About This Episode:
Want to know how to do QA testing in the cloud. How does Pokémon go scale to millions of requests? And why is the next generation of application security needed?
Find out, the answers to these and all other end and full stack pipeline DevOps automation, testing, performance, testing, security testing, in this episode of the TestGuild new show for the week of October 31st.
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
*** Applitools free account: https://rcl.ink/xroZw ***
1. https://link.medium.com/hbJCo65bMkb
2. Julia https://bit.ly/3jVZvH5
3. Beth https://bit.ly/3jWIPiK
4. TAU https://prn.to/3GCHgAl
5. Cypress https://bit.ly/3nNEjEf
6. 2022 Trends: https://bit.ly/3nGGIjW
7. Roblox https://bit.ly/2ZIVwa6
8. Pokemon https://bit.ly/31fmoi5
9. Autonomous Security https://bit.ly/3mwwV0K
10. Invicti: https://bit.ly/2ZLMPeU
News
First up, Automation News.
This first article that reached my desk is all about QA testing in the cloud. It's a trend to be seeing more and more about. And it talks about the evolution of apps of QA at a company called Azimo. So this is the fifth in a series of blog posts in which they outline their multi-year experience with Android app testing. Most of the principles, goals, and achievements apply to iOS apps as well. It's a really good breakdown of a real-world scenario of what happened as they try to scale their automation for their mobile applications, how to reduce flakiness, and the test lab set up that they had that work for them. Test analysis is a whole bunch of really good information related to QA testing in the cloud. So if you do anything that required testing and you want to know how to do more in the cloud or how to make a transition to the cloud, and how it can help your mobile testing efforts. Definitely check out this article in the links down below.
This next article comes your way via Linked In. It's actually an older article, but actually, the author republished it on LinkedIn, and I think it's a really critical topic, especially if you're new to automation. How do you prepare your QA teams for test automation? So in this article, Julia goes over a bunch of things like determining the goal and sharing the strategy with your team. How to Identify team roles and responsibilities, training time, how to support your team. And I said the article was written. I believe in May, but I didn't see it in May because Julia just reposted now, and that's what caught my attention. This is a really well-written article, and it's a real-world article because Julia is a hands-on automation engineer and she's actually in charge of training on her company so she knows what she's talking about. So definitely check out that article. And if you're not already, definitely give Julia a follow-up as well.
So I recently covered in a previous news show how Postman released a report on the state of API testing for 2021. What would it be like if you actually had that breakdown, though, from a tester's perspective, and that's actually what this next author did? Beth Marshall released a new blog post that actually takes that report and breaks it down from a tester's perspective, and she just goes over what she learned from the postmen report. Her key takeaways. She breaks down, you know, different key elements of the report that really stood out to her as a tester and with a summary of what the report meant to her. Definitely a good read. And also another must follow if you're not following Beth already on all the socials. Definitely check her out as well.
And a resource I always recommend to other folks, and one that's also recommended for a lot of other testers is test automation university, and they actually just announced a huge breakthrough in their platform. Test automation online is now the world's largest online software testing education platform, and it just celebrated its 100000 students. It keeps growing. It's a lot of great content here. If you're not familiar with Test Automation University, it's headed up by Angie Jones at Applitools, and it contains a lot of free video content and training that can keep you up to speed on the latest and greatest with test automation. So a great resource to know and definitely check it out in the link down below to really accelerate your education in test automation.
So all use Cypress engineers not sure if you checked it out, but Cypress just released a new test run of version eight point seven zero and includes some new features and bug fixes. So if using Cypress just a heads up that there is a new release of that test runner, and you should definitely probably give it a try because it probably fixed some bugs and maybe with has a new feature that allows users to overrate tests with an option to change the default behavior to overwrite existing screenshots without having to set an override for each Cy.Screenshot commands So that's something you struggle with. Grab the latest release and you'll be all set.
So every year I released my top trends for test automation. I've been doing this since 2015, so if I want to get a sneak peek, I'm going to be actually doing a webinar where Applitools on the test automation trends you need to know for the new year. And it's just a lead-up to a blog post I do every year on TestGuild.com, but you can get a sneak peek here by joining the webinar and finding out what my top trends are. That you need to know to kick off the year right. To register for that event. Once again,clickj the link is down below.
Next up, performance and site reliability news.
And so as we head into the holiday season, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, you start to get a lot of news stories around how sites go down because they weren't able to handle the handle, the capacity or the workload that's been put on them. But here's an article that came my way that kind of reminded me that Black Friday and Cyber Monday is coming in. Is your team ready? So I think if reading this has articles kind of get you not nervous but maybe can light a fire on you to say, Hey, is my application ready for the holidays because I don't want to be featured in any news item on my site went down. So definitely a good read on how Roblox went down all weekend and some key aspects of the server issue and that caused it. The timeline and some statements are what happens. Some people are speculating it was due to the promotion they were doing with Chipotle, and that does not seem to be the case in what's really bizarre is usually you have an outage for an hour or two, but this outage was down for three days. So I have a link to this because it keeps updating it as it goes along with the timeline on what they found. Something to keep an eye on to see what caused it, because sometimes because one outage may apply to you as well. And if you're on-site, reliability performance is definitely something you need to keep an eye on, especially as we head into the holiday season. In that article was first reported to me on LinkedIn Stephen Townsend. Stephen Townsend is interesting because he was a hard-core performance engineer that took a new role as a site reliability engineer. This is one that posted this article, so you have anything to do performance testing, site reliability engineering how to get up to speed with site reliability engineering. Stephen is definitely a must-follow. So thank you, Stephen, for that post.
So a bunch of my nephews and nieces stayed at my house a few weeks ago, and they're obsessed with Pokemon go. But they were a little upset because I live in the middle of nowhere. There was no Pokemon from them to catch. I don't understand the game, but I wondered like, it seems like a lot of people are obsessed with this game still after many years. I always wondered how it was able to handle all that stress of multiple uses jumping on the system. And I found my answer in this article on how Pokemon Go actually scales to millions of requests. It's actually posted by an advocate at Google Priyanka and James, who is a senior engineer, engineer manager of Pokemon Go, and the video has a great breakdown and actually how their infrastructure server team handles Pokemon Go. How it's set up really great information here on Kubernetesm cloud spanner. Bunch of different techniques that they use to make sure that their application stays reliable up and running and able to handle all these requests. So I think this is definitely a must-read and definitely check that out. Also in the links down below in the comments.
Next up, security testing news.
This next article talks about how the next generation of applications security is needed. What I really like about this? How it makes the distinction between autonomous is not automation, and the distinction is autonomous application security testing enables an intelligent way to adjust its testing techniques to the specific needs of each application, not a pre-built test suite and no size fits all. The type of approach and the tool that is actually pushing here is called AppSec on Autopilot. Never heard of for all secure, so just something to keep an eye on. If you're looking to do some autonomous security testing here, it's a good approach. If you're not doing security testing at all, it's one of the things you definitely have part of your testing toolkit, so definitely check that out.
And this last security article, I actually missed was actually a news article that was released a few weeks ago, and it's all about following the money here. A trend I've been seeing is application security. Here's a key indicator on how this trend is actually a thing because the money is being spent, it's flowing that way. And it is how application security testing firm Invicti security raised 625 million dollars. Security is a hot, hot topic and you definitely should be involved in it. So their tool NetSparker is designed for enterprise web application security testing with a large number of integrations and high scalability. A lot of money is going into testing, but it seems like a bulk of the money is going into the security sector. So definitely you if you don't know about security. I think it's definitely an awesome skill to have as we enter the new year also.
So that's it for the news items for the week of October 31st. If you haven't already. Definitely go in that comment down below the first one and click to create a free account with Applitools to help increase your automation system coverage with an approach that you won't be able to get any other way using. Leveraging AI with visual testing definitely a technique that you should be using, for sure. So definitely create a free account now.
And that's it for this episode of the TestGuild new show. I'm Joe and my mission is to help you succeed in creating E2E full-stack pipeline automation testing awesomeness. As always test everything and keep the good. Cheers!
