Software testing tools and load testing information

Neotys, a company providing easy-to-use load testing tools for web applications, has announced the Neotys Service Partner Program for companies that specialise in web application quality and performance testing and seek to expand or update their offerings.

Neotys offers a web load and stress testing solution, NeoLoad. NeoLoad is easy-to-use, requires no scripting, and provides a rich feature set at cost effective price points. NeoLoad supports all web and application server technologies including J2EE, .NET, PHP, AJAX, SOAP, FLASH, FLEX, Google Web Toolkit and Oracle Forms.

The market proliferation and mission critical nature of web applications has rapidly increased the need for load and stress testing. These tests ensure performance targets are met before applications are deployed and keep performance tuned throughout the SDLC.

For the full article visit here

There is a new service announced this week for load testing web applications. It is a hosted service so it takes away all the worries about setting up load injectors and generators and monitors as well as performance testing experts and load testing tools. It is suitable for ecommerce sites, corporate websites, web applications and web-enabled systems.

Acutest, a leading provider of software testing services from London UK, and Pragmatic, a leading provider of application lifecycle management (ALM) solutions from Denver USA, have formed an exclusive partnership to bring Software Planner to the UK.

Software Planner is an award winning application lifecycle management (ALM) tool that helps companies manage all elements of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). This includes the management of application requirements, project deliverables, testing plans, test cases, test execution, defects and help desk support. It also provides collaborative tools and interactive reporting dashboards to support change programmes spread across teams, locations and organisations. Software Planner is currently being used by over 70,000 users.

“Software Planner has helped software companies implement better software releases since 2000 and is being used in over 28 countries”, said Steve Miller, President/CEO of Pragmatic Software. “Having a local partner in the UK that are experts in software testing and automation will provide us the ability to expose Software Planner to a larger audience in the UK – backed by a local partner that can really service their testing needs. We are very excited about partnering with Acutest and our clients will be the beneficiaries of exemplary service and support”, added Miller.

“There’s real demand in the UK for an ALM tool like Software Planner”, said Barry Varley, Managing Director of Acutest. “In these difficult economic times, organisations are looking to unleash the value they have within themselves that isn’t currently hitting their bottom line. By joining up all the management, QA and testing activities throughout the whole Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Software Planner helps save time and cost whilst improving risk management and governance. What’s more, both the SaaS and Enterprise version are priced appropriately for these times of recession. “

Telecoms testing is complex and multifaceted in an industry sector that is under great pressure to deliver reliable, secure and innovative services and products that constantly improve performance and provide a reliable and effective solution for the end users.

Thirty years ago the main challenge for telecom providers was to the delivery of basic fixed wire telecoms services. Since the 1980’s deregulation of the telecom sector in the UK the challenges have increased. The telecoms sector has moved relentlessly towards the goal of convergence of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

One of the main drivers in the telecomms industry is the need for increased speed and bandwidth. The recently published government interim report into ‘Digital Britain’ by Lord Carter, includes a 22 point action plan which outlines the government’s strategy for the UK’s digital transformation, along with the upgrading and modernising of all wired, wireless and broadband infrastructure and making broadband available to every house in Britain by 2012. It also highlights the strategic importance that the telecommunications industry plays in the future of UK PLC and the need for ‘Superfast’ connectivity in order to keep the UK in the forefront of the telecoms revolution and to gain competitive advantage by doing so.

In order to understand the specific challenges for the software testing market, we first need to understand the complexity and diversity within the Operational Support Systems (OSS) Architecture and the associated commercial and financial pressures that exist to ensure first to market products, which perform and function in the desired manner.

Telecoms providers are moving towards a standardised Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) that has an emphasis on reusability and common capabilities in order to deliver consistent customer experience. These architectures will support the full range of business activities including

According to the Seapine Software Quality-Ready Assessment (QRA) , few organisations have embraced automated testing. Forty-four percent of organisations have either not investigated automated testing or do not see enough of an ROI to implement it. The QRA results show that automated testing has not gained wide acceptance among software development and QA organisations.

• 37% of organisations have purchased an automation tool but have not put it into wide use.
• 60% of organisations must redeploy some resources to regression test critical bug fixes.
• 44% of development and QA organisations do not use automated testing.

For most software development organisations, test suites grow in lockstep with the code base. To continue to complete the required testing, organizations must either add more testers or find more efficient ways to test. Test automation provides a solution to that problem.

For the full article visit CM Crossroads

Shunra today announced the HP certification of Shunra VE Desktop for HP Software, a Windows-based solution that tests the impact of applications on networks in all developmental stages by emulating a wide area network (WAN) and detailing network conditions seamlessly during load testing. The interoperability with HP LoadRunner enables a powerful, integrated solution offering customers highly-accurate, network performance testing.

“Shunra VE Desktop for HP Software has transformed the traditional ‘develop on a LAN – deploy on a WAN’ methodology by providing actual depictions of real-world network impact in all phases of the application development lifecycle, prior to deployment,” said Thomas Charlton, CEO, Shunra. “End-user experience is a critical business driver for our customers, and Shunra significantly increases deployment success rates by analyzing WAN characteristics and impact on geographically remote end-users. Companies are now gravitating toward the requirement of network-aware applications at all developmental stages in order to avoid costly performance bottlenecks, time troubleshooting and rollout failures.”

“Application performance testing labs are looking to lower costs, while delivering load test results in a simple, repeatable manner,” said Subbu Iyer, Senior Director of Products, Performance Center and LoadRunner, Software, HP. “The combination of HP LoadRunner with Shunra VE Desktop for HP Software allows customers to achieve this and test network-aware applications with a WAN emulation capability.”

For the full article visit Business Wire

The state of automated testing in the IT industry is so laughably bad, it almost makes you want to cry. According to statistics provided by testing tool specialist Original Software, organisations that bought automated testing tools have only managed to automate, at most, the testing of 20 percent of their applications. The other 80 percent is done the old fashioned way: by hand.

In its new whitepaper, “The Great Software Testing Swindle,” Original Software makes a compelling case that all is not right in the $1 billion market for automated testing tools. In fact, the state of affairs is probably more akin to Shakespeare’s line about Denmark and foul odors.

In “Swindle,” the English software company summarises that, based on research and its own experience, it is very rare to see an organisation automate more than 20 percent of its testing chores. In fact, the percentage is usually much lower than that. As a result, not only have these organisations wasted time and money, but they’ve created another bottleneck in their application development cycles. This, from something that’s supposed to speed up the development cycle and lead to cleaner code.

So, how did we get to this fine state? The problem, Original says, stems from the use of software scripts–the most widespread technique to achieve test automation.

The scripts work well, as long as the application doesn’t change. But when the application has undergone some level of transformation (such as what might lead you to test it in the first place), those scripts are practically worthless and must be adapted to work with the application changes.

Vendors of automated testing tools must be aware of this Catch-22–that you can easily check your applications for potentially damaging changes, as long as you don’t change your application. Original is aware of the fundamental flaw, and has been talking about the failures of script-based tools for years.

For the full article visit IT Jungle

Empirix have launched a new e-TEST suite Advantage certification programme developed specifically for QA professionals, consultants and software testers who want to strengthen their professional credentials while at the same time ensuring they have a solid understanding of Empirix e-TEST suite. The program is designed for both Empirix e-TEST suite customers as well as QA professionals who are looking to expand their knowledge and understanding of e-TEST suite.

The e-TEST suite certification program curriculum consists of three areas:

• e-Tester Certified Professional - Focus on automated regression testing
• e-Load Certified Professional - Focus on Performance testing
• e-Manager Enterprise Certified Professional - Focus on Functional testing/Test Management

Users can elect to become certified in any or all of the three areas offered. List price for a single certification is $400. Pricing discounts will be available to corporations who would like to obtain certification for multiple employees and for those who choose more than one focus area for certification. 

Empirix has designed the program to meet the schedule demands of QA professionals by offering the certification exams online - available 24/7 from anyway around the world. Empirix has teamed with ePath Learning to deliver the 3 proficiency tests. ePath Learning develops and offers the most advanced, yet easy to use, online and professional services enabling organizations like Empirix to create, deliver, and manage customized, on-demand learning solutions.

Empirix’s e-TEST suite was designed specifically for pre-deployment testing of Web applications and Web services. The solution has won numerous accolades from customers, analysts and press for its ease-of-use and ability to find potential issues that traditional testing tools miss.

For the full article visit PR Web

Application performance testing

ITKO, a leading provider of testing solutions for integration and SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) software, announces Web 2.0-ready features to enhance the quality coverage of enterprise applications. In a single application environment, LISA can test from the implementation layers where data business logic resides, to the new UI-oriented patterns of development becoming popular in rich browser-based application delivery models such as SaaS, AJAX and mashups.

Testers and developers using LISA can now scriptlessly record both dynamic web elements such as Java applets, AJAX, and validate browser-specific actions, such as modal popups, file uploads and HTTPS security warnings. Then these functional tests can be expanded to validate workflows that span underlying service and implementation layers, for regression and load testing.

• Codeless UI Recording and Testing: Now testers can record and playback the entire Web UI testing workflow within a native browser emulation (IE 6, IE 7, Firefox, Netscape), and get sustainable test assets out of the process. LISA captures all user actions, from mouse clicks and data entry, to drag-and-drop functions in the web UI, and then provides several ways to leverage that test, and add dynamic data validation points without needing to re-script the test.
• Web 2.0-Ready Testing: LISA already tested Web applications at the HTTP level, simulating all of the transactions that occur between the web page and the web server. Now LISA supports direct testing of DTHML/Javascript, AJAX, custom Java Applet, Swing and AWT approaches to delivering UI functionality into the browser.
• Single Test Case, from Web 2.0 to SOA: Testers no longer need to use separately acquired or developed tools to test Web 2.0 interfaces, and all of the other implementation layers that feed them. Users can use LISA to model a single test case with steps that invoke and verify the behavior and performance of web UIs, JDBC database calls, WSDL/SOAP, an EJB server, and messaging layers on an ESB.
• Load Testing of Web 2.0: LISA also efficiently conducts multiple user testing of Web 2.0 browser applications. LISA uses a shared set of virtual users that can test any technology, leveraging pre-existing functional test cases, and dynamically staging them as load tests from a single instance of LISA. These same tests can then be extended to test every layer of the application at load. Upon staging, load tests can simulate an instance of the browser for each virtual user, or run “headlessly” to simulate only the transactions that occur between objects to conserve test system overhead.
• Asynchronous User Simulation: Unlike other tools that simulate variable user behavior and “think time” only by setting an arbitrary time frame for each successive test step, LISA allows testers to flexibly synchronize tests with the real-world conditions and timing produced by each step of the test case.

“To truly ensure quality, the entire development and QA team needs to be able to invoke at the browser, in all the meaningful ways actual end users will, and then verify the resulting actions and effects that occur in the middle-tier layers that feed that Web 2.0 application,” said Mackay. “Then, you need to immediately be able to run those functional Web 2.0 tests as load and performance tests using LISA Server, so business requirements can be continually verified across the entire system on a continuous basis.”

For the full article go to Business Wire

Not surprisingly, OptimalJ is tightly coupled with the rest of Compuware’s stack—including with its QACenter (a software quality-assurance-testing tool) as well as its broader offerings, initiatives such as Application Performance Assurance and Continuous Integrated Testing.

“What makes Compuware unique is … a combination of this integration—in particular, integration that links testing and runtime application monitoring for much faster fixes to inherently-complex applications,” Kernochan argues.

“Of the obvious competitors, IBM’s application lifecycle products are split between Rational and Tivoli, and do not communicate well yet—especially between runtime and testing … HP’s Mercury unit does not have a development toolset to pair with … and Telelogic is too new to the scene to have ‘chops’ in application-lifecycle support.”

The bottom line of all of this, Kernochan concludes, is that Compuware is much more than just a mainframe software survivor. “Inside the battered hulk of Compuware, the mainframe utility vendor, lives a core application-lifecycle solution that remains differentiated and useful,” he contends. “This solution, with OptimalJ as its center and QACenter as a star among its peripheral testing/application management outliers, offers a unique combination of data-center experience, third-party support, and full lifecycle support. These features are of greatest use in inherently-complex applications. The good news for Compuware is that SOA does not reduce the number of inherently-complex applications that your organisation has to deal with.”

There’s an interesting footnote here, too, says Kernochan. Compuware is perhaps best known as a provider of application performance and testing solutions. Testing is an integral, if underappreciated, part of application lifecycle support, Kernochan argues. “Dressing testing up as ‘quality management’ really hasn’t helped to raise its reputation in customers’ eyes. Nevertheless, both testing—because it cannot be avoided, it had best be done as well as possible—and application-lifecycle support are as important in SOA architectures as they were in the old data-center days. Perhaps more so, because if SOAs result in speeding up application development, IT will have to run harder in testing to maintain the same level of software quality for inherently-complex applications,” he comments.

For the full article go to ES Enterprise

Fast software testing services