As digital transformation accelerates and more organizations use software solutions to facilitate work operations, security threats have become more commonplace. Cybercriminals tirelessly develop ways to exploit software application vulnerabilities to target organizational networks. A notable example is the 2017 Equifax data breach, which exposed the personal details of 145 million Americans.

Confidence in the quality, robustness, and reliability of a product are among the most valuable qualities sought after by consumers as well as businesses. This confidence is built through the rigorous testing of a product. In software engineering, practices like extreme programming (XP) and test-driven development (TDD) champion the belief that automated testing should be used from the start of a project.

We’ve already outlined why API performance matters and what aspects of APIs to test, but what is the difference between API testing and monitoring? As with most things, context matters. The use cases for testing and monitoring are different because the objectives are different. The ultimate goal is to verify that your APIs are functioning properly, but staging environments vary significantly from production environments.

When a startup is in its very early stages, rapid iteration and dynamism are at the top of its priorities. The ability to do so, while maintaining a stable and high-quality product, is a big challenge facing the R&D group. We want to release features as quickly as possible, but this rapid velocity cane cause conflicts when writing in-depth, comprehensive tests.

Reliability testing is a software testing technique designed to make sure that a piece of software meets customer requirements, and to identify any faults within the product before it is delivered to the customer. It is the key to improving the design, functionality, and ultimately the quality of software. It should be performed at each level of software creation, and it encompasses everything from unit testing, to full system testing.

We’ve recently completed a large beta test for our new product here at Testmo. We build a test management tool, so most of our users are professional software testers. As you can imagine, our customers are a rather critical group of users when it comes to software quality. We’ve learned some important lessons about running a large beta test and we want to share how we benefited from Sentry error reporting to identify, find, and fix issues quickly.

Digital businesses are making a radical change in the way they build and deliver software. Gone are the days of apps that rely solely on in-house tools. Rather, today’s apps are increasingly dependent on external APIs and third-party app providers (which, in turn, are reliant on other APIs and apps). While this type of modularity allows for product flexibility and rapid development, it can be difficult to address any issues that arise.