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Testing

The latest News and Information on Software Testing and related technologies.

Secure Software Development: How to Check Your Code

In May of 2021, a cybercrime organization called DarkSide successfully locked operators of the Colonial Pipeline, which supplies the east coast with 45% of its petroleum fuel, out of their own software system with a type of malware called "ransomware." True to its name, ransomware returns access to your software (in theory) if you pay a ransom. The result-fuel supplies collapsed across the eastern United States, with gas lines, price spikes, and panic. People began hoarding gasoline in states not even served by the Colonial Pipeline. The US government passed emergency legislation. Even DarkSide seemed shocked at the impact of their cyberattack.

Best practices for shift-left testing

There are several different testing methods you can use as part of your development process to ensure you build high-quality applications. Shift-left testing is one approach that has become popular with agile teams because it enables them to move the testing phase to earlier stages of the development life cycle, which is a primary goal for agile development. Shift-left testing has a few advantages over traditional methods.

Completing the security testing automation cycle

DevOps, DevSecOps and CI/CD are synonymous with one word - automation. Automating their workflows gives developers the ability to deliver consistency, time savings, and useful insights into their software development life cycle (SDLC). But automation is only as efficient as your weakest link or most cumbersome bottleneck, which can sometimes be security testing. Security testing has traditionally been carried out either manually or quite late in the process.

Performance, Stress, and Load Tests in Rails

Tests are an integral part of most well-working Rails applications where maintenance isn’t a nightmare and new features are consistently added, or existing ones are improved. Unfortunately, for many applications, a production environment is where they are put under heavy workload or significant traffic for the first time. This is understandable as such tests are costly.

Triggering automated tests with Jira and Xray - Demo Den - May 2021

Sérgio Freire, Head of Solution Architecture and Testing Advocacy for Xray, shows how to trigger test automation from Xray Cloud using GitLab and report the results back to Xray in a Test Plan. You can easily replicate this process for other frameworks including Jenkins, Robot Framework and Bamboo.

Reducing flaky test failures

Testing is vital because it helps you discover bugs before you release software, enabling you to deliver a high-quality product to your customers. Sometimes, though, tests are flaky and unreliable. Tests may be unreliable because of newly-written code or external factors. These flaky tests, also known as flappers, fail to produce accurate and consistent results. If your tests are flaky, they cannot help you find (and fix) all your bugs, which negatively impacts user experience.