About This Episode:
Hey, looking for some last-minute holiday gifts for that special tester in your life. Want to know how to handle when systems like AWS go down? You probably heard about the Log4j security risk we talked about last week, but do you know how to fix it? Find out the answers to these and all other e2e full pipelines DevOps, automation, performance, and security testing in this episode of the Test Guild news show. So grab a cup of coffee or tea, and let's do this.
Exclusive Sponsor
This episode of the TestGuild News Show is sponsored by the folks at Applitools. Applitools is a next-generation test automation platform powered by Visual AI. Increase quality, accelerate delivery, and reduce cost with the world’s most intelligent test automation platform. Seeing is believing, so create your free account now!
Links to News Mentioned in this Episode
News
First up, automation news.
The first news item that caught my eye was Browserstack has acquired Nightwatch.js. So they're going to join forces to help simplify test automation for developers. So if you don't know, Nightwatch is a NodeJs e2e automation framework, and it's actually one of the fastest-growing Selenium-based tools. I think around one million monthly npm installs, and Andre mentions that partnering with Browser Stack, gives them the resources to really build for the future and scale Nightwatch to even greater heights. So this really does seem like a win-win. Browser Stack has supported open source projects before, and they help infuse Nightwatch to give them a little more capital will do a little more development. So if you're invested in either one of these platforms, this is a great sign, especially for Nightwatch.js Users.
Next news item that came my way is 10 CI/CD Pipeline Anti patterns and how to overcome them. This article is really important because it goes over why it's so critical to understand your CI/CD pipelines, and if you do any sort of software development, you really need to start focusing your efforts on treating your CI/CD pipelines as a first class citizen. This article goes into a bunch of different ways, and how you can help implement and improve your CI/CD Pipelines. It sas a bunch of good best practices and suggestions on how to make them even better. So definitely a good read, so definitely check that out in the comments below.
Also, I heard about a new tool that's actually now free. Its speed scale makes the free API observability tools available to the public, so observability has been a big trend on this new show, and a lot of times when I speak with engineers the past year, they all brought up observability. So this is a great development that now vendors are starting to make available. More open-source tools are free, free available tools. I don't know if this is open source to help us with observability as well. So speedscale also plans in the future to include load generation capabilities to enable developers to run tests locally. And this really goes with the overall goal we've been seeing which companies want to shift left earlier in the development lifecycle. This will help you actually develop APIs for further left towards the developers that create them, so it'll make it more close to the metal. While developers are developing, they have these tools like speed scale to help them before actually goes even further into the CI/CD pipeline that we talked about earlier. And with more and more companies developing microservices, API type infrastructure, I think tooling like this is really critical, so really great tool to see available now for free. So if you haven't checked it out, definitely check it out in the link down below.
Also, when searching tools, I also noticed that Seleniumbase, if you do anything with Python, you like test automation, you definitely should check out SeleniumBase. They actually released a new version 2.2 10. This release actually helps improve reliability and refreshes dependencies If you're using Selenium base. Definitely, something to be aware of. Give it a try to get that extra stability, especially if you are using Chrome.
And speaking of APIs, are you looking for a last-minute Christmas gift for the special tester in your life? Well, I just noticed the first draft of Test Web APIs by Mark Wintergham is now complete and available for purchase just in time for the holidays. So this was actually posted on LinkedIn by Mark. It's great to see that the first draft is fully complete now. And if you click on the link in Mark's post, you'll notice that it takes you through the meaning MEAP, so you get access to this first draft right away and you'll get access to all the updates made in the finished e-book once it's complete as well. This book covers a lot of things like how to design and implement a web API testing strategy, how to set up system automation suites, and a whole bunch more. So, as I mentioned, if you're looking for last-minute holiday gifts for that special Test Guild life definitely gives us a look. This could be a great stocking stuffer, for sure.
Another holiday gift that's sure to please that special Tester in your life is a ticket to the Automation Guild 2022 event. It's the sixth annual online event dedicated 100 percent, helping you succeed. With all types of end-to-end automation testing. So not just functional UI automation. I'm also going to have topics on chaos, engineering, security, testing, performance testing, GitHub actions, all types of automation that's going to help you develop software with better quality in the new year. And what's even better, as you probably can get reimbursed for your ticket. And at the end of the year, a lot of companies have extra money still hanging around their education budgets, so they have money to spend that you need to spend by the end of the year. Use it or lose it. This would be a great use for that as well, so I highly recommend you check out Automation Guild head on over to Automation Guild dot com and check out our awesome line up and check out some of our awesome speakers and topics that are going to be relevant to helping you accelerate your career in your automation efforts in the New Year. So definitely check it out. Head on over to Automation Guild dot com and register today.
Next up, performance is site reliability news.
So if you're into open source technology and performance, you're probably very familiar with Jmeter. But do you know Jmeter just released a new version five point forty-two? Here is a really quick article on the announcement of the release of Jmeter five point four to how to download it and how it does not contain the Log4J exploit that I told you about last time on the show. So thank you NaveenKumar for that quick update on Jmeter.
Also last week, we talked about how AWS went down the week before. Well, it actually went down again last week, and you want to know why? Well, I'm here to tell you in TechRadar has an article on why this went down last week. And this outage affected Hulu and Twitch. The outage wasn't as long as last time. It's a tech radar released this great right up on it turns out the cause of the outage was due to network congestion triggered by U.S. traffic engineering executed in response to congestion outside of its network.
So how do you handle these major outages that we've seen with AWS these past few weeks? So one of my go-to resources for SRE type information is Evan. Evan used to be? Evan actually used to be a hard-core automation engineer as well, so he has a very good testing background. But he got into so reliability engineering a few years ago, and he's been publishing a lot of great content around this. If you're not following Evan. Definitely give him a follow-in along those lines to create a really quick video on how he handles these types of issues when out with outages. So really timely VIDEO. Evan. So thank you Evan for all you do and definitely give them a follow as I said.
Next up, security news.
So normally this news item would be in my follow the money section, but I don't have the follow the money graphic loaded up on my new computer system. But just picture money raining down on us because this next company, Dass from an ex-Microsoft Team, actually got 60 million to automate cloud security recently. So this investment is helping them with their AI-driven products to be available probably in the first quarter of 2022. And the startup is focused on rapidly fixing cloud security issues with the help of automation and AI and doing so in a developer-friendly manner. So it's going to help you address major issues with cloud security pitfalls like misconfiguration and other vulnerabilities that a lot of developers sometimes miss. So the first time I heard of Dass but it looks like a promising start-up so definitely keep your eye on them. And like I said, automation, security, really hot topics. So as you can see, follow the money. This is a great opportunity to get involved if you're not involved already as well.
Probably you already heard a lot about like Log4J. But what does it all mean? Well, I found a great resource for you. She Hacks Purple, actually released a bunch of new information on Log4J. It's up on her blog post, but also has a Log4j Explained for software developers and App SEC folks on a YouTube channel as well. They think it's going to be really helpful for you. So I'll have a link to this video and she hacks Purple's blog post as well. To learn more about Log4J from a security expert on what it all means and what you could do to help fix it.
All right, so for links to everything of value we covered in this episode. Head on over the links in the first comment down below. And while you're there make sure to check our awesome sponsor Applitools by creating a free account using that link. Thank you everyone for helping and supporting the show by clicking on the link and checking out Applitools. So that's it for this episode of the TestGuild new show, I'm Joe, my mission is to help you succeed in creating and end full stack pipeline automation awesomeness, as always, test everything and keep the good. Cheers!
