If you are a tester that’s charged with automating the execution of a web application, there’s a fairly good chance that you won’t be using some of the cost solutions out there like QTP or SilkTest. There’s a better than even chance that you’ll be looking at open source testing solutions. If this is your first experience with such technologies, you might find it a bit daunting. Oftentimes the one thing you won’t find is a nice concise script that will at least give you a start. Complicating this is many blogs seem to indicate various tools all interconnect in some ways, or can only be used in certain contexts, leaving you to figure out a lot of the details yourself.
For me, when I look at these tools I need to know, as quickly as possible, if (1) they work at all and (2) if I can wrap my head around how to get started in the first place. Sometimes you just need a gentle nudge in the right direction to see how the technology works. When I practice with technologies, I create little “spike” files that do just enough to show me what I need to know. Here I’ll be showing you my spikes.