One of the things I try to tell my students is that if they want to give themselves as great a shot at long term career success in testing they should pick up a scripting language. (I then suggest they nag the school to offer my Python course again ;)). This is usually met with cries of disbelief and the ever present ‘Why?’. Well, here is a quick list I came up with to answer that exact point.
You can use a scripting language to
- Create oracles
- Create test data
- Monitor log files
- Replace (overpriced) tools (like QTP)
- Check databases
- Seed databases
- Quickly check algorithms
- ‘grep’ / static analysis
I’m sure there are a tonne more, but as mentioned this was just a quick list.
I wish more people around here understood this concept! But I guess there’s job security in performing the same, menial setup tasks by hand every time they need doing…
Scripting languages are an important part of “automated acceptance testing”, also. Heck, these days I can bring up an entire network of machines for an automated test using Perl and the VMware APIs… 🙂
I more and more understand this concept. Scripting language, QA methodology, SQL Query are best combination skills for automation testing. Even QTP without VB Script, nothing could be automated.