Open-source tools take hold in test/QA market
January 2, 2009 —
The software industry as a whole has embraced open-source tools in recent years, and the test and QA market jumped on the trend in 2008.
In particular, the year brought broader adoption of the Software Testing Automation Framework. STAF offers testers a multiplatform, multi-language function-testing capability with reusable components. The market also turned to HtmlTestCase, an open-source unit-testing tool that uses classes to simplify automation of HTML function testing. It was designed for QA staff members with technical skills and specifies tests with a high-level API.
Other open-source projects that gained popularity in 2008 were Systir (System Testing in Ruby), which performs system-level tests in a domain language, and Faban, created by Sun Microsystems for benchmark development. Faban includes a driver framework and a harness for automating the running of server benchmarks, along with a Web interface to launch and queue runs.
The year also saw the release of new products and updates for test.
Hewlett-Packard rolled out new versions of the HP Business Availability Center (BAC) for SOA, Diagnostics for SOA, SOA Policy Enforcer, Service Test and Service Test Management.
BAC’s new features include a topology view of Web services, synthetic transaction monitoring, and the ability to track the performance of a service from the perspective of a particular customer. Diagnostics for SOA works with BAC, gathering performance metrics, events and faults from services and the stacks on which those services sit. The new version of Service Test, which was made available as a standalone product, has broadened functional test capabilities and adheres to such Web standards as SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) 1.2 and WS-Addressing.
IBM released a new version of its Quality Management portfolio last year, adding a Generic Service Client to Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality that provides a single client to interact with any SOA service type. This can be done either by importing a WSDL (Web Services Description Language) or XML Schema Definition file, or by connection with a Web service endpoint.
For its part, iTKO added the ability to create services synthetically from WSDL models, databases, enterprise service buses and Java objects in a new version of its Lisa SOA testing and validation suite. Later in the year, iTKO integrated Lisa into Eclipse to automate unit, functional, regression, load and performance testing within the platform.
Targeting multithreaded applications, Coverity released Thread Analyzer for Java. The tool analyzes code as it is executed to identify deadlocks and issues, and a deadlock algorithm tracks the sequence of locking orders to create a complete locking reference.
The year also brought some consolidation of the vendor base. Mindreef, maker of the SOAPscope Server for SOA quality management and Web services testing, was acquired by Progress Software in June and is now a product unit of Progress.
Related Search Term(s): open source, testing, Coverity, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, iTKO, Mindreef
Share this link: http://sdt.bz/33148
Most Read Latest News Blog Resources
Android is the focus of two new design tools
Anywhere Software and Xamarin provide ways for developers to create and test their applications on PCs
|
|
LEADTOOLS HTML5 add-on modules released
Including New HTML5 Zero Footprint Viewer, JavaScript Libraries and RESTful Web Services for Document and Medical SDKs
|
|
How to speed up your Cukes
Using a five-step process derived from Six Sigma, Cucumber tests can go much faster
|
|
WhiteSource offers open-source license management as a service
Software gives companies insight into the open-source components in products
|
SmartBear rolls out new quality solution: API Complete
Software gives organizations ability to write test scripts and monitor APIs by bridging the DevOps divide
|
|
Android is the focus of two new design tools
Anywhere Software and Xamarin provide ways for developers to create and test their applications on PCs
|
|
WhiteSource offers open-source license management as a service
Software gives companies insight into the open-source components in products
|
|
Top five devices you can integrate with your applications
A five-fingered list of common, household items with which you can talk to (via software, of course)
|
Slick...but who needs it?
compilr.com is a well-designed site and the folks behind it seem to have their heart in the right place. But...who needs it?
|
|
How to be a better software developer
Want to be a better developer? You won't get there by mastering an interesting language or learning a new set of APIs.
|
|
Wooing Galatea
Do yourself a favor and check out Galatea 2.2, a wonderful book by novelist Richard Powers.
|
|
The world as story
An artificial-intelligence system at Carnegie Mellon seeks to understand the world by making statements about it.
|
Five SCM Best Practices
Two-thirds of all software projects fail, according to the Standish Group’s CHAOS study. Improper usage of software configuration management...
|
|
|
Best Practices for Branching and Merging Patterns
Development teams often create a branching pattern, usually drawn out on a white board or in a Visio document, that is used as a model to...
|
|
Automated Error Reporting
We invite you to read a short e-zine that tells you all about automated error reporting for .NET applications. This 8-page e-zine is packed...
|
|
The End of Application Redeploys
Imagine that every time you wanted to write, send or receive an email, you needed to restart your computer. How much time would this take, a...
|
Related Articles
LoadRunner wins big again in Testers Choice Awards
Hewlett-Packard raked in many honors this year, spearheaded by its LoadRunner performance testing software. Eclipse, IBM and Parasoft also had strong showings in this year's awards.
|
iTKO integrates Eclipse into LISA, allows for more testing
The LISA 4.5 SOA suite gains Eclipse capabilities for source control and life-cycle management. The combination allows developers to test Java code without needing to write JUnit tests, thus upping the number of tests that can be run.
|
Business Briefs: October 1, 2008
Hewlett-Packard announced a slew of layoffs in the wake of its acquisition of Electronic Data Systems, Microsoft is set to sell Greenfield Online's Internet survey division to ZM Capital, and Red Hat plans on acquiring virtualization company Qumranet.
|