Sahi vs.

Selenium
Though Sahi is aimed at non-programmer testers and Selenium at programmers, we get a lot of queries on their differences. Here is a brief document which compares Selenium and Sahi. To those who read this: 1. If you are a Selenium fan, be open minded and verify the claims for yourself or contact us for clarification. And again, please be open minded. You may save a lot of time for yourself and your team. 2. This document is biased towards Sahi because we built Sahi. We believe what we state is true, but if you have evidence to prove otherwise, please do contact us at support@sahi.co.in. 3. When we say "Not sure" or "?" it means we do not have enough information because of lack of research on our part. Please verify for yourself. 4. If you want a comparison between other tools and Sahi, we would be happy to discuss it. 5. If you are another tool developer/supporter, please let us know how it compares and let the world benefit from alternatives.

Sahi vs. Selenium: Comparison document

Recorder
Selenium Works only on Firefox Sahi Works on all browsers (IE, FF, Chrome, Safari, Opera) Has trouble recording IFrames, Frames and Can record on IFrames, Frames and popup popup windows windows For Frames and IFrames, need to explicitly Implicit smart identification of elements even selectFrame across Frames and IFrames Uses XPath for identification of elements if Uses various algorithms to uniquely identify id or name not present elements in a simple human recognizable way

Programming Language support

Selenium Java, Ruby, Perl, Python, C# (and may be more). Sahi Sahi Script, Java, Ruby Sahi Script has the syntax of javascript but can interoperate with any Java code directly from script. The

Needs language bridges for each new feature. For example, needs java bridge to invoke Flash via ExternalAPI.

Java/Ruby drivers are available since Sahi V3 Sahi Script can directly invoke anything exposed by javascript.

Ease of use
Selenium Easy to start with because of Selenium IDE which is a firefox plugin. Estimated start time less than 5 minutes Sahi More difficult than Selenium to start because it needs installation of Sahi. Estimated start time 10-30 minutes, depending on Java installation etc. Deep learning curve when the need is felt to There is only one mode of operation for Sahi. move from Selenium IDE to Selenium RC. Extremely simple to learn and use for testers Knowledge of programming language Can achieve most automation with just required functions and variables. Sahi has inbuilt APIs for most other complex tasks like data driven testing Needs JUnit style of programming Can choose your own style Uses XPath based identification for elements Has nearness APIs like _in and _near which in complex html structures or those with can help show nearness of elements. Eg. dynamic ids. css selectors and javascript _image(delete.gif, _near(username 4)) may also be used. Needs waits for making AJAX work No waits needed in 90% cases Supports parallel execution Inbuilt parallel execution. Needs only one parameter change

Stability of scripts and ease of maintenance

Selenium Smart DOM Relations No resilient to UI changes Dependent on XPath Difficult for testers to understand and debug Implicit waits for page load No and AJAX: Explicit waits needed. 1) Saves time 2) Keeps scripts simple 3) Reduces random failures Ease of adoption by a team Needs testers to know Sahi Yes Does not use XPaths. Uses _near and _in Yes

Sahi abstracts out all these for

of testers

TestNG/Junit, XPaths, HTML the tester. structures, Frames IFrame knowledge, Javascript for AJAX conditional waits

Dependency on other tools

Selenium Java (Others need something similar) Needs JUnit (and optionally eclipse) to run tests Non persistent reporting. Needs TestNG or something similar for that Sahi No additional tools required. Tests run from the Sahi Controller/command line/ant Persistent HTML reporting which can be shared via URL or file

Stability of product and number of releases

Selenium Sahi Started 2004(?) in ThoughtWorks Started 2005 in ThoughtWorks Version 1 took 5 years, Version 2 planned Current release: Version 3 Number of stable mid-2010. Moving away from original releases in 2009: 7 architecture to WebDriver based architecture

Footprint
Selenium RC: 10.5 MB, Grid 15 MB Not sure Sahi less than 2 .5 MB with source Runtime ~ 50MB for 3 parallel threads

Reporting
Selenium Needs external tools to create readable reports Sahi Inbuilt HTML reports with click through to relevant portion of script

Others
Build tool integration (ant, batch files) Multiple OS support Version Controllable Scripts/Code Selenium Yes Yes Yes Sahi Yes Yes Yes

HTTPS support/redirects Not sure 401 Authentication, Not sure Windows/NTLM Authentication dialogs External proxy tunneling Yes In built APIs for data driven No testing Works only with browsers Yes Needs privileged modes on Yes browsers for operation. (Privileged is bad) Extensible on future browsersDepends on finding a way to use privileged mode on that browser Editor support Has good editors in various languages

Yes Yes

Yes Yes Yes No

Yes. Very little dependency on type of browser. Editor support for javascript is not as good as for Java.

Support available
Free support via Forums Paid support available Authoritative training available Selenium Yes Yes ? Sahi Yes Yes Yes

Posted by V. Narayan Raman at 8:58 PM 13 comments: felix said... How about stability? Even selenium scores badly against webdriver... Saturday, April 24, 2010 11:46:00 PM PDT V. Narayan Raman said... Hi Felix, Stability is something that comes up again and again. Thanks for bringing up that point.

The cause for instability generally is due to 1) Timeouts: when the server does not respond within time, the tests break. The tool should have the intelligence to wait for the necessary time. Sahi monitors page loads and AJAX and waits till activity has subsided. Selenium requires explicit waits or waits with conditions. The conditional wait is preferred but it complicates the script and demands more from the tester. 2) Scripts very dependent on UI changes. In the absence of ids, Selenium is very dependent on XPaths, which is a hassle for testers. If the tester does not tweak the XPath, the tests will be brittle. Tweaking XPath for lots of UI elements is not a trivial task and can take up valuable tester time. Sunday, April 25, 2010 10:34:00 PM PDT zawistol said... Raman, What would you recommend for Flex testing, we have a few folks using QTP with Flex add in. Lech Wednesday, April 28, 2010 7:19:00 AM PDT V. Narayan Raman said... Hi Lech, We are adding support for Flex too. It will follow the same principles of Sahi so it should be simple. If your requirement is urgent, you could check out FlexMonkey. http://www.gorillalogic.com/flexmonkey Regards, Narayan Wednesday, April 28, 2010 10:11:00 AM PDT David Burns said... Selenium does use XPath but does not rely on it. Selenium has a number of different locator techniques from using IDs or Names to CSS or XPath. You can even use JavaScript if you wanted. Selenium, like Sahi, can invoke External APIs as long as you can access them via JavaScript. It something that is widely used by Developers/Testers around the world.

Selenium 2 has implicit waits. Its something that Selenium has been lacking and was one of the things that we needed to do and have now done. Users can use the implicit wait but these will still timeout after a while because something not loading quickly can show a bug, its not that the test is brittle. Everything else looks correct from the Selenium point of view as far as I can see. Friday, April 30, 2010 1:00:00 AM PDT V. Narayan Raman said... Hi David, Thanks for stopping by and sharing your knowledge. I have updated the post with your information. Selenium 2 is still in alpha so I am not adding in implicit waits yet :) Thanks, Narayan Monday, May 3, 2010 9:28:00 PM PDT psylence said... Does Sahi handles subdomains while testing? As i understood, selenium does not.. Tuesday, May 11, 2010 4:47:00 AM PDT V. Narayan Raman said... Hi psylence, Yes Sahi works with subdomains. You may need to modify sahi/htdocs/spr/domainfix.js to set document.domain to the base domain. Tuesday, May 11, 2010 6:38:00 AM PDT psylence said... Raman, thanks for your answer! Btw, i have problems running Sahi on MacOS X. I've gooled and found this one: http://sahi.co.in/forums/viewtopic.php?id=36 but it not helped(

Maybe you can give some tips, thanks. Tuesday, May 11, 2010 7:22:00 AM PDT V. Narayan Raman said... Hi psylence, If you post your problem on the Sahi Forums (http://sahi.co.in/forums) or email us at support@sahi.co.in, we will be able to guide you. Wednesday, May 12, 2010 12:58:00 AM PDT psylence said... Raman, thanks! I"m already managed to make it running finally. Wednesday, May 12, 2010 8:05:00 AM PDT halperinko said... Are there any plans for SAHI to support legacy Windows and/or Java applications not under a web browser? Thursday, August 19, 2010 4:39:00 AM PDT V. Narayan Raman said... Hi Halperinko, Thanks for the interest. Currently we are concentrating only on the web. We do not have plans for windows/Java apps right now. You could have a look at White for Windows Apps, Frankenstein for Swing apps and SWTBot for SWT apps. Thanks, Narayan Thursday, August 19, 2010 6:42:00 AM PDT