What are the cases to choose Katalon over Selenium?

Question

I know that Katalon technology is built on top of Selenium.

I also know that Groovy has some very powerful features for testing.

But still, is Katalon a little bit underestimated?

In which way should someone choose which one to use?

Also i have to add that i have use both of them and they do a really great job — Old Ben Murphy, Dec 21 '18 at 09:12
The way, you should choose: try them and pick the best *for your task*. There are no silver bullets. — cfrick, Dec 21 '18 at 12:49
I already have worked with both but they are too close and both of them work fine for every task a just wanted a specific case that you cannot use the one or the other — Old Ben Murphy, Dec 21 '18 at 12:58

Mate Mrše · Answer 1 · 2019-01-23T09:08:13.000

I consider Katalon Studio to be a "best-buy" option (it is free, after all :) - at least for the "foreseeable future".

These are some of the features:

It is built on top of Selenium, and you can use the Selenium scripts.
Offers Web testing, API testing, and Mobile testing
There's also a dashboard style Katalon Analytics (still in beta)
Katalon Recorder (as an alternative to Selenium IDE)
BDD and Cucumber support

There's also a growing community of users and a host of other options (JIRA integration, all of the relevant browsers are supported, etc.)

EDIT:

To add a bit of clarification: I don't really consider this as a one or the other problem. I'm still using Selenium even with Katalon.

The same goes for Groovy: it is a programming language used when writing scripts in the "Script" mode of Katalon Studio. (btw. Java code works as well.)

UPDATE: Here's a link showing how to use Selenium in Katalon Studio.

Yes i also think there is a better learning curve, the debugger is really cool and there are a lot of features there, still the majority would go fo selenium. I don't know maybe better community support... — Old Ben Murphy, Dec 21 '18 at 09:50

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 21 '18 at 09:25

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One of the differences between Katalon and groovy is that groovy is lightweight as compared to Katalon. Since Katalon offers variety of features in a container, it is easier to use. Scripting is very much encapsulated within it. Groovy on other had provides many features for testing - Do check out Spock (http://spockframework.org) which is mainly used for testing Java/Groovy applications.

In a nut shell; which should be chosen really depends on the team composition of programmers, tech stack on which your app is built, maintainability of the application in scope. Hope it helps...

answered Dec 21 '18 at 09:25

Pooja

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Grovoy is part of the Katalon you can use groovy to write your own packages. But after all you might be right the choice debends on how the team works – Old Ben Murphy Dec 21 '18 at 09:46
But still is there any straight forward occasion that you have to use the one over the other...? – Old Ben Murphy Dec 21 '18 at 09:53
Groovy *^ Typo sorry – Old Ben Murphy Dec 21 '18 at 10:36
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Certainly, we once chose Katalon over Groovy as we had an internal project which was to be managed by freshers hence less programming exp and less time to market - which was a win-win. – Pooja Dec 21 '18 at 10:44

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 04 '19 at 10:49

I choose Katalon for the team with some testers some of which can program and some cannot.

Selenium + Java + testNg + RestAssured/RestTemplate + Hamcrest/AssertJ + JdbcTemplete is a good combo I used to use to set up my testing framework. However, it requires much programming skill and not every members in teams can do that.

Katalon is a different story, any normal team can do that. Testers dont event know how to manage driver, set up request or db connection.

score 4 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 21 '18 at 10:14

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Katalon may be used together with Groovy so I see no problem in mixing them and enjoy.

See an example: parsing JSON with groovy slurper

answered Dec 21 '18 at 10:14

Anton Hlinisty

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Yes i know that i understand that. The question is if there are specific cases you have to use one over the other :) – Old Ben Murphy Dec 21 '18 at 10:20
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I assume you need to make a final choice between Spock and Katalon as frameworks disregarding the syntactic things related to groovy itself. Just because both support groovy. – Anton Hlinisty Dec 21 '18 at 10:26

What are the cases to choose Katalon over Selenium?

4 Answers4