IBM DevOps Test UI vs. Katalon vs. Postman

IBM Rational Functional Tester is good for automating thick applications.

Incentivized

Katalon TestOps is well suited for an oraganization who want to organize their automation collections and have everything in one place. It provides good insight on test runs, failures and also helps in defect tracking. It is extremely easy to schedule and run test suites automatically. With the help of test history, it becomes easier to triage the report and identify if it is a product issue or a test flakiness. Also with the automation run scheduling features with custom options, user do not have to manually trigger the runs and just run the scheduler to do the job.

Incentivized

Postman is good for organising your API credentials, vendor settings, environments etc. It's also a good way of getting stared with APIs as you get to use a GUI which can help you understand what we mean by a 'body' or 'bearer token'. I think people generally gravitate towards GUI tools for getting started in a new technology area.

Incentivized

• An execution log in html format provides detailed information of the actions, verifications, and screenshots with timestamps.
• Quick response and good support. IBM releases frequent updates to handle customer needs and fix issues.
• A solid object inspector, extensive functional library and playback monitor.

Incentivized

• Easy to setup and quick to get started: As Katalon comes with built-in features a new automation tester can automate easily. Script creation time is quick.
• Test Analytics: Katalon also provides analytics which tells you the pattern of your automated tests at a different instance of time.
• Third Party Integration: Katalon provides amazing integration with 3rd party tools like JIRA, ALM, GIT, JENKINS, etc.
• Image-based testing: Katalon also provides inbuilt image based test automation.

Incentivized

• It has opened a door for me to explore more out of it, as it is associated with so many APIs that I never felt any difficulty in finding the right API template, which are well organized and easily available.
• It is very secure to use and provides great services which are user-friendly.
• Due to this software I have got rid of the excessive emails and the slack channels, Now I am using my own private API and even it give me an option to produce my personal Postman’s API Builder from its Private API Network and this features has shared my excessive workload.

Incentivized

• Installation or updates were not always perfect. Would have to clean previous installations or reinstall Java if there were errors.
• No or very limited support of browsers outside of Internet Explorer.
• Uses a lot of memory, can have memory issues on large tests.

Incentivized

• Integration with Azure is painstakingly slow as it takes too much time to upload reports to Azure. When raised with the support team i was advised to contact Microsoft who promptly and correctly replied that its an issue with the katalon plugin.
• Non Responsive Customer Support. Several mails were replied late.
• The Desktop app uses too much memory when booting up and running tests even on a 16gb RAM.

• Wherever you need to automate tests that involve database verification or rely on data from databases, Postman is less suitable.
• Postman's disc usage is extremely high, and it occasionally causes the computer to fade.
• It doesn't have the ability to generate random data. To achieve randomness in my tests, I've been working around scripts.

Due to the slowness, there is an intermediate timeout. There is no other problem.

Incentivized

1. Friendly user friendly - when I started using Postman, I was a beginner to the API world, and it gave me a friendly view to begin its usage 2. Postman offers many features, including API testing, monitoring, documentation, and mock servers 3. Environment variables simplify testing across multiple environments (dev, prod) without repetitive configuration.

Incentivized

I love the support. They have provided answers and solutions for most of our questions or doubts that could come up. They also have provided basic tutorials on how to get familiarized with the program.

Incentivized

There is a lot of in-depth documentation for Postman available online, including detailed guides with screenshots and videos. They provide example APIs for new users to explore while learning how to use the tool. Generally, bugs in the client are quickly addressed through frequent free updates. Community and professional support options are available - most of the time, the free/community level support is adequate

Incentivized

Selenium is similar to IBM Rational Functional Tester but is not as user friendly and does not support thick applications. Visual Studio Coded UI is newer so not as refined; the object inspector/management and execution log results is poor compared to IBM Rational Functional Tester.

Incentivized

Katalon Studio is above both the tools is due to its codeless test automation feature and having API, desktop, web, and mobile automation in one place but obviously there is room for improvement when desktop automation is of primary importance in the automation.

Incentivized

Previous to using Postman, I would either use browser tools directly, or write an in-house tool to send requests. Postman eliminates that need while providing a much better experience and more features. At the base level, Postman is as simple as typing in the address as you would in a browser. Authentication can be provided simply as well.

Incentivized

• Speeds up and broadens the testing cycle by using machine time for regression testing.
• Frees up time for testers to focus on critical items outside the automated suite.

Incentivized

• Support can be better: As mentioned before, katlon community is still growing but is currently a small community. If you are stuck, its hard to find help in the community and one has to reach out to the support for help. This takes a while before you can get solution to your problem.
• Result upload takes little longer time: It is been observed that uploading tests results takes little longer.
• Sometimes it gets hard to integrate: Since this is fairly a new tool, requires lot of learning curve to get the job done effectively.

Incentivized

• Postman is free (although there's a paid tier that offers more features) so using it for testing APIs comes with little to no risk (besides learning curve).
• The learning curve is a little steep for non-developer users, but developers should find it easy to pick up and use right out of the box, so to speak.

Incentivized