About This Episode:
Is the page object model overrated?
Want to know a real-world example of performance testing across the pipeline?
Worried about the Cobalt strike on Linux?
Discover the answer to these that other automation testing, performance testing, security testing, DevOps automation topics, in this edition of the Test Guild new show for the week of September 19th. So grab your favorite 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 a free account now.
Links to News Mentioned in this Episode
1)Applitools free account: https://applitools.info/ols
2) https://applitools.info/ols
3) https://eldadu1985.medium.com/8-reasons-page-object-model-is-overrated-9c5d90779b50
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eldad-uzman/
4) https://www.globalbankingandfinance.com/how-the-worlds-top-financial-organisations-test/
5) https://medium.com/detesters/how-to-store-testcaf%C3%A9-tests-in-an-influxdb-95f4e59abda8
6) https://sandelk.wixsite.com/craigrisi/post/performance-testing-across-the-pipeline-with-k6
7) https://devops.com/new-relic-survey-shows-greater-appreciation-for-observability/
Tweets by MartkosIT
8) https://www.infoq.com/podcasts/sre-apprentices/
9) https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/252506642/Hackers-port-Cobalt-Strike-attack-tool-to-Linux
10) https://www.itpro.co.uk/business-strategy/mergers-and-acquisitions/360869/jfrog-acquires-upswift-for-edge-based-devops
News
Speaker 1: Hey is the page object model overrated?
Want to know a real-world example of performance testing across the pipeline?
Worried about the Cobalt strike on Linux?
Discover the answer to these that other automation testing, performance testing, security testing, DevOps automation topics, in this edition of the Test Guild new show for the week of September 19th. So grab your favorite cup of coffee or tea and let's do this.
I want to start off the show with a big announcement that this edition of the Test Guild news show is sponsored by the awesome folks at Applitools. If you don't know Applitools the next-generation test automation platform powered by visually AI so it can help you increase quality, accelerate delivery and reduce costs with one of the world's most intelligent automation platforms, and I always believe that seeing is believing. So create your free account now by clicking on the link down below.
So first up in automation news, speaking of Applitools, it seems like every week I've done this show, we've had some sort of news article around AI & machine learning and automation and actually just noticed that Applitools has a free webinar coming up on Disruption, the economics of testing with AI.So AI-based Automation techniques really can help you deliver real benefits that come with the potential of addressing many of today's critical automation bottlenecks you probably find yourself struggling with. So in this webinar, you're going to discover why the cost of quality is out of control. The critical pain points faced by modern software development teams and five ways AI & machine learning can help you. So definitely check out that webinar as well in the link down below.
So is the page object model overrated? You're probably like what? Ever since I started automation, the first rule I've always been taught is to use page objects. But this may not always be the case. And Eldad Uzman actually takes a contrarian view in his latest two-part. It's an awesome two-part series on reasons why he actually thinks the page object model is overrated. So this article goes into what is the page object? What are some principles that are used for the page object and then to show some examples of the page object? And then he shows how you have to refactor it and some of the benefits. But then it gets into the pitfalls of why using the page object may not be ideal in all situations. And he basically concludes that the constant overthinking of using the page objects and breaking up into unrealistic levels and wire all those pieces together is too much of a burden that's not always justified. Like I said it's a two-parter, so definitely check it out as well. I really think this is a must-read to help you start thinking about different approaches you may have or understandings you might have about automation and maybe just flip the script and try something different. A lot of times doing something different actually gets you out of a route and breaking down old conceptions of what you may have been taught. As always, being the best practice may actually help you break out of route and make a breakthrough in your automation effort. So highly recommend you check out this two-part article.
Hey, if you're like me, when you think of cutting-edge companies, you probably don't think right away of companies in the financial or insurance space. And I'll be honest, one of the best places I ever worked my whole life was at a company called OneBeacon. Insurance was an insurance company. It was around for 100 years. But I was able to dabble in all kinds of automation, really complex automation testing and automation in general across all over the company. I really learned a lot. So I did performance testing, automation testing, UI, functional automation, mainframe automation, all kinds of cool stuff. And so that's why this next article really caught my attention. And so a recent survey explained how some of these top financial companies, including banking, insurance, financial services, test the software of the business. And it really shows how the industry appears to have risen to the challenge. So it talks about how seriously these organizations take testing the maturity that they have in their test coverage. So, once again, a good article to kind of make you think maybe differently and maybe how you may have thought about some of these organizations and how you could take some of these lessons learned from larger enterprises they may not be in and actually implement them at your company as well. So I think it's really cool stuff.
And other cool news, though, I actually came across another article on how to store Test Cafe test in influx DB. And even though you may not be using either Test Cafe or influx DB, I like these type of articles because it shows a real-world example of how someone implemented two different technologies. And a lot of times by reading it, you could probably pick up things that you can apply to your tech stack as well. And I think it's a really well-written article, it takes you on a journey on the benefits of visual test automation, followed by concepts of extracting test results and storing them and in influx DBI. And would probably be a good idea to follow the writer on LinkedIn as well to get updates every time they release a new article.
And speaking of LinkedIn Mohab recently hit me up in my inbox. Give me a message. Let me know about a new GitHub library called Shaft-Engine that he wanted me to check out. And this acts as a high-level wrapper, almost like a unified high-level interface to any of the underlining test automation frameworks out there. That it supports so some reasons of why or when you would use Shaft as if you're starting a new test automation project, that focuses on any of the supported platforms, and if you already have an existing test automation project that uses Selenium, Appium, rest assured, TestNG, Java, then you can use Shaft-Engine with the direct upgrade with zero refactorings required. So why don't you check it out and let me know what you think and then we can get back to Mohab because I haven't had time to try it myself yet.
Next up, performance and reliability news in this next news article came my way via Twitter from MartkosIT. Mark and Mark's always tweeting really cool articles related to performance testing and the latest one that caught my eye is one that he retweeted on performance testing across the pipeline using k6. So definitely give Mark a follow if you're into performance testing at all in this article is a great breakdown of k6 how to get started with the different parts of a k6 script. Running k6 analyzing k6 results. It goes over the metrics of performance testing, running tests to verify your results, k6 and the metrics itself, and how to perform tests throughout the pipeline. A really cool, detailed article on k6 and performance testing. And my motto, as always, is automation and automation is just not functional. Automation is automation all the way across your CI/CD pipeline and performance testing is a big piece of it. So this is a great article on how to get started. Hands-on using k6 in how to actually implement it. And your CI/CD Pipeline.
And this next article is all about Observability in a survey that really reflects on how Observability is really becoming more and more popular. It's a new relic survey that surveyed thirteen hundred software engineers, developers, IT leaders, and executives and found that half of the respondents, half are in the process of implementing an observability platform. In these survey results, just more signs that this is definitely a leading indicator, that this is definitely a growing trend that you need to get involved with as well. And speaking about observability, a lot of times it shows up in the site reliability field.
Another growing trend I've been seeing is SRE. And this next interview for you by Tammy Bryant, Butow. And Tammy is a principal SRE at Gremlin. I think when the first person I ever talk to that actually told me or taught me about chaos engineering, was on my podcast. Here's another podcast, episode you should check out. And it goes over how you can have a formal SRE apprenticeship program and how to implement it, how Tammy implemented it at Dropbox so you can get ideas on how what is the best way to teach people new technical skills like site reliability, engineering? I think it's a good listen for sure.
Last up, security news.
So we talked a little bit about this, a few episodes back, and that is the cobalt strike. And the latest is an unknown group of cybercriminals have actually created a version of the Windows-only cobalt strike. It says that they actually have used the cobalt strike beacon tool. So it's been adopted by hackers to work against Linux machines it was designed to use for Penetration Testing and other security professionals. And Beacon is the automated attack opponent of the cobalt strike security testing suite. That enables attacks like keylogging and file theft that because it's so effective, at automatically compromising machines, the software has become effective, with cybercriminals looking to remotely break into a network. So definitely something to keep your eye on the security space.
And the last piece of news is some acquisition news. I love when companies acquire other companies because a lot of times the highlights may be trends that are starting to grow in the field that I need to be aware of. So in this article, JFrog actually has acquired Upswift for edge-based DevOps expansion. And the reason why it's under security news is that it actually talks about how this will help connected devices to become more secure. And it focuses on software to manage Internet of Things devices. It allows you, developers, and engineers to have the ability to monitor device health in real-time and access individual Iot devices from a browser. So Iot is a huge thing that is coming if it hasn't started already that you need be aware of and how different security things need to be thought of as you're developing these type of devices to think about, hey, how can this be exploited? How can I test to make sure that we're not going to be hacked using different tools in this area are going to help. And seeing actually people acquire other companies that actually focus in on this is just a clear sign to me that this is something you should be checking in and as well.
All right. So that's it for this episode of the TestGuild new show. Make sure to get a free Applitools account to discover how AI-based visual validation testing can help you with your testing efforts.
So I'm Joe. And my mission is to help you succeed in creating e2e full stack automation awesomeness. As always, test everything and keep the good. Cheers!
