Enterprises across industries continue to demand faster releases and quality software to withstand the ever-changing market scenario and competition.

With enterprises following DevOps and agile methodologies of software development, software testing forms an integral part of it. The earlier manual method of testing does not suffice the present-day connected devices and complicated architecture applications with industry 4.0 in place.

Contents

1. What is Automation Testing?
2. What does Test Automation Do?
3. Significance of Automation in Testing for Enterprises?
4. What-are-the-Benefits-of-Automation-Testing?
5. What are the Various Components of Automation Testing?
6. Automation Testing Tool Best Practices
7. What is the Actual Process of Test Automation?
8. What Does an Automation Tester Do?
9. What are Automation testing challenges and how to overcome them?
10. Automation Testing Vs Unit Testing
11. Why Should You Leverage Next-gen Testing Services Provider for Test Automation?
12. Related Queries on Automation Testing

There is a need for businesses to adopt test automation that ensures faster and quality releases along with saving considerable time, and efforts.

What is Automation Testing?

According to WIKI, automation testing is the use of software separate from the software being tested to control the execution of tests and the comparison of actual outcomes with expected outcomes.

Test automation can automate some repetitive but necessary tasks in a formalized testing process already in place, or perform additional testing that might be difficult to do manually.

Test automation can speed up the release cycles, increase coverage and ensures quality software releases.

In manual testing, a human is involved to perform the manual tests that are more prone to human error and might even lack their correctness. This sort of human involved testing encloses many gaps which are seen and sometimes even have missed project timelines due to the huge number of misidentified bugs.

But, as automation testing involves the usage of tools and test scripts to test the software, the results are more reliable and delivers accurate results while testing various use cases and user scenarios.

Hence, this sort of automation testing ensures effective outcomes and can be successfully used by businesses to ensure faster and quality releases.

Automated testing is also known as test automation is a method in software testing that effectively makes use of special test automation tools. These tools are used to control the execution of tests using well-crafted test cases for each of the user scenarios and compares the actual test results to the predicted or the expected results.

It is actually a process that validates if the software is functioning appropriately and meeting the given requirements using these test automation tools.

What does Test Automation Do?

Automation testing meaning can be broadly defined as the process which involves running scripts that are executed by leveraging software testing tools. Automated test systems ensure high accuracy and reliability of the test results.

As no human observations are involved, it ensures more accurate test results. Moreover, this sort of automation testing using open source and paid test automation tools is most suitable for regression testing, performance testing, load testing, security testing along with other types of testing.

Significance of Automation in Testing for Enterprises?

Software testing is essentially an important part of the software development life cycle (SDLC) and should be taken up to ensure quality software.

Earlier manual testing was the major mode of testing but with advanced applications and connected devices in place, it is essential to have Test Automation to ensure faster and quality releases.

Even smaller and mid-sized companies in their quest to have good quality products continue to adopt test automation best practices to deliver high-performing products to their clients.

For enterprises, with automation in testing in place, there is a faster feedback cycle and that brings faster validation at various phases in product development.

The other benefit of automation testing is the testing procedure becomes automated as the test scripts are run by the test automation tools without much interference of QA.

Test automation also helps enterprises to improve the communication between DevOps, QA teams and product owners who depend on the results of these automated tests as these results are more reliable than the manual testing results.

It is more important to note that automation testing is best suitable for applications that need to be tested for various versions, platforms, and operating systems.

Test automation involves the usage of tests that are repeatable and can be run many times to test various conditions and scenarios.

It is best suited with regression tests and high-risk functionality tests to check whether they fail under real-time conditions.

These automated test results help to save businesses of any probable loss due to their application failure as with effective automated software testing the results are more reliable.

What are the Benefits of Automation Testing?

There are many benefits with Test Automation which have been broadly classified as Qualitative and Quantitative benefits.

Qualitative Benefits of Automation in Testing

– Speeds up the testing cycle with automated runs

– Reduces test execution time effectively

– Increases test coverage on each testing cycle

– Ensures ease of test case maintenance

– Reduces the need to update scripts in case of changes to the application

– Ensures faster test scripts generation

– Facilitates reusability of code

– Reduces manual intervention and they can be utilized for functional testing

– Reduces testing timelines significantly

– Reduces regression testing time enormously

– Saves time as automated testing brings in more efficiency

– Improves test accuracy compared to manual testing

– Breaks up large business processes into smaller components to be re-used multiple times

– Ensures longer automation code life

– Increases the team’s testing speed

Quantitative Benefits of Automation in Testing

– Generates quicker ROI

– Reduces QA cycle times by up to 80%

– Lowers the overall QA costs up to 60%

– Improves organizational efficiency

– Ensures cost optimization

– Delivers faster time to market

– Helps improve the business bottom line

After having known about the various benefits of Automation testing, it is necessary to know about the different types of automation testing.

What are the Types of Automation Testing?

Unit Testing:

This is the first type of automation testing in which the individual components of an application are tested. These tests are usually written by the developers but sometimes automation testers also write them. These tests are usually performed during the software development phase.

Smoke testing:

This type of testing is performed to check whether the build is stable or not. If the build is not stable, then it will be sent back to the developers as an unstable build and if the build is stable then testers will accept it to perform further testing on the build.

Black box testing:

This form of testing is performed to check if there are any incorrect or missing functions, checks for the existence of any interface errors, or any behaviour related or performance errors and also checks the presence of termination errors if any.

Integration testing:

In this integration testing, the application modules are typically integrated logically and tested as a group. Essentially, this form of testing checks and verifies the data communication between different modules of the application.

Functional testing:

This form of testing is done to check if all the functions work as expected or not. This involves testing APIs, database, security testing and also tests the overall functionality of the application.

Regression testing:

This is an exhaustive testing methodology done to check whether all the existing features are functioning well even with recent code changes.

It basically verifies that the old code works in the same way as they were before making any changes to the code.

What are the Various Components of Automation Testing?

Automated unit tests:

These tests are primarily designed and crafted to test the software code. These tests categorically search for script errors, or if any bugs or any other issues within the written code.

Automated web services tests:

These tests are useful to test the user interface part of the web services. Protocols like SOAP and REST are used to test a web service.

This sort of testing determines the XML request and validates the response against the request sent which is achieved by the web services testing.

Automated API tests:

These tests allow the software to communicate effectively with other software applications. These API tests help to check the functionality and security of underlying layers.

Automated GUI tests:

These tests focus on testing the graphical user interface of the application under test.

It involves checking the screens with various controls like menus, buttons, icons, and all types of toolbars, menu bars dialogue boxes, and windows.

Automation Testing Tool Best Practices

Below listed are 6 best practices for test automation tool:

1. Select the right automation tool:

Testing teams must select the right automation testing tool that is in-line with their project requirements which helps them to execute automated test cases in an effective manner.

2. Design tests before automating them:

It’s always preferred and is considered as a good practice to create test cases before initiating the test automation process. A good test design will eventually help in finding defects and fixing them.

3. Don’t plan to automate unstable functionality:

Whenever there is a new feature or functionality that is to be tested, care should be taken such that automation testing will be taken up only for stable functionalities.

4. Decide which tests to automate:

Every feature cannot be automated as there are certain features that require manual testing. A proper automation test strategy needs to be put in place to fulfil all those test cases that need to be automated.

5. Early and frequent testing:

To leverage test automation, it is much better to start testing early on in the software development process. By running automated tests often, testers will be in a better position to detect bugs and resolve them at the earliest. This would save time and cost which would have been spent otherwise on fixing bugs at a later stage of the software development process.

6. Do not completely rely on UI test automation:

Completely relying on UI test automation is not considered as a best practice as every application might have some UI changes done. Hence, UI testing should be planned carefully to ensure the app delivers a great user experience to end-users.

Some of the Most commonly used Test Automation tools are:

Below is the automation testing tools list that will help you understand more about each of these tools

Selenium:

Selenium is one of the most popular test automation tool and is the preferred tool for web automation testing for DevOps. Selenium offers two parts of its software, Web driver and IDE (Integrated Development Environment). Selenium automation testing is also one of the most preferred automation testing in the market these days.

Appium:

It is an open-source test automation framework that can be used with native, hybrid and mobile web applications to test them.

It facilitates to make use of preferred test practices, frameworks, and tools. It is preferred to automate any mobile app from any language and any test framework.

Cucumber:

It is an Open source automation testing tool that revolves around behavior-driven development.  

Ranorex:

This is a unique test automation tool that can be used to test web apps, desktop or mobile applications.

TestComplete:

This is the first automation testing tool that has AI with a visual recognition engine that can test with or without scripts and the tool can be used to test desktop, mobile, and web applications extensively.

Microfocus UFT:

The Unified Functional testing tool (UFT Tool) is used in regressive and functional test automation.

It also supports API and web services testing, continuous testing, support for testing ERP and CRM applications.

Apache JMeter:

This is the most popular performance testing tool that perfectly measures the performance of your software. It is built on java and runs functional tests to measure the performance of web applications.

Tosca:

This is a very effective testing tool that can be used for end-to-end testing as it supports functional testing, load testing, risk-based testing, test data management and also app testing.

What is the Actual Process of Test Automation?

10 Basic Steps for a Well-Defined Test Automation

1. Evaluate to understand the need for automation based on project type

2. Define automation goals and priorities

3. Plan automated testing strategy

4. Select the right automation tool & framework based upon the project requirements

5. Decide on what test cases to automate

6. Develop good quality test data

7. Create automated tests more resistant to UI changes

8. Execute the tests for the test scripts developed

9. Test early and often with CI/CD pattern

10. Maintain the test scripts

Business Benefits with a well-defined Test Automation Approach

– Delivers quality software products

– Increases release velocity through the CI/CD model

– Reduces human errors as human tasks are automated

– Ensures cost optimization

– Maximizes ROI

– Ensures faster time to market

What Does an Automation Tester Do?

The QA automation tester and the automation test engineers are the main people involved to achieve test automation initiatives. They know how to automate for the successful roll-out of quality products for businesses.

The QA automation tester is responsible for designing and writing test automation scripts as the first phase and they use various types of test automation frameworks to achieve successful test automation.

They run test scripts to ensure all the scenarios are successfully tested and they have a close association with the developers and other QA analysts.

They log bugs and issues in various test management tools such that the developers work on these bugs and fix them.

Once again automated regression testing is done to ensure the new functionalities do not affect the functionalities of existing features.

What are Automation testing challenges and how to overcome them?

Though Test automation brings about a lot of advantages for enterprises. Typically, by using automated testing, an expedition of the process of software validation can be achieved along with achieving increased test coverage.

However, there are a lot of challenges in applying test automation for applications under test (AUT) which need a careful follow-up process to achieve successful test automation implementation.

1. Lack of Proper communication & collaboration between Developer and QA teams: 

Lack of proper interaction and collaboration between developers, QA automation engineers, and operations teams does not signify test automation success.

Hence, it is essential to place the entire team members to get involved in identifying test automation objectives and setting targets.

They also need to spend significant efforts on proper communication between teams to have a clear understanding of the requirements and project specifications to ensure test automation success.

2. Proper Selection of Right Test Automation Tool:

With the availability of a variety of automation testing tools for both open source and paid tools, it is necessary to evaluate properly before adopting a tool. A proper in-depth evaluation of the application under test (AUT) is required.

It should be carefully done and then the tool that appropriately matches the AUT should be chosen.

To overcome it, an expert QA test automation engineer can prove helpful to evaluate the tools based on the application that has to be tested.

3. Lack of Highly Skilled Test Automation Experts:

It is a truth that test automation requires efficient and industry rich technical skills to accurately design and maintain test automation framework and test scripts.

The team should properly build test scripts and maintain them to effectively run test scripts to verify the application performance and further resolve technical issues.

In order to overcome it, automated testing resource(s) should have a strong knowledge of the Test Automation framework’s design and implementation aspects to ensure effective automation is achieved.

4. Involves High Initial Investment Costs:

It is also a known fact that the initial phase of test automation is usually expensive as it is necessary to analyze, design and build a automation testing framework, libraries or reusable functions through a thorough analysis of the AUT.

Further, if a licensed test automation tool is selected, then the operating cost should be evaluated.

Else, if free open-source tools are chosen then also significant efforts should be spent on learning, training and maintaining them.

Hence based on the AUT priority and cost capability available therein, either open source or licensed tools should be selected.

5. Challenges with Scaling Test environments:

This is an important challenge today as QA teams that don’t provision test environments in the cloud, continue to face scalability challenges when they introduce test automation.

It is necessary to rapidly provision the different test environments that automated testing requires, scale them up, run the tests, tear them down, to ensure success while testing in the cloud.

The in-house (on-premise) teams usually have a limited number of test environments they can use, which means fewer tests they can deploy at any given time.

As a result, testing takes a much longer time. In order to overcome this, it is essential to move test environments to the cloud to scale the test automation and it will also reduce QA teams operating costs.

Automation Testing Vs Unit Testing

Why Should You Leverage Next-gen Testing Services Provider for Test Automation?

Test automation is nowadays dominating in the Agile and DevOps adoptions. Test automation enables tremendous benefits to enterprises as it ensures faster releases, quality software and also delivers a quicker time to market.

But, in order to achieve successful test automation for all critical projects, it is essential to leverage next-gen automation testing services providers as they use a balanced test automation approach to achieve quality products.

Some of the Highlights of the Approach they perform are:

– Assessment of your automation needs and application landscape

– Assessment of your existing automation solution

– Tool selection, Proof of Concept and implementation

– Automated test script creation and execution

– Creation of regression test suites with flexible execution options

– Training and handover of automation test pack to client for future maintenance

Moreover, with the huge number of benefits with automation testing services, it is time for enterprises to adopt test automation initiatives using either open source or the licensed automation testing tools.

TestingXperts has developed an extensible test automation framework, ‘Tx-Automate’, which is modular, reusable, integrated and compatible.

The framework has best-in-class features for test automation including rich custom reporting metrics, third party integrations, configurable execution options, etc.

The framework helps configure/ create test suites by combining various automated tests and making those test suites available for execution.

Get in touch with our team to discuss further

The post A Beginner’s Guide to Test Automation 2023 first appeared on TestingXperts.

Every software company tests its software or application before releasing it to the end users. Testing for defects is very crucial for a product’s success. This is one such activity that validates a software or application’s performance, functionality, quality, and other important aspects of it. But, as the code base and functionalities added to software/application increase, manual testing alone may become a laborious and time-consuming activity. This is where companies have switched to Test Automation, to improve the efficiency of their product and save time.

Contents 1. What is Keyword-Driven Testing? 2. How Keyword-Driven Testing Works? 3. Benefits of Keyword-Driven Testing? 4. Conclusion

Automation testing has come a long way in the past few years. Many software companies have improvised their test automation efforts through data-driven approach/testing, also called as keyword-driven test automation.

What is Keyword-Driven Testing?

Keyword-driven testing is a software testing methodology, suitable for both automated or manual testing. It uses a set of keywords or action words to define individual test cases or test actions. For instance, actions like login, click, enter client name and more are pre-defined within the test code using keywords – “commands”. These keywords can be used multiple times within the same test case to maximize test coverage.

Keyword-based testing provides a great level of abstraction that allows testers both experienced and inexperienced, to manage testing in more compatible and versatile ways. The testers use keywords to identify objects and parts of their test scripts. The intention of this type of testing is to make even the less-savvy users to test using keywords without having to write instructions in conventional coding languages.

How Keyword-Driven Testing Works?

Keyword-driven testing is a sequence of operations, recorded in a keyword format. Testers simply drag and drop the relevant keywords to a specific action and perform testing. The keywords guide what actions to be performed on their application or system.

Benefits of Keyword-Driven Testing?

Maximum Code Reuse – Keyword driven testing allows one script to manage the entire implementation process, providing a high-level of re-usability and saves time.

Added Benefit of Data-Driven Approach – Since keyword test automation framework is an extension of data keyword driven testing, it includes the application of data driven methods, i.e., allows its test scripts to read test data from data sources such as CSV files, ADO objects, ODBC sources, etc. rather than hard-coding.

Testing Framework Extension – Any addition of new operations or modification of existing operations into the system can be easily made.

Effortless Tool Switching – If it is necessary to switch from one automation tool to another, you will have to converse with a minimum of code as the keyword-driven testing framework comes with test cases that will remain almost in the same form.

Simplistic View of Tests – This testing records all the operations in the form of a spreadsheet or other preferred format, hence, allowing users to take a glimpse of operations at once with easy view option.

Easy Implementation – Creating keyword driven tests are much easier and faster than writing test scripts. Unlike scripts, this testing doesn’t require testers to have a detailed knowledge of scripting languages. Hence, even an inexperienced tester can implement test using keyword-driven testing.

Early Stage Testing – With keyword driven testing, you can test an application or system at every step and run functional tests during the early stages of development. This will increase the overall automated testing success rate as well as reduce testing costs.

Conclusion

Leverage TestingXperts’ years of experience in developing keyword-driven frameworks for client projects across various domains and delivering test automation solutions through keyword-driven testing. Contact us today to explore our QA and keyword-driven testing solutions that help you accelerate your application testing.

The post Keyword-driven testing: Why you should use it? first appeared on TestingXperts.

The rapid demand for IT organizations to deliver high-quality software at a progressively faster rate has necessitated the shift to agile development and DevOps methodologies. As applications under development become more complex in nature, continuously changing to include new technologies and feature sets, manual testing simply can’t keep up. This rapid shift is driving the need for test automation. Test Automation delivers strong benefits, such as.

Contents 1. Test Automation Benefits 2. Ways to Drive Value from Automation Testing 3. Define a Clear Set of Goals 4. Don’t Automate Everything, Manual Testing Will Still Be Needed 5. There is More to Automation Than Just Functional Testing at the GUI Level 6. Test Automation Requires Regular Maintenance 7. Choose Tools Matching Your Team’s Skills 8. Define a clear test data management strategy

Test Automation Benefits

Irrespective of whether a traditional or agile development approach is applied, opting for test automation needs careful planning and an exhaustive understanding of the benefits it can deliver. Setting the right expectations for test automation can lead to creating a successful strategy whereas having unrealistic expectations can do the opposite.

Embarking on the journey of automated software testing requires the adoption of best practices such as behavior-driven development (BDD) and continuous integration and testing. These are key elements to improving the overall development process. When done well, the advantages of test automation are indisputable, but when done poorly, the disadvantages can be worse.

In this blog, we will identify the ways to drive value from Automation Testing.

Ways to Drive Value from Automation Testing

The following recommendations will increase your possibility of succeeding in adopting test automation as an integral part of your testing approach.

1. Define a Clear Set of Goals

It is essential to define a simple but clear and balanced set of goals while automating tests. Test automation has been taken as a “magic bullet” that will reduce the cost of testing dramatically and is also assumed to offer 100% coverage. However, the main purpose of automation testing is to find defects early on and diminish quality risks by not allowing them to proliferate without the need for human intervention.

Defining a clear set of test automation goals allows the whole team to experience the benefits of automation. On the other hand, if automation is considered as another form of management control, it will not be effective. Therefore, it is important to list goals and develop an execution plan which leads to incremental improvement.

2. Don’t Automate Everything, Manual Testing Will Still Be Needed

While there are numerous benefits to test automation, automating every test might not be beneficial. For example, usability and exploratory testing require human intelligence and intervention, and do not explain an investment for automation.

Therefore, teams will need to leverage both manual and automated testing to ensure software quality before launching an application. Employing a mix-blend of the manual as well as automation testing can be the best way to succeed.

3. There is More to Automation Than Just Functional Testing at the GUI Level

Almost every team starts its automation effort with GUI functional tests, however as the components of the GUI tend to change regularly, they are costly to build, slow to implement, and delicate to maintain. Hence, to ensure that problems are discovered easily and rapidly, a blend of different testing levels and types is required to reach the anticipated level of quality and to alleviate the risks associated with defects.

Teams should not just think about automating GUI functional testing, but also various other types of tests, such as:

A clear test automation strategy should feature the amount of time your teams spend in each area. The prime focus should be on the highest-value tests, allowing you to establish a clear ROI.

4. Test Automation Requires Regular Maintenance

Poor practices yield tests that are hard to understand and maintain, and may produce failures which take time to research. As the application or system is modified, you need to evaluate the efficacy and effectiveness of each test constantly. New scripts must be written to bring out new features and directions. Teams have to write and maintain these tests. This truly helps to ensure that you are not building tests that will disrupt things as easily.

5. Choose Tools Matching Your Team’s Skills

Due to a large number of automation in testing solutions available on the market, the products available from various software companies often vary in terms of their focus and practical scope. No single solution from a solution provider will meet all of your testing needs. Therefore, it is important to select the right tools that take application targets into account, fit your team’s development practices, and also match the skills of your resources.

6. Define a clear test data management strategy

In order to test business-critical software, testing teams need to plan and retrieve the essential test data, as well as the activities associated with it. Unavailability of the required data can have a severe impact on the software testing activity and can result in inadequate testing coverage. Test Data is something which constantly gets refreshed and versioned after some time, having to be repeatedly referred to to evaluate the required outcome of an activity. If test data is not managed and maintained appropriately, it can cause delays in the testing and development process. Hence, it is important to have a clear test data management strategy to accelerate the application’s go-to-market speed and to eliminate business losses.

Conclusion

It can be established that automation testing results in cost reduction, as well as time/effort savings, consistency, quicker feedback, and results, thereby contributing to increased productivity and profits. Improved test automation with accurate testing techniques helps ensure that a shippable product is delivered at the end of every sprint.

TestingXperts’ Test Automation strategy enables organizations to increase release velocity and reduce time to market. TestingXperts has developed an extensible automation framework, ‘Tx-Automate’, which is modular, reusable, integrated and compatible. The framework helps to configure/create test suites by combining various automated tests and making those test suites available for execution. Connect with our software automation testing services to know more.

The post 6 Recommendations for Driving Business Value from Test Automation first appeared on TestingXperts.

2018 continues to be a year where technological trends like machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud, SaaS, Smart devices, intelligent systems continue to make a deep impact on businesses. The digitalization of business and collaborative launches have led to increasing dependence on software for all kinds of jobs.

Contents 1. QA Outsourcing 2. Why Outsource QA Services 5. Conclusion

Consequently, this has increased the costs of testing, overheads of testing tools, testing infrastructure, and the right skill set to implement them. In this competitive industry, the costs associated with botched applications continue to rise and deeply impact enterprises not just for financial reasons, but also with the company’s image. Consequently, this has amplified the focus on QA and software testing within the SDLC.

QA Outsourcing

In this day and age, testing has become multi-dimensional as it works with an Omni-channel objective. Expertise, strategy, infrastructure, best practices, and skilled resources are what you need to bring out the best in the approach. However, opting for outsourcing Quality Assurance services can be an important option for any organization both from a financial and technical perspective. Let’s identify the prime reasons why outsourcing QA services can prove to be a significant decision for organizations.

Why Outsource QA Services?

1. Experience and Expertise

QA and software testing requires extensive experience and expertise. Therefore, it is imperative to choose a well-established and accomplished partner, well-equipped with the latest trends, best practices, and strategies in QA and software testing domain. Simultaneously, an efficient testing partner would have a good understanding of the emerging technologies like IoT. A specialist testing partner can bring the best-in-class human resources for your project.

2. Flexibility

The most evident reason for outsourcing is to have the right resources with the right skill sets readily available with the flexibility that is needed by your business. QA and testing partners have proficient teams that are updated with the right technology required which can be deployed at short notice. Thus, flexibility is a major reason why you should consider outsourcing QA services.

3. Cost-effectiveness

Cost is a significant factor to consider, though, it should not become a reason to hire amateur resources, which can be costlier in the longer run. Therefore, it is recommended to outsource QA services to a well-recognized and a specialist company.

4. Focus on core business processes

Outsourcing enables you to free your own valuable resources to do the work which adds more value to your organization.

Conclusion

Enterprises are in dire need of robust applications but with quality and speed. To ensure superior quality and to avoid conflicts around primacies, testing should be considered as a separate function undertaken by different teams or companies. Outsourcing an important function like QA can enable organizations to concentrate on core activities and innovation, whereas the QA and testing providers work proficiently, ensuring quality outcomes and positive business results.

Here is how we at TestingXperts can help your organization in providing QA and software testing services. Our experience and expertise, coupled with flexible models provides you a cost-effective option for your organization to focus on your core business processes.

The post Top 4 Reasons Why You Should Outsource QA Services first appeared on TestingXperts.

The rapidly approaching GDPR deadline, i.e., May 25, 2018, is clearly on the horizon. GDPR is not just limited to the European Union. Even if you are not a European-based business, you will be affected if you have customers in the EU.

Contents 1. GDPR Compliance 2. Steps to make your Testing GDPR compliant 3. How can TestingXperts help?

GDPR affects all businesses within and outside of the EU who hold personal data for individuals within the EU. From IT operations to marketing, anyone dealing with personal data needs to recognise how GDPR affects their data workflows. GDPR applies to all the data that is gathered from the ecosystem, whether it is provided by customers or gathered by automated systems. This also includes personal data stored and used in big data analytics platforms.

GDPR Compliance

In many organisations, development teams deal with data from real production environments and usually, this data originates from customer databases. However, testing with real data often causes problems regarding information security and confidentiality. GDPR necessitates explicit attention to this practice. Every data that includes personal data is subject to GDPR compliance. It is illicit to have personal data anywhere where it is not-obligatory.

Therefore, Test Data Management(TDM) is an area that definitely needs attention from GDPR perspective. From bringing efficiency to data processing and testing the quality of deliverables, TDM is susceptible to vulnerabilities around organisational and regulatory standards. Therefore, various measures (e.g. masking) should be employed to ensure that the personal data is encrypted.

Test data may become a block in your preparations for GDPR. In order to address the challenges associated with testing and make the testing GDPR compliant, it is important to follow the below steps.

Steps to make your Testing GDPR compliant

1. Document the use of personal data in test environments.

Documenting the personal data should be the first step in your GDPR compliance process. This includes listing down the data in backups and the subsequent replicas that the testers have created for themselves. This step might expose uncomfortable surprises, like huge amounts of personal data in test database tables.

2. Develop a smooth test data management process

A lean and adaptable process is needed to stay in control for a smooth test data management process. Properly analysing and tracking the document from where the real data is coming, and where it is going is important. According to the new regulation, it is important to ensure that no personal data is open to business users, software testers, test managers, and other team members during software development, maintenance and test phases.

3. Employ a combination of masked data or synthetic data for testing

Though using synthetic data is a desirable option, but it is not always promising. Hence, it might be prudent to use a combination of carefully masked data along with synthetic data.

4. A proper review of privacy policies

Privacy policies must be articulated accurately. There should be a specific reason for collecting, sharing, storing, and using the personal data among third-party processors. Consequently, it is also important that you are reviewing the third party policies as well to make sure they comply too.

How can TestingXperts help?

Adherence to the regulation will require a comprehensive test data management approach. TestingXperts will help you build cross-functional teams for you to carry out various GDPR assessment and implementation activities with Tx’s GDPR framework. Tx has a step-by-step phased approach to GDPR compliance to provide a comprehensive solution.

The post Is your Test Data GDPR Compliant? 4 Steps to Make your Testing GDPR Compliant first appeared on TestingXperts.

As IoT technology continues to evolve at an incredibly rapid pace, consumers and businesses are conjecturing about the new challenges that will be faced in this year and beyond. Let’s find out the top 5 challenges that the IoT eco-system will face in 2018.

IoT Testing Challenges:

The post 5 IoT challenges to be faced in 2022 first appeared on TestingXperts.

Adoption of agile methodologies and best practices indicate that the organizations are constantly challenging themselves to get services and products to market faster. Automation testing is just one way to accelerate your project delivery and in doing so building up a regression pack of test scripts that can be run with minute effort in the shortest amount of time. The three greatest benefits brought together by test automation are reduction in time, usage of resources effectively and efficiently, and increasing the test coverage.

Automation Testing

Test automation significantly shortens the testing lifecycle and increases the speed of the testing process.  Automating your test scripts allows you to save a huge amount of time instead of just running them manually. Automated tests can be easily built once you have the primary tests in place, which means that the testers can add tests into the regression pack and build a greater test coverage quickly. This implies that every industry at this time or in future will need help on all aspects of Automation Testing. Let us understand how test automation as a service is bringing value to the organizations.

Role of Testers Redefined

The role of testers has been transformed with the arrival of the concept of Agile, DevOps, and Continuous Delivery. This concept has been evolved from the arduous Manual Testing process to fast and recurrent Test Automation. Automation has been highly responsible for the transforming and evolving role of a tester. In an Agile environment, when testers and developers have to collaborate, the overall culture of the teams change, testing gets quicker, and releases get more frequent. Automation cannot work without an effective testing strategy. The role of a tester will progress in an automated testing environment.

Clear focus on Quality of Testing

As quality is kept at the forefront these days, there is an increasing need for automation to ensure quality. This is a shared responsibility of the development team and the testing team. Automation can create a huge difference in redefining software development at every stage of the cycle. Furthermore, organizational strategies will be changed, and there will be evident structural changes to accommodate quality within their systems. Quicker delivery will be the main objective, but only automation can help in achieving speed with quality.

Quicker Feedback

Speed has become the prerequisite across various industries. Automation can, in all possible ways, help give instant and rapid feedback to the team, which also cuts down the delays and lays focus on improvement. Automation adds value by speeding up the arduous and tedious testing activity that is required for making sure that you achieve the desired result. In a certain way, automation in testing makes the activity more and more perceptible and assessable for considering the ensuing activities.

In Conclusion

Automation testing is the sure-shot method, bringing desired value to the organizations and helping them bring agility with quality. The need for automation testing cannot die in the future but only provide the desired outcome with well-aligned and dedicated teams that are able to work on projects and scripts.

TestingXperts is a automation testing company provides qa automation testing service with its extensive experience and an intelligent Test Automation Framework ‘Tx-Automate’. Connect with us to leverage our QA Automation Testing services.

The post Critical Need for Automation Testing in the Software Ecosystem first appeared on TestingXperts.

Web applications are more than just simple information-based websites. The increase in size and complexities together with shorter development cycles in Agile and recurrent changes in requirements present numerous QA and testing challenges.

Contents 1. Web Application Testing 2. Web Application Testing Practices 3. What are the benefits of web application testing? 4. How to test Web Application? 5. What are the challenges faced in web application testing? 6. What are the tools for Web Application testing? 7. Conclusion

Web Application Testing

With all the impending issues, web app testing holds more importance than ever. However, testing a web application is not just an ordinary task, and depends on several factors such as compatibility across various browsers, application performance, user experience, user acceptance, ensuring proper security, etc.

The enterprises must deploy skilled testers to assess all aspects of the website across platforms, browsers, and devices. The testers must always implement web application testing best practices in order to produce accurate and reliable test results without increasing testing times.

Web application testing Practices:

1. Emphasis on Cross-Browser Compatibility Testing

With more and more users accessing websites on their mobile phones and tablets, enterprises are exploring more ways to make their websites mobile-friendly. Responsive web design makes the web applications deliver a rich user experience on every device. To ensure that the web application is able to work well on all browsers and devices, developers build responsive websites by using open web technologies like HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. Hence, it becomes important to perform cross-browser compatibility testing to ensure that the website is accessible on every available version of individual web browsers.

2. Evaluate the Application’s Performance Under Various Conditions

In addition to assessing the proper working of the application on all devices and browsers, it is also equally important to ensure that it does not crash under heavy loads. Sometimes minor flaws in the coding or design can affect the website’s performance adversely. Therefore, it is important to perform load testing and evaluate how the application performs under varying loads. There are various automation load testing tools available to accelerate load testing.

3. Choose the Right Parameters for Usability Testing

Usability and the user-experience of the web applications are of the utmost importance to keep the visitors engaged and convert them into customers. Hence, it is important to evaluate the usability of the applications based on most appropriate parameters. Performing usability testing on the application before its release is a best practice. Usability testing involves several parameters such as UI design, speed, navigability, content readability, and accessibility.

4. Validate all Security Issues with Security Testing

Underestimating the significance of web application security is a ticking time bomb. Even a single vulnerability can lead to a massive data breach that can shake even the largest of companies down to its grounds, causing a negative impact, substantial financial consequences, and the loss of public trust. It is therefore imperative to ensure that the web application is thoroughly tested on the security front. A number of strategies that should be incorporated into the web application security testing are as follows:

• Defining coding standards and quality controls

• Creating strategies based on both internal and external challenges

• Using industry standards as a benchmark

• Implementing a cross-functional approach to policy building

5. Integrate Exploratory Testing in the Software Development Lifecycle

Exploratory testing reduces testing time and discovers more defects. As a regular practice in the software testing approach, testers write and execute test cases simultaneously. When failing to understand the shortcomings of exploratory testing, they are surrounded by more defects. By integrating exploratory testing with other black-hat and white-hat software testing techniques, the limitations of web app testing can be easily overcome. The integration can help in producing more reliable test results while reducing the testing time significantly.

How to test Web Application?

There are six important steps to test a web application:

1. Functionality testing:

This step ensures that the functionalities of a web application are properly functioning or not. Functional testing takes place in the source code.

Functionality testing includes:

• Determining the data input and entry
• Test case execution
• Functions need to be properly identified because the software runs effectively through the integration of functions
• Actual results must be analysed

2. Usability testing:

This testing type focuses on how user experiences while using a particular web application. Efforts are put in to ensure that the application is built in-line with user needs. This testing method makes it a point to see that a user is able to easily navigate through the various functions of an application. The content that is displayed in the web application must also be clearly visible.

3. Interface testing:

This testing method ensures that the three main components of a web application which are web server, web browser and database are running harmoniously. This testing type checks whether there is any interruption while the data is being transferred. Upon that, the communication taking place between various interfaces is also thoroughly checked.

4. Compatibility testing:

This testing methodology ensures that a particular web application is compatible with all browsers. Compatibility testing takes place at three levels which are browser compatibility, operating system compatibility and device compatibility.

5. Performance testing:

In here, a specific web application is tested in terms of how better it can perform under stress conditions and heavy load. How the application is able to perform under different internet speeds, networks and browsers are also worked upon. Stress testing is one form of testing which is used to determine what amount of stress a web application can go through until it ceases to function. Also, how an application performs when it is running through various hardware configurations and what are the mechanisms that need to be strategized in order to prevent the application from crashing. All the above-mentioned aspects are thoroughly scrutinized and tested under the scope of performance testing<.

6. Security testing:

The final and most important step of testing a web application is Security testing. When a web application is being built, there is a lot of data that is being used and stored. Some of this data can be sensitive and needs to be protected at any cost, failure of which can cause a lot of technical issues for a web application to function properly. In order to fully secure these types of mission-critical data, security testing is implemented.

What are the benefits of web application testing?

Compatibility across browsers:

The practice of web application testing helps the applications to be compatible across all web browsers. Every user uses different browsers while surfing websites. The practice of web application testing effectively helps the apps to function the same for every user using different browsers.

Improves website performance:

The methodology of web application testing successfully helps to overcome the slow app performance. Applications with slow performance are not the choice for any user and Google even. Web app testing helps to resolve the load time delays caused due to the graphics, code, etc. and maintains a quality application.

Secures App from vulnerabilities:

Security is one of the important concerns for every application. Day-by-day the rate of website hacks is excessively increasing, so there is an immediate need for every small and large enterprises to practice the web app testing to ensure that the applications are free from the different kinds of threats.

Ensures high quality of the application:

The end-to-end testing practice effectively helps in enhancing the performance and functionality of the app. And, this way of testing helps to find and resolve the bugs at earliest. Thus, a high-quality app will be achieved before the release.

Reduces the Time and Cost Consumption:

The end-to-end testing practice through automation tools reduces the occurrence of errors and the performance of repetitive test cases. This will help the enterprises to achieve quality results with reduced time and cost.

What are the challenges faced in web application testing?

Challenge in interacting with Firewalls:

There are several instances where a firewall or a port can block a web application due to the issues of security certificates. Therefore, to avoid these scenarios, it is mandatory to test the application across various firewalls.

Challenge for validating Web Services:

The modern web applications are prominently depending on the web service layers such as JSON/REST or XML/SOAP to exchange data between systems or applications. So, the need for testing these web services has become huge, but the web automating testing tools are not the ones to tackle the services. Hence, testing web services is one of the important challenges faced by the teams.

Challenge to maintain consistency across browsers:

Interactive and Scalable web applications are always the preference of any user. If any inconsistency is experienced by the user while surfing on different browsers, then this can become a huge negative affecting the enterprise brand and growth. Hence, while performing usability testing, the developers need to monitor the interactivity and scalability of the app across different browsers by using different hardware.

Challenge to overcome performance issues:

An application with slow loading time is not a choice for any user and this drive affects the enterprise’s brand and app future. Hence, to overcome this challenge, developers should find the reasons influencing performance testing such as extending application features, interoperability, and integration issues, etc.

Challenge to secure app from data breaches:

Cyber threats are exceptionally increasing in number and affecting the user’s sensitive data which is available in the apps. In order to avoid data breaches and loss of information, it is important to regulate security testing practices. This will help to avoid the issues related to DDoS attacks and other cyber attacks and if there are any found, they can be resolved at the earliest.

What are the tools for Web Application testing?

Selenium: 

Selenium is one of the leading open-source web automation tools. It helps to perform automation across different devices and browsers. Also, there are several options to choose the language for writing test scripts such as C#, Python, Java, PHP, JavaScript, etc.

TestComplete:

This is an easy-to-use functional test automation tool. It allows in creating and maintaining automated regression tests on various devices. This tool is efficient to run 1,500 tests in parallel across remote test environments.

Qase:

This is a modern cloud-based test automation tool that is designed for helping QA and development teams. This tool doesn’t limit to run test cases or projects.

Zephyr:

Zephyr is also a top tool providing end-to-end solutions for many small and big enterprises. A one-click can enable to integrate with Jenkins, JIRA, Bamboo, etc. Also, it provides a good number of deployment choices for the user.

Robot Framework:

This is an open-source tool with an test automation framework. It helps to drive a keyword-driven approach for acceptance test-driven development and acceptance testing.

Conclusion

Every application whether web, mobile, or desktop-based, is experiencing more users. Considering the device variety, the ease of access has grown fundamentally over the past few years. With so much going on in the software domain, there is no way that testing will get easier. TestingXperts follows a comprehensive QA strategy that handles the unique requirements and challenges associated with web application testing. Connect with our experts to improve the overall user experience of your application with our testing strategies.

Related Queries on Web Testing

Q1. How can I test any Web application?

Ans. Testing a web application is not just an ordinary task, and depends on several factors such as compatibility across various browsers, application performance, user experience, ensuring proper security, etc.

Q2. What are Web testing tools?

Ans. Selenium is one of the leading open-source web automation tools. Others include TestComplete, Qase, Zephyr.

Q3. How is Web Testing different than application testing?

Ans. The practice of web application testing effectively helps the apps to function the same for every user using different browsers.

Q4. What are the different types of testing?

Ans. There are various types of software testing, you can 5 best practices for web application testing first appeared on TestingXperts.

]]> https://www.testingxperts.com/blog/4-Trends-Driving-an-Effective-Test-Data-Management-Strategy?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=4-trends-driving-an-effective-test-data-management-strategy Mon, 05 Feb 2018 08:02:18 +0000 https://www.testingxperts.com/?p=9374

Test data management (TDM) is a critical activity in the testing lifecycle. And this is undergoing continuous refinement with constant changes in the technology landscape and application development process. Contents 1. Effective Test Data Management Strategy 2. Big Data 3. Service Virtualization 4. DevOps Practices 5. Agile Methodology 6. Conclusion TDM is highly critical in … Continue reading "4 Trends Driving an Effective Test Data Management Strategy"

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Test data management (TDM) is a critical activity in the testing lifecycle. And this is undergoing continuous refinement with constant changes in the technology landscape and application development process.

Contents 1. Effective Test Data Management Strategy 2. Big Data 3. Service Virtualization 4. DevOps Practices 5. Agile Methodology 6. Conclusion

TDM is highly critical in the testing lifecycle, as the quantum of data generated while testing is massive. Automating the test data helps in minimizing the time spent on processing the data, generating reports faster. However, some key trends have been empowering the TDM strategy. These key trends must be considered while creating an effective test data strategy to reduce time-to-market and improve efficiency. Let’s discuss these trends.

Effective Test Data Management Strategy

Big Data

Big data is a growing technology-driven program, and its strategic significance is growing gradually. With the rapid increase in the adoption of big data, test data architects need continuous data privacy and security solutions. Due to rising breach cases, IT organizations need to expand their data privacy and regulatory compliance initiative by including development and testing environments into the scope. In the current scenario, testing a big data application has become a challenge due to lack of proven test frameworks and toolsets. To set this right, test architects must manage test data and regulatory compliance in their test data strategy.

Service Virtualization

In the world of agile and DevOps, testing the applications need accurate, reliable, and comprehensive test environments. While this can be challenging, testers must execute integration tests on the application with various code versions and test data combinations. Therefore, test data architects need solutions to virtualize application behavior with predefined test data combination. Various organizations are leveraging service virtualization with proper test data configuration as a technique to minimalize costs in the non-production environment.

DevOps Practices

The implementation of DevOps practice promotes collaboration across teams involved in the software development lifecycle. The product, as well as test managers, deliver software in quick cycles and of high quality by continuous integration. A test data architect should leverage database virtualization in TDM for faster provisioning of non-production forms of databases virtually.

Agile Methodology

Agile delivery methods necessitate delivery within shorter delivery cycles with high quality. In every agile sprint, the test teams build, run, and automate tests for which the test data management teams execute data refresh and provide the test data needed to perform the tests. The ideal situation for a test data architect is to ensure optimal data sets with maximum test coverage. This solution helps in completing the testing on time.

Conclusion

Concisely, Test Data Management architects and consultants must be aware of the impact of these major trends on their existing test data strategy. Equipped with this information, they must modify their test data strategy with effective solutions, such as service virtualization, to integrate an ultramodern vision into their Test Data Management strategy. Test data is often generated using existing data. Therefore, the data must be kept confidential to protect the individual’s interest or business interests. Securing the test data is important based on the criticality of the application under test.

At TestingXperts, we have employed robust test data management practices for intricate enterprise platforms. Connect with our experts to improve test effectiveness by using accurate test data and institutionalizing the entire test data management process.

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]]> https://www.testingxperts.com/blog/Oldest-Canadian-Telecom-Company-Experienced-Another-Data-Breach-Is-your-Data-Secure?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=oldest-canadian-telecom-company-experienced-another-data-breach-is-your-data-secure Mon, 29 Jan 2018 15:15:08 +0000 https://www.testingxperts.com/?p=9364

Bell Canada shocked the world by experiencing second hack in just eight months. Hacker stole data from up to 100,000 Bell Canada customers, leaving customers under enormous stress. Bell is Canada’s one of the largest and oldest telecom company, with over 22 million customers. This breach happened twice in eight months, prompting an RCMP investigation … Continue reading "Oldest Canadian Telecom Company Experienced Another Data Breach. Is your Data Secure?"

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Bell Canada shocked the world by experiencing second hack in just eight months. Hacker stole data from up to 100,000 Bell Canada customers, leaving customers under enormous stress. Bell is Canada’s one of the largest and oldest telecom company, with over 22 million customers. This breach happened twice in eight months, prompting an RCMP investigation into the breach at Canada’s largest telecommunications company.

1. Cybersecurity Facts 2. Cybersecurity: The Inevitable Need 3. Solution: TestingXperts’ Security Testing Services

 

Cybersecurity Facts

 

BCE Inc. confirmed on Tuesday, i.e., January 23, 2018, that hackers got hold of ‘fewer than 100,000′ customers’ information, including names and email addresses. This followed a hack in May 2017 when 1.9 million email addresses and about 1,700 names and phone numbers were stolen from Bell’s database. –Courtesy: Financial Post

From leaking debit card details to attacking global enterprises and institutional systems, cyber-attacks have become a substantial part of our political and social discourse. Every day there is fresh news of cyber-attack that gets people in distress. The last WannaCry Ransomware virus attacked global enterprises and institutional systems and panicked every mobile application user. This repeated again on Jan 23, 2018 with Bell Canada paying the price.

Cybersecurity: The Inevitable Need

 

Cybersecurity has become more than just a concern for businesses these days. Gone are the days, when cybersecurity was perceived as a reactionary measure to be taken after the incident had occurred. Nowadays with the growing awareness and knowledge, businesses have realized the importance of securing their data.

Viruses and bugs attacking the digital space are getting stronger; intensifying the need for an extensive security strategy. Companies and individuals today are in dire need to build software/applications that are thoroughly tested for the data security and are, at the same time, competent enough to alert users against any possible cyber-attack.

After all these incidents, it is evident that such attacks will only grow in the days to come. Companies and individuals should realize the need to build software/applications that are thoroughly tested for their security. At the same time, should be competent enough to alert the users against any possible cyber-attack.

Cybersecurity experts and specialists from the industry are saying that such attacks on the internet will continue to propagate and intimidate the core presence of web in the global sphere. So, the question remains – can such cyber-attacks be hindered or totally choked with anti-virus programs, or is there a need for a comprehensive Security Testing Strategy

Solution: TestingXperts’ Security Testing Services

Security testing service exposes weaknesses and threats to the security mechanisms of the applications under the context that maintain functionality and protect data as envisioned. It involves a wide range of testing segments like penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, security auditing, posture assessment, security scanning, risk assessment, and ethical hacking.

Over the past years, TestingXperts has built test accelerators, capabilities, and knowledge repository and is working on more than 150 engagements using the latest industry standards such as OWASP and proprietary testing methodologies. TestingXperts offers a comprehensive security analysis supported by dashboards, wide-ranging reports, along with remedial measures for all issues found. TestingXperts has deep expertise in security testing for mobile applications, web applications, web services, and software products. Connect with us to discuss how TestingXperts can bring more value to your business with enhanced security testing techniques.

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