So I was doing some website test automation research, I stumbled upon Sahi. Open source, setup was easy, API easy to understand, javascript, java, ruby support, notepad ++ plugin, etc. After trying it out for an hour or two, I feel more research is warranted.
The major red flag I found was was that there wasn't much written about it on blogs, and the community seems small. So why isn't this tool more common? For those who have evaluated it why did you choose something else?
I think it is because Sahi Open Source offers only a very limitied functionality compared to other free tools/api's like Selenium.
Sahi Pro costs USD 495! for functionality that you get from other tools for free like taking screenshots or grid.
Disclaimer: We are the authors of Sahi, and this answers the original post and the next answer by Tarken. This is of course biased, but I hope in a sense of fairness this will not be removed :)
Hi Steve Miskiewicz, you should definitely check out Sahi. Don't be worried about the blogs and online presence. The problem space of web automation is small. You find elements and perform actions on them. And make sure that it works on all browsers. Sahi guarantees that.
What other open source or commercials tools do, Sahi can do the same things at a fraction of the effort and maintenance cost. For example, Sahi does not need waits and so Sahi tests are much more stable. It does not require ids and can work on ANY web application. Sahi does not use XPaths, but has wrappers around the DOM to find one element relative to another. It has recorder and accessor spy which works on all browsers. It is guaranteed to work on any new browser that is released, because it uses javascript to locate elements and trigger events. (Native events are over rated. They introduce brittleness in tests because they need focus. Even WebDriver does not use native events on all browsers, and actions like mouseover on IE causes problems because of cursor location) Sahi can work across domains, subdomains popup windows etc. with ease.
If your application uses extjs, zkoss, gwt or other such rich UIs, you will find Sahi to be very useful.
Hi Tarken,
Screen shots have always been possible with a simple Sahi function. Screen shots are not what Sahi Pro charges for. Even open source Sahi can execute multiple scripts on say 5 instances of IE in parallel. If a screen shot is taken, the wrong window may be in focus. It is a choice to either focus on screenshots or run 5 parallel instances on a single machine without getting into multiple VMs, grid etc. Even here, Sahi Pro does have native focus and screen shots in the latest release. (And Sahi Pro has distributed playback too)
Sai Pro charges for innovation, accountability and sustainability. Most organizations value these, and that is why Sahi Pro has a fast growing customer list.
If you want testimonials of the open source version, you may see some here: http://books.zkoss.org/wiki/Small_Talks/2010/January/Making_ZK_Functional_Tests_With_Sahi and here: http://sahi.co.in/forums/viewtopic.php?id=2582
On a different note, on posts like https://stackoverflow.com/questions/606550/watir-vs-selenium-vs-sahi, posts in favour of Sahi have been (incorrectly) questioned for integrity. I believe it does not encourage Sahi's supporters to speak in public. I hope this post does not go the same way.
This is a very good question... why ISN'T Sahi more common?
When I was evaluating tools a few years back I first tried Selenium RC and liked the overall nature of the tool but found, in my experience, in all honesty, it just didn't work. It didn't work well with IE (a deal-breaker for many) and was way too flakey (tests often failed for no reason, hung on waits, crashed, etc...). I ended up working around the tool's issues more than testing... which was too bad because I really like it.
Like the OP, I then stumbled upon Sahi and found it similarly nice to how Selenium operates... except everything I tried worked. Sahi runs great on IE, FireFox, Chrome and Safari; it handles waits implicitly (you do not need to put any waits in your scripts); can run tests in parallel right out of the box (so to speak); and many many other great features... long story short: Sahi was just like Selenuim... except it worked!
It was a complete no-brainer for me. I've been using Sahi for a few years (the first year completely on the free, open source version, which disproves Tarken's misguided response above) and have found it a fantastic tool for test automation.
I do wish there were more folks blogging about Sahi (besides me)... this unfortunately gives flippant, biased statements (as seen here) more credence. But this will change if folks just give it a try.
So to answer to the OPs question, Sahi isn't as common as other tools because they are better at building tools than they are at marketing.
@Narayan, I would love to see Sahi at a few of the US conferences!
I have been using Sahi for over 2 years and in that I have used it as an open source for more than a year. I have found that sahi "works for me" instead of "me working for the tool" in case of QTP and Selenium. Speed!. Everything comes so easy with Sahi. Write up tests, make suites, schedule them.... Even as an Open source I was completely satisfied, and I am not sure how much exposure Tarken has but seems like very immature to talk about something you have no experience with.
Sahi is indeed a great tool. They provide wonderful support and assistance. For a developer who has no time to automate testing, Sahi is invaluable. It is simple, provides AJAX support and does not depend on HTML implementation.
Other tools are good if you have a dedicated team to handle testing.
SAHI is a web browser automation tool, so I'll focus on that
I recently tested about 10 professional applications. They pretty much fundamentally do the exact same thing when it comes to web automation. They have different features and different ways to do thing. Most insist on going straight to some kind of GUI or fancy layout for the test. When converting it to a more useful script it becomes rather complex.
Sahi cuts the crap and focuses on a simple scripting even non-programs can easily read what is going on
A lot of other application contains other features not need for web automation. So unless you need them I would not bother with them
During testing some professional applications costing way more then Sahi where not very stable, they would just randomly stop.
Some applications do have more features like a small screen shot of every step taken etc.
I am using Sahi for few years, all I have to say is its very simple and effective when its come to executions. We use Sahi OS, still we manage to automate most of the scenarios. Scenario like file upload, can do with this, but with Selenium you need to create exe file using Autoit in order to overcome its. Scripts are simple and same scripts able to run in difference browser. There are few occasion its get stuck or fail but most cases its works.
Major advance I see in Sahi is you don't need to write wait or wait for page load functions.
Once more thing, In Sahi its identify object by its types, Ex; Let say you have a login page, So Sahi will identify how many text fields, password fields and button were on that page. By using above feature, can write scripts which will not depend on object id, name or location(XParth)
In Selenium in order to do that you have to write a code for that, in Sahi its already have.
............. Thanks Dev
