How do I decide between using "FIT/Table" style Selenium or a language specific driver (aka "Driven Mode")
If you need things like conditionals and looping, use Driven mode. If your needs are very simple, FIT based tables can do the job. (There have been some musings about adding conditionals and looping to FIT style tests, but it's not there today.)
Driven mode enables "white box" testing and also "synchronous" in design.
With white box testing, you can send one command to the browser in an "RPC" fashion, get a result, then check the back-end database to confirm.
With FIT-style/Table-style Selenium, it is more for "black box" testing and is "asynchronous" in design.
You send the whole test document over to the browser in a "REST" fashion, it generally only has the same access to click and type and change things as a regular user would. There are some tricks to accomplish "white box" with FIT-style Selenium, and you could do "black box" with the driver, but in general each "style" of Selenium enables a better focus on different things.
Use Driven Mode Selenium if:
- You need to use conditionals or looping.
- You mostly want to do "white box" testing.
- You want to easily plug in with server side unit testing libraries.
- Your test writers prefer programming in a "real" language.
- You want the interaction between browser and test harness to be "RPC" and synchronous in nature.
Use FIT-style Selenium if:
- Your tests are relatively simple with little need for conditionals or looping
- You want to focus more on "black box" testing
- Your end users or customers are non-programmers and are more comfortable with FIT-based Selenium tests.
- You want the interaction between browser and test harness to be "REST" and asynchronous in nature.