Software testing tools and load testing information

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. “

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

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

From IT Week:

Almost half of IT departments are failing to comply with the Data Protection Act (DPA) because they use live customer data to test applications without customers’ permission, according to research published today.
A survey of 100 senior IT decision makers by IT management software vendor Compuware found 44 percent were guilty of this practice, putting them at risk of prosecution under the DPA. Forty-eight percent said they were only “vaguely familiar” with this law.Ian Clarke, global sales director for enterprise solutions at Compuware, said that using live customer data for testing in this way is not only illegal but also increases the risk of security breaches. “Testing environments tend to be insecure, with data often printed out and moved around,” he said. “The fines for breaching the DPA may be relatively small but the real risk is the damage to reputation following data breaches.”
The survey also indicates that firms that send application testing offshore are not doing enough to protect customer data. Eighty-three percent said the only step they took to secure data when outsourcing it to third parties was to set up non-disclosure agreements.
Clarke said companies should employ software testing tools that automatically replace live customer data with dummy data to reduce the risk of security breaches and ensure compliance with the DPA.

Application testing services

Borland Software has released an upgraded version of Borland SilkTest(R), the enterprise-class functional testing product. Borland recently acquired Segue Software and added this tool to Borland’s Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) portfolio. SilkTest 8.0 offers new features designed to help organizations optimize the quality of software by streamlining and automating testing efforts. It also adds support for testing Eclipse-based applications and those applications running on the latest Internet browser and Microsoft .NET 2.0 environments.

From TMCNet

“SilkTest 8.0 provides a full-featured automated functional testing system designed to ensure software meets designated functionality, quality, and reliability requirements. Automated functional testing is a key component of any comprehensive software quality process, enabling enterprises to thoroughly verify application functionality with accuracy, comply with industry and company standards, and streamline this critical but time consuming process.

SilkTest is a member of Borland’s Silk(TM) quality and performance management product line, and will play a role in Borland’s upcoming Lifecycle Quality Management solution, expected to be introduced later this year.

“SilkTest provides a sophisticated system for test planning, development, execution and reporting across multiple platforms, development environments and browsers,” said Erik Frieberg, vice president of product marketing and strategy at Borland. “Its tight integration with Borland’s other test, performance management and requirements management products enables IT teams to improve quality throughout other phases of the development lifecycle. This lifecycle approach aids efforts such as requirements-driven testing and helps customers be more efficient in their existing development and testing processes.” ”

Fom CSL Blog

opensourcetesting.org: Open Source Testing tools, news, and discussion.
pensourcetesting.org aims to boost the profile of open source testing tools within the testing industry, principally by giving users easy access from one central location to the wide range of open source testing tools available.

These tools are free as in speech, not free as in beer. While you will not need to pay a vendor to use the tools, they still have a cost of ownership through evaluation, implementation, training and maintenance costs, the same as any software does. But with a handful of commercial vendors dominating the proprietary software testing tools market, make no mistake about it – these tools can make a real difference to your life as a testing professional!

Opensourcetesting.org was started in March 2003 with what amounted to a personal list of about 50 tools found that I’d come across on Sourceforge and thought the world should know about! Following a one-off evening of marketing activity, comprising a targeted press release and a couple of forum postings to comp.software.testing and qaforums.com, the ball started rolling. The first month averaged about 300 unique users per week and it’s since been rising steadily month-on-month to about 1200 unique users per week after 9 months, and continues to rise steadily.