AI for ETL Testing, Shift-Left Dead, Cypress A11y and more TGNS127

[00:00:00] Joe Colantonio Have you seen how AI can help you with ETL testing? How do you create a simple but effective end-to-end test architecture using Playwright? And is shift left dead? Find out in this episode of The Test Guild Show for the week of July 7th. Grab your favorite cup of coffee or tea and let's do this. Hey, before we get into it, if you haven't already, please make sure to subscribe to our LinkedIn News Show newsletter that I have, and a link down below to never miss another episode.

[00:00:28] Joe Colantonio First up is a webinar of the Week Spotlight, and this is all on our Test Guild upcoming webinar on leveraging AI to simplify and speed up ETL testing. This session that will take place next week is going to cover how AI can really help you to enhance and actually help you extracting, transforming, and loading data. And this webinar really is essential for testers looking to optimize your ETL process with advanced AI tools. Register now to learn more about how I can actually help you enhance your ETL testing, making it faster and more reliable. And by registering, you're going to gain some practical insights and hands on experience and how to integrate AI into your ETL workflows that can hopefully, ultimately save you time and improve your data accuracy. And this is one place where I think AI really can assist you. Definitely register now in the link down below. See you there!

[00:01:22] Joe Colantonio Hey, if you're not part of our Test Guild Community, you definitely should be. We have some awesome content in it. For example, Sebastian just announced in our Test Guild Heartbeat community that he's released a new Cypress plugin. What's it about? Let's check it out. So this new Cypress plugin wick a11y is for website accessibility analysis, and this open source tool integrates seamlessly into Cypress test using Axe core as its engine. It helps you to identify accessibility issues, flag problematic Dom elements, and generates detailed HTML reports with solutions and screenshots. This is a great way to learn how a tool like this can help you to identify and resolve accessibility issues in your software. Integrating a tool like this also early in the development cycle to catch accessibility issues sooner should hopefully save you time and resources while ensuring a more accessible user experience, something everyone should be aware of and check out. Check it out in the links down below.

[00:02:17] Joe Colantonio Also, there's a new AI tool that was announced Codoid has introduced its first AI tool for software testers and the QA community. This suite of tools works offline and allows testers to see suggested test cases by uploading a screenshot of their application. And the tool aims to streamline the testing process by providing immediate, relevant test key suggestions. Give it a try and see if this AI tool can help you with your testing, and actually check out to see how good it is at generating test cases for your application screenshots. So definitely something to check out to see if this actually works for you. If it can help improve your test coverage and reduce test case creation time. Check it out for yourself. Let me know how it works for you in the comments down below.

[00:02:58] Joe Colantonio All right, let's check out some more AI news. This is by Joe Fernandez, who announced that last month Microsoft introduced their AI recorder for Power Automate, and this AI record allows users to create automation and Power Automate desktop to simplify recording the screens, akin to conducting a screen sharing session. And this streamlines the process of building automation, making it more accessible and efficient for users. And in their brief 10 minute demo, Microsoft showcased how the AI recorder can help facilitate easy automation for tasks like data transfer. And this feature is expected to significantly enhance productivity and simplify the automation process for a wide range of applications. Leveraging the AI recorder to quickly document and automate your manual test processes could be really helpful. And by recording their test execution steps, you can create a reliable automation script without needing extensive code knowledge. Definitely check that out as well in the links down below.

[00:03:56] Joe Colantonio Also, Dennis recently shared insights on LinkedIn about creating a simple and effective end-to-end test architecture using Playwright. In this post, Dennis highlights the importance of streamlining your approach to end-to-end testing, emphasizing the need for clear structure and efficient processes. He discusses how Playwright's capabilities make it a robust tool for end-to-end testing, providing a reliable framework for automated tests across different browsers and platforms. And he also stresses the significance of maintaining a modular test architecture while enhancing the maintainability and scalability of test suites. In this post, Dennis outlines practical steps for implementing a modular test architecture with Playwright, including setting up the test environment, creating reusable components, and integrating into continuous integration systems. He underscores the benefits of using Playwright's features like auto waiting, captured screenshots, and recording videos of test runs to improve test reliability. And to help you with debugging. And it's always a good practice, regardless of what tool you're using to create a more modular approach to your test automation frameworks. And this approach not only simplifies the testing process, but also enhances tests reliability and more importantly, maintainability. Consider leveraging Playwright's automates features to help reduce flaky tests caused by timing issues that he goes over and this as well. And this can also significantly improve the stability of your test suite and save time undebugging and rerunning failed tests. You can check that out down below.

[00:05:27] Joe Colantonio I didn't have a news show last week, so this news is a little bit old. It's from a few weeks ago, but it's how Playwright just launched a new version 1.45, which introduces several new features including the clock API with a few people on LinkedIn have been talking about, which allows testers to manipulate and control time within tests. This feature is really useful for test time-related behavior like simulating inactivity and events timing manually. And this update also adds new CLI options, environment variables, and improvements, test configuration and browser capabilities. Given the new clock API and Playwright, give it a try to see if it helps you in your testability for time-based dependent functionality. See if it works. And also really cool API that should help you create more reliable and precise tests for time sensitive features, ensuring the applications handle various time scenarios accurately. Definitely a cool thing. Check it out. Let me know your thoughts.

[00:06:24] Joe Colantonio So is shift left dead? Well, according to Jason, it just might be. Jason posted recently on his LinkedIn, an article that he wrote about the shift left movement, which emphasizes early stage security and quality test, is facing criticism for overburdening developers. The article goes over a survey recently of U.S. developers that revealed that many bypassed security measures and push untested AI generated code due to pressure into production. And this trend points to structural issues in the tech industry, highlighting the need for better project management and support of development environments. He goes over why you should be aware that the shift left approach may not always be effective, and might need reevaluation to balance quality and developer workload, depending on your team's unique situation, and also to maintain code quality and security. You want to integrate AI tools thoughtfully, not just willy nilly, to help ensure more robust testing processes, and hopefully avoiding overreliance on developers for early stage testing. I don't know, I don't think it's dead. I just think people do it incorrectly. Definitely read more about it. Let me know your thoughts on this as well down below.

[00:07:33] Joe Colantonio So last up is a security item checkmark and Wiz have announced a new integration to enhance cloud security operations. This collaboration integrates checkmark's static application security testing. And was this platform offering a comprehensive solution for application and cloud security. And this integration aims to prioritize and mitigate risks to critical assets by combining application security insights with cloud security findings. I think software testers should recognize the importance of integrating application security with the cloud security to help streamline vulnerability detection and hopefully remediate processes earlier rather than later. And so utilizing an integration like this should provide proactive identification and just security vulnerabilities. Build application code in cloud environments, hopefully, ensuring a more robust security posture for organizations. You're not doing anything with SAS or anything like that. This is stuff that you should definitely check out, especially if you have cloud security issues. Check it out down below.

[00:08:33] All right. For links of everything we covered in this news episode. Head over to links in that comment down below. So that's it for this episode of the Test Guild News Show. I'm Joe, my mission is to help you succeed in creating end-to-end, full-stack pipeline automation awesomeness. As always, test everything and keep the good. Cheers.