Date: 1/8/2020Guests: None
Welcome and greetings
Recap of last episode
- In the last episode, I discussed various types of testing and where they are typically found in the SDLC. This is not an all encompassing list and does not dive too deeply into each type but is a general overview of how they can be used and how you might want to think about using them to testing your applications.
Summary of this episode
- In this episode, we discuss Test Automation and how it can be used to accelerate your pipelines. We will discuss some of the methods of automating tests and some products that can help you with your automation.
What’s in it for you?
- After listening to this episode, you will be able to determine if your tests are good candidates for automation and how you can integrate test automation into your CI/CD pipelines.
Episode Content
- What is Software Test Automation?
- It is simple the act of executing a set of test cases without any human intervention.
- Why is it important?
- This takes the human factor out of test execution. All steps are executed in the same manner every time that the test case is run. This restricts any variation in test results from a human hand controlling the execution of the tests.
- What are some of the benefits?
- Repeatability – Easy to duplicate your results
- Consistency – minimal variation in test execution
- Speed – automated scripts don’t need bio breaks
- Reliability – no human factor
- Schedule-ability – can be set to run automatically
- What makes a good automate-able test case?
- Frequency of execution – provides more value quickly
- Known inputs and outputs
- Simple test cases
- How can we automate a test case?
- It can be scripts that are written in house?
- It can be done with third party tools such as Selenium, Unified Functional Test, and other automation tools such as Jenkins
- Maven can run your unit tests as one of its “goals”: clean, verify, compile, test, package, deploy
- Gradle can run your unit tests using a task of type test.
- Selenium can be used as a scripting engine to test your application
- Unified Functional Test is an example of a 3rd party tool that creates a “script” of test steps that are then executed as part of your automation.
Recap of this episode
- In this episode, I discussed what test automation is, some of the benefits, and some types of test automation.
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Next Episode: The journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step …… Unit Testing