Integration Testing is a cornerstone for delivering quality software.
This is the phase that can test how the individually tested modules (often via unit tests) come together and work as expected. Integration tests above all, need to be effective in catching problems when the different parts of the system communicate together. They should also be able to quickly identify the probable problem area within the system.
A properly engineered integration testing pipeline can not only prevent common issues from reaching production but also help in uncovering architecture/interface issues as well.
Here are some ways to make your integration testing better.
1. Limit the number of tests, so that they are maintainable when changes are made and also more useful than the overhead of maintaining them.
2. Try to spin up the test environment and generate the required data every time tests are run, thus making the pipeline run idempotent. Just as an idempotent data pipeline is far easier to maintain, so is such a testing setup.
3. Use mocking but only where required. Strive not to mock unless the system design does not allow any alternative. That is also a good clue to check if an alternate design will give better results. (If design changes are an option)
4. The test environment should be as close to the production environment as possible.
5. Adding a CI (Continuous integration) pipeline ensures that new changes are automatically tested, allowing for quicker feedback and early detection of issues. One way is to integrate it directly as a check when PR is opened by a developer.
6. Testing reports should be easy to consume and should effectively communicate potential problem areas.
Over the years I have seen several stacks being used for this purpose, the most common being the Cucumber framework, where tests are written in BDD style following the gherkin syntax. I have also seen custom frameworks written in python, or as an extension of Cucumber itself.
I recently came across the karate library https://lnkd.in/gNvqMQPp as a viable alternative to cucumber and upon trying found it pretty amazing. Here are some key advantages over cucumber or similar frameworks:
1. No glue code is required! Yes, with karate you just write steps in Gherkin syntax (customized) and the test is ready to execute!
2. Built-in assertion framework which is much more flexible. (can assert over JSON data directly). In cucumber, you need to select some suitable library for assertions.
3. Built-in HTML reports, and test parallelism.
4. Built-in REST API support. No need to rely on another rest api framework like Rest Assured as is required with cucumber.
I found that using karate to write tests for java/scala codebase results in much faster test automation and more readable tests.
What frameworks have you used for integration/regression testing?
#softwaretesting #integrationtesting #qualityassurance #testautomation #continuousintegration
AVP, Test Automation Analyst @Barclays
1yboth the new features - image comparison and the @setup are going to be very useful. ..Thanks for giving us this