cases and can even automate non-UI test cases such
as file operations, database testing and so on.

The user needs to have the knowledge of VBScript to run test cases.

This Scripting engine installation is not required explicitly as it is available as a part

of the Windows OS.

QTP works only on the Windows platform and cannot work across other browsers
like Chrome, Firefox and so on.
 It also helps in providing quality assurance to the software under test.

It is easy to use because of its ease of navigation, result validation, and generation of
reports.

Now, let’s understand about Selenium.

What is Selenium?
Selenium is an automation tool used to test web applications.

Selenium is an open source portable framework used to automate testing of web

applications.

It is highly flexible when it comes to testing functional and regression test cases.

Test scripts in Selenium can be written in different programming languages like Java,
Python, C# and many more.

These test scripts can run across various browsers like Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera
and also provides support across various platforms like Windows, Mac OS, Linux,
Solaris.

Selenium also supports cross browsing where the test cases run across various
platforms simultaneously

Helps in creating robust, browser-based regression automation suites and perform

tests.

Elements on a web page can be easily found using the element locators like
name, XPath, class,CSS selector and so on.

Selenium can be integrated with tools such as TestNG & JUnit for managing test
cases and generating reports.
 It can also be integrated with tools like Maven, Jenkins & Docker to achieve
Continuous Testing.

Advantages of these tools over each other

We’ll first see the advantages of Selenium over QTP.

QTP is licensed and the license cost is way too high.

It supports only VBScript programming language and the test scripts cannot be
written in any other languages.

These test scripts run only on windows environment and do not provide support
across all the browsers.

QTP does not support different IDEs. It works only on QTP developed IDE.

It allows only limited add-ons to the process.

It can also execute parallel testing like Selenium but only using Quality Centre, which
is again a paid product by HP.

Now, let’s see what are the advantages of QTP over Selenium
 QTP can test web, mobile, and desktop applications.

It has its own in-built object repository that helps in organizing the data in the
application.

The rate of automation is fast compared to that of Selenium.

QTP can also handle controls within a browser like a favorite bar, address bar, back,
and forward buttons, etc.

It also provides enterprise support if the user faces some issue.

Test reports are automatically generated.

What are the differences between QTP and

Selenium?
QTP and Selenium are the two predominantly used automation testing tools which are
widely used by all software testers.

We’ll compare these tools based on certain parameters -

License

Flexibility

Programming language

IDE basis

Repository

Environment

We’ll first start comparing them based on their license.

License: QTP is licensed and the cost is way too high and the user has to pay for all the
versions of this tool whereas Selenium is an open source tool and the user does not have
to pay for any of the versions of this tool.

Flexibility: QTP is not very flexible when it comes to executing the test cases across
different platforms. It mainly supports Windows and executes the tests there. It also tests
Web, Mobile, and desktop applications whereas Selenium is highly flexible because the
test cases can run across different platforms like Chrome, Firefox, IE and so on. It can
only test web applications and cannot test mobile or desktop applications.

Programming language: QTP test scripts are written only in VBScript which is an
active scripting language developed by Microsoft and the test scripts cannot be written in
any simple programming language whereas Selenium test scripts are written in the
simple user-friendly programming languages like Java, Python, C#, Scala, Ruby and so
on but the most commonly used language among these is Java.

IDE basis: QTP test cases only work on QTP developed environment and not on any
other IDEs apart from this whereas Selenium test scripts are integrated and run across
different IDEs like Eclipse, NetBeans, .Net and so on.

Repository: QTP has an inbuilt object repository which is a common storage location
for all objects, and is a collection of all the objects and its properties with which QTP will
be able to recognize them and act on it whereas Selenium does not have any inbuilt
repository as it uses the web elements in the user interface to test the applications.

Environment: QTP supports different environments like SAP, Oracle, and so on and it
does not support additional plugins to the software whereas Selenium supports all
additional plugins alongside its features.

So, these are the major differences between the two most predominantly used testing
giants, QTP and Selenium.

Conclusion
Each tool has its own pros and cons. It completely depends on the user as to what he
wants to test and how he wants to carry out certain operations. These tools have
advantages and disadvantages over each other. Selenium is ahead of QTP based on
certain parameters and also QTP is ahead of Selenium, based on a different set of
parameters.

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