Q & A with the Selenium Committer's Panel moderated by Pooja Shah

Fireside Chat between Manoj Kumar (Selenium Committer and a member of the Project Leadership committee - Selenium) and Puja Jagani (Selenium Project Committer and member of Technical Leadership Committee)

Selenium Grid can be a bit daunting to get up and running. Starting it is quite easy, but using it effectively can require pulling in third-party tools. In this workshop we’ll cover how to run your grid effectively, using best practices culled from several large grid installations.

As our systems and tests grow more and more complex we need to make sure that we have the tools to capture the root causes without spending hours or days chasing them down. This is where Observability becomes our best friend. Observability allows us to see what is going on inside a system based on what we think is crucial without trawling through logs! Just like any piece of software should be robust, scalable, maintainable, and reliable, it should also be observable. Observability makes the journey from identifying unexpected problems to identifying the root cause easier.

To do so, the code should record as much useful granular information as possible. Metrics, logs, and traces are three known ways of encapsulating granular information. They are the primary sources of information to help determine the state of the system at any given point in time. 

Selenium 4 introduced a fully distributed Grid with multiple components that communicate over the network. Troubleshooting and diagnosing problems in this setup is a challenge. To tackle this, Selenium integrated OpenTelemetry’s tracing and event logs.  This feature is now available out of the box by default when using Selenium.
The users now have more power in their hands!

I will dive into Selenium's observability journey by discussing: 

1. What is observability?

2. Need for observability

3. Understanding the three pillars of observability: Metrics, Logging, and Tracing

4. Generating telemetry data alone does not suffice. It is a process from design to deployment. 

5. Full-stack tracing in Selenium (Grid and Java client library)

6. Explain how we, at BrowserStack, are benefiting and exposing this information to our users.