SilkTest jobs for QA Testers.

The table below compares the demand for SilkTest 2010, HP QTP 11 and Selenium skills in QA Tester jobs advertised across US and India in October of 2010. I compared the job postings for QA Engineer position with automated testing tool experience on the following job search engines: dice.com, sfbay.craigslist.org/sof/ (only for San Francisco Bay Area) and naukri.com

	dice.com	craigslist.org	naukri.com
SilkTest	35	6	15
QTP	560	9	302
Selenium	299	57	97

As you could see, Silktest is lagging behind of QTP or Selenium on all job markets, but I think I have an explanation why this is happening. There are plenty of QA Tester job postings like

Required skills - Test automation, SaaS, SQL, performance testing, Load Runner and QuickTest Professional, Silk Test, Java, Visual Basic.

Perhaps I should look for Silk not SilkTest, even it would include results for Silk Performer. Unfortunately as you can see below the change is not as big as I expected. I could explain why Selenium is so popular in Silicon Valley. As an open source project, Selenium is available for free and has been used for testing at many Silicon Valley companies like Google, Yahoo, and eBay. There are also a lot of startup companies not willing to spend money of SilkTest license or QTP license. That's why there are a lot of job postings for QA Testers with Selenium testing skills in Silicon Valley. In the same time I am still not sure why SilkTest lags behind of HP QTP on national markets. Does anyone have any ideas?

	dice.com	craigslist.org	naukri.com
Silk	69	6	87
QTP	560	9	302
Selenium	299	57	97

MicroFocus SilkTest 2010

The curious QA Tester should already notice availability of SilkTest 2010 trial download on MicroFocus web site.The first thing you will notice is the size of download SilkTest 2010 package - 694 MB, the previous version SilkTest 2009 R2 download size was just around 200 MB. The reason is that now SilkTest 2010 product suite includes the following components:

• SilkTest Workbench is the completely new, native quality testing environment that offers .NET
scripting for power users and innovative storyboard-based visual tests to make testing more accessible.
• Silk4NET is plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio that allows QA Testers to efficiently create and manage functional, regression, and localization tests directly in the Visual Studio using Visual Basic or C#.
• Silk4J is plug-in for Eclipse enables QA Testers to create Java-based test scripts.
• SilkTest Recorder – enables QA Testers to record and replay tests using a GUI and then export
those tests to SilkTest Classic, Silk4J, or Silk4NET.
• SilkTest Classic is the traditional, 4Test SilkTest product.
• SilkTest Agents is the software process that translates the commands in tests into GUI-specific commands.

SilkTest 2010 supports applications that use the following browsers or are developed in Adobe Flex, Firefox, Internet Explorer, SAP, Win 32, WinForms and WPF. Micro Focus Silk Test 2010 supports the following databases SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2005, Oracle 11.1 and Oracle 11.2. SilkTest 2010 license policy didn’t change and requires installation SilkMeter 2008 or later with proper SilkTest license policy.

Silktest Interview Question 77 - How to download latest SilkTest 2009 trial version?

Last week Micro Focus, a leading provider of enterprise application modernization, testing and management solutions, announced the availability of SilkTest 2009 R2 and Silk4J 2009 R2 from Borland Software Corporation. Without a doubt Silk Test 2009 is quality choice for automated regression and functional software testing, but I wonder why Micro Focus labels the latest Silk Test version as 2009 R2. It is 2010 already, so label this famous automation test application as SilkTest 2010. The trial version of SilkTest is available for free download.

The latest version of SilkTest 2009 R2 also includes the following significant enhancements

Improved Open Agent Technology – Dynamic Object Recognition allows for a decoupling of an application's Graphical User Interface (GUI) object hierarchy from its representation in test scripts, resulting in significantly lower script maintenance.

Advanced synchronization capabilities eliminate the need to modify test scripts to include wait times, providing advanced automation for testing today’s dynamic Web applications.

Full cross-browser AJAX support – Silk Test now provides completely automatic synchronization for testing Web2.0 applications on Firefox 3.0 and 3.5 as well as Internet Explorer, 6, 7 and 8 through its open agent technology.

Enhanced support for system functions by the SilkTest Open Agent.

Dynamic Port Allocation – The SilkTest Open Agent also now uses dynamically allocated ports. The dynamic port allocation feature for the open agent makes it possible to leverage the supported technologies for SilkPerformer 2009 R2 GUI value unit tests.