Parasoft simplifies Process of Testing Microservices

Parasoft, the leader in automated software testing, released new versions of its industry-leading functional solutions for microservices. Parasoft SOAtest, an API/web/mobile/database testing solution, now provides a simplified approach to testing microservices, with new workflows and protocol support. Parasoft Virtualize, a service virtualization solution, has been bolstered with new technology to help isolate individual components and stabilize test environments. As pioneers in the software testing space, Parasoft continues to innovate, and when it comes to microservice testing, Parasoft is making it easier to ensure reliable, high-quality software by providing teams with an intuitive approach to defining and executing complete test scenarios. For a free trial of Parasoft, click here.

The shift toward microservices has brought great promise to the development and testing worlds by increasing speed, flexibility, and scalability. Realizing these benefits is essential to organizations that are looking to get ahead in today’s face-paced world of software development, so effectively adopting microservices requires an effective testing solution, along with a scalable testing strategy.

“Digital transformation, APIs, and microservices all make headlines these days, and our data shows the relationship between them: enterprises with top priorities like changing their business models or accelerating digital business are up to twice as likely to be investing in APIs and microservices,” described Randy Heffner from Forrester, in the October 2017 report, Microservices and External API’s Underpin Digital Business. “These key investments foster business agility, and agility is key to sustainable transformation.”

One of the key advantages of microservice architectures is the ability to develop, deploy, and upgrade services individually. But this essential benefit also introduces a series of new testing challenges, such as understanding how to isolate each component for testing while still collaborating with the team as a whole.

In Parasoft’s latest software releases, Parasoft has continued to develop solutions to foster the collaboration required between development and testing teams in highly complex architectures. Specifically, core components of SOAtest, Virtualize, and the Continuous Testing Platform have been enhanced to meet the challenges of microservices, with new features and capabilities such as:

• New support for Apache Kafka:Recognized as one of the most important protocols for microservices, Parasoft SOAtest now supports Kafka for both initiating (push) and listening to (pull) events. This supplements support for existing microservice specific protocols, RabbitMQ, protobuff, HTTP, REST, and more.

• Ability to deploy API testing in dynamic ecosystems: Teams can now easily integrate API testing as part of existing CI/CD processes using the new highly-deployable SOAtest executable, which can be deployed on-demand as a step in CI builds, enabling teams to perform test execution in disposable environments as a part of the accelerated delivery process.

• A simplified approach to proxy creation: With a new workflow to simplify the endpoint discovery process, Parasoft Virtualize teams can now more efficiently simulate services in a federated or sandbox team structure without having to disrupt core system configuration.

• A mechanism for collaboration and correlation: Using the Parasoft Continuous Testing Platform, teams can visualize their microservices environment. By enabling users to associate test artifacts with each component, that can be shared across development and test teams, the Continuous Testing Platform provides a single point of alignment for test configurations.

“Microservices enable the speed and flexibility required to support many of today’s agile development projects – but without leveraging a testing solution that’s built specifically to address the unique challenges of microservice testing, QA won’t be able to keep pace with development and the whole software delivery process will slow down,” explained Chris Colosimo, Sr. Product Manager for Functional Test Automation at Parasoft. “At Parasoft, we continue to innovate to provide technologies and processes that empower testing teams to open the fast lane to successful microservice adoption.”

Learn more about how to simplify microservices testing by downloading Parasoft’s new whitepaper, Testing Microservices.