Katalon Testing Suite

I've always been attracted to low-code, no-code (preferably) automation test suites, probably because I never really got on with coding. Oh, I've dabbled over the years. I've written "Hello World" in quite a few languages, and actually made progress with Python -- in that I completed all the exercises in the course I was following along with. However, in the hierarchy of testing, automation trumps manual. I have known many people leave testing -- or decide against going into it -- because coding seemed the only way forward, and they weren't temperamentally suited to coding. 

There are quite a few low-code, no-code suites, on the market, and they've promised a lot of over the years without ever fully being able to deliver in a world of business bespoke software. I asked Copilot to give me a top ten list of low-code, no-code automation test suites and it returned the following: 

To be frank, I've heard of the top two on that list and Ranorex at No 6. And I was surprised that TestComplete (from SmartBear) wasn't on the list, perhaps because I've seen a lot of marketing for it. 

Anyway, to our Katalon tale. I've had a few cursory looks at Katalon over the years, and liked the fact it had a Linux client. I have to say that it now seems to have reached a surprising (to me anyway) level of maturity. As an aside, I also had an interviewee who sang its praises untroubled by the fact we weren't using it. I sincerely hope she's working in automation using Katalon and is still enthusiastically advocating for it. 

I downloaded the latest free version to follow along with Raghav Pal's Katalon masterclass, which can be found here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcUgrciUCPg

And very good it is, too. The suite and the masterclass. He does lots of training stuff, and if you have the time to follow along and actually do the training as opposed to just watching the video, you will learn a very great deal. And so there I was with Katalon and Raghav following along assiduously, when I hit this error (or limitation): 

I understand. I truly do. This is an application intended for use in businesses, and they don't want to give everything away for free, which is perfectly reasonable. I was just a mite miffed because I was caught up in the flow of the training and it was a bump in the road. 

I now know how to do the following in Katalon: create test cases using three different methods; create a test suite and add test cases to it; create a test collection and add test suites to it. And, of course, I cheerfully ran the tests and watched them complete. I looked at the reporting, which is impressive (businesses love reporting) and I looked at scripting which Raghav made it easy to follow along with. Despite this, I know there is much, much more to this suite than the little I've learned. All I've learned is confined to web applications, which are increasingly common these days. But Katalon also does mobile applications and, I believe, desktop applications. I used to test desktop applications exclusively, but that was before the world changed, and I have no experience testing mobile applications beyond browser simulations of various mobile phones. 

Past real-world problems

Imagine you have a piece of software in which you have to create a list of items, but the snag is that all the items have to have unique names. So you record yourself adding the first item. You go to the URL, you enter the login name and password, you take the steps to add the item, and then you close the browser and save the test. When you run the test, it will fail because the name has already been added and the name has to be unique. I know a coder using the Selenium webdriver (and coding in C#) who solves this problem by simply adding the date and time to the item, thereby making them unique. I'm sure it's not too difficult, but I don't yet know how to do this in Katalon. 

I'm going to continue learning with this suite, as far as the free version will allow, and I will post my progress here. 

Opportunities

Job roles are becoming increasingly specialist, including testing job roles. The day of the charming generalist belongs to yester-year. We used to work in IT, doing a bit of everything as our skills and inclinations took us. Installing software, fixing computers, helping someone having a problem with their hardware, creating and cloning virtual machines, a batch command here, a script there, a select statement here, a manual test there. Now all these things have their particular lanes and boxes, and the rest of it -- such as my enjoyment of Linux on the desktop -- is in the hobbyist arena. 

Employers now want and advertise for a very specific set of skills and tools. I saw one job advert that said "Knowledge of Appium essential". Essential. This was in a long list of other desired skills. Basically, though, don't bother applying if you don't know Appium. I looked it up (it's a tool for testing mobile apps on Android and IOS), but I didn't apply. 

On the plus side, mastery of a particular tool, such as Katalon, would pretty much guarantee you a decent income. And there are people who invest a lot of time trying to divine the next big thing in their arena. In testing, I've heard Playwright and Cypress mentioned. I believe Raghav has a course on both.