Katalon (functional testing studio)

Automates testing on top of Selenium, Cucumber

Overview

Competitors
Sign-up and client install
Studio Plug-ins from Katalon Store
Projects
Record
Analytics
Studio SaaS
More on DevOps

This is a hands-on succinct introduction to using Katalon’s comprehensive toolset for both exploratory and scripted (automated) testing. Use it to test Web and mobile UI (Katalium). It tests both SOAP and RESTful APIs. It enables BDD Cucumber to express test scenario in natural language.

NOTE: Content here are my personal opinions, and not intended to represent any employer (past or present). “PROTIP:” here highlight information I haven’t seen elsewhere on the internet because it is hard-won, little-know but significant facts based on my personal research and experience.

Katalon leverages open-source browser control engines Selenium for web UI and Appium for mobile UI.

Their top people (with an address in Atlanta, GA) make money by charging $8,000 for training, $5,000/year for support, and licenses for enterprise features to run CI/CD at scale.

Competitors

It’s marketing website is katalon.com. The product is rated well against its competitors.

Ketalon began in 2017.

Katalon Studio was named a March 2019 Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for Software Test Automation, with more than 450 positive reviews, shows the tool is now one of the biggest players in the market against:

TOSCA from Tricentis
Selenium
UFT (Unified Functional Testing) from Micro Focus (formerly HP and Mercury)
TestComplete from SmartBear
SoapUI
Ranorex Studio
TestIO
Telerik Test Studio
Sahi
Rational Functional Tester from IBM
Watir
Rapise

NOTE: Coded UI Test is no longer offered by Microsoft as of 2019.

Available on macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Create an account by signing up at:

https://www.katalon.com/sign-up

Katalon Studio Enterprise (KSE) is a paid IDE with exclusive features, basic support, all Katalon plugins, and options to activate offline.

Katalon Runtime Engine (RE): is a paid CLI console to execute “TestOps” in CI/CD infrastructures or via the command-line interface with options to activate offline. Compatible with KS and KSE. All console executions require the Runtime Engine.
PROTIP: To make it easier to upgrade, instead of clicking “Download” on the website, install the GUI app using a package manager.

On MacOS, after installing Homebrew:

brew install –cask katalon-studio

Katalon Studio (KS) is a free IDE with no limitations on quota but no support after online activation.
- https://forum.katalon.com/discussions
- https://docs.katalon.com/katalon-studio/docs/index.html

Studio Plug-ins from Katalon Store

Scroll down https://www.katalon.com/download for the sequence of next one-time actions.

test case libraries, keywords, and object repositories.
Extend capabilities by adding plugins from store.katalon.com

Projects

https://github.com/katalon-studio-samples
contains ready-made templates

https://github.com/katalon-studio-samples/getting-started-sample
https://github.com/katalon-studio-samples/katalon-studio-demos with POM and BDD
https://github.com/katalon-studio-samples/katalon-demo-project
https://github.com/katalon-studio-samples/demo-project
https://github.com/katalon-studio-samples/katalon-web-automation
https://github.com/katalon-studio-samples/web-sample-actions
https://github.com/katalon-studio-samples/data-driven-tests

Sample app https://github.com/katalon-studio-samples/calculator

Record

Katalon Recorder records, plays, debugs, manages automated tests and exports to C#, Java, Ruby, Groovy, or Python, Robot framework.

Analytics

Katalon Store In-depth views of reports on https://analytics.katalon.com/index.html Katalon Analytics

Studio SaaS

Katalon Studio is the cloud-based webapp that provides in-depth views of test execution in visualization of charts, graphs, and metrics.

More on DevOps

This is one of a series on DevOps:

Wilson Mar