Testing ASP.NET Web Applications

5.13. How Much Should We Automate?

One of the differences between engine level and UI level tests is the amount you should automate. Developers and testers who are new to creating automated UI tests tend to get carried away, and they may create tests for every little UI element, but not gain very much benefit from these tests. Due to the nature of UI tests, these tests tend to have a higher maintenance cost. There are some tasks that computers can do well, such as creating a large text document and then running that text document through a program to apply styles, all the while trying to break the app that is applying the styles. Then there are certain things that manual testing is more suited for, such as testing whether a particular page looks aesthetically pleasing when it is rendered for printing.

Many of the issues that occur with automated UI testing boil down to the fact that developers and testers test things that should not really be tested. Properly designed applications wrap many business rules into a thick layer, which the user interface will then encompass. To test a business rule in the UI requires a lot of clicking, selecting particular items and entering values, which makes maintenance a nightmare. Which brings us to the next question: what types of behaviors should you automate?

• Session Rules. Many applications have business rules that apply to features that a user session or role will have access to. An example of such a business rule would be that users in the ...