June 2011 Monthly Meeting Summary
Topic:
THE SIKULI OPEN SOURCE TEST AUTOMATION TOOL
Sikuli is an open source visual technology to automate/test GUI's by utilizing image
processing; it includes Sikuli Script, a Jython visual scripting API, and the Sikuli IDE for
writing visual scripts with screenshots easily. Two perspectives were provided -
a) from one of Sikuli's developers, and b) from experienced Sikuli users.
Presenter Bios:
Rudy Regner is a Systems/Software Test Consultant with 30 years testing experience on a wide range of systems –
mostly real-time Satellite Control and Avionics; currently working at U.S. Office of Management and Budget developing test strategies
for IT platforms used in developing the Federal budget.
Tom Yeh is one of the developers of Sikuli. He received his Ph.D. from MIT in 2009, with a dissertation topic of 'Interacting
with Computers using Images for Search and Automation'. He is currently a post-doc researcher with UMIACS
and HCIL at the U. of Maryland.
Took place on: Wed. June 8 2011 6:30 PM
Attendance: 22
Meeting Notes:
- There were quite a few questions initially about how Sikuli worked and some of its pros and cons.
- Rudy discussed hia initial investigation of the use of Sikuli on a project and how to integrate it with Cucumber and Watir-Webdriver for test automation.
- One potential issue to consider that was mentioned was potential replay issues when screen resolution for the replay is different than in the initial recording;
that alone was not an issue, but for testing web-based UI's, browsers sometimes render things a bit differently with different resolutions depending on the
browser/platform/resolution settings.
- Sikuli uses a fast adaptation of an image-matching approach called 'template matching' and is optimized for speed; the required 'closeness' of
the matching is configurable (with a slider control in Sikuli).
- Image files are saved as png files and where possible are automatically named when saved based on included OCR analysis of the text (if any) in the saved image.
- Tom discussed some possible future directions/enhancements for Sikuli and elicited some discussion from the attendees regarding ideas/suggestion for
enhancements.
- A powerpoint presentation from the meeting is available novataig_2011_06_Sikuli_Demo_NoVaTAIG_presentation_RR.pptx (0.9 MB file size).
NoVaTAIG Home Page
