Agile Trailblazers Blog

Cucumber, Selenium and Gherkin have become popular tools for helping teams implement test automation - what is often referred to as Acceptance Test Driver Development (ATDD) or Behavior Driven Development (BDD).  In this article we will cover some more advanced features of Selenium and Cucumber and show how to environmentalize your test framework so you can run the same tests against different environments or browsers.  In this article series, we use Ruby as the implementation language (and we recommend Ruby when there is no other existing preference). However, these examples will translate easily to other languages like Java. 

If you are not familiar with Selenium, Cucumber and Gherkin take a look at our related introductory blog "The 5 Step Guide for Selenium, Cucumber, and Gherkin".

Want to Performance test your web Applications? Then you should know about Apache JMeter.

What is Apache JMeter?

 It is a 100% pure Java application and Open Source testing software .It was designed for  load, stress, functional, performance testing.  It requires JDK 5 or higher.

What is performance testing ?

 Performance testing is the process of determining the speed or effectiveness of a computer, network, Software program or device. In this process involve quantitative tests done in a lab, such as measuring the response time or the number of MIPS (millions of instructions per second) at which a system functions. Qualitative attributes such as reliability, scalability and interoperability may also be evaluated. Performance testing is often done in conjunction with stress testing.

Heard about Node.js and Express but are confused where to start? Well, here you can find 3 easy steps to create and run Express application in Node.js on a Mac OS.

The CI [continuous integration] pitfall to utilizing Git and Gerrit for code review.

We developers live in an object oriented world where data is represented as objects in our applications. However, these applications often end up saving their data in SQL databases which are relational, not object oriented. This often causes translation errors and could cost you and your team significant time tracing and debugging. Understanding keys, relationships, and cardinality are essential skills for any developer to be able to create and maintain reliable, consistent, and efficient applications by being able to create and read data models and spot potential problems before they become major bugs.

If you are familiar with open-source Jenkins, you understand that it is an award-winning continuous integration and deployment tool for a reason. It’s growing ecosystem of plugins has taken Jenkins to the next level providing extended features and added functionality.

However, an integral part of replicating your software delivery workflow is the ability to represent your delivery model visually while automating the process; with Enterprise Jenkins, you can completely re-write the script pun intended to accomplish this through the Pipeline Plugin.

Selenium Grid is a powerful tool for testing web applications across browsers and operating systems, but incorporating it into a Continuous Integration pipeline can be frustrating. Integrating the Grid with a CI/CD server is complex, and a misstep during setup can lead to unreliable test errors, and down that path lies madness. Here at AgileTrailblazers, we use the Selenium Grid plugin for Jenkins to quickly execute our UI tests on every build against multiple operating systems and browsers, so front-end bugs are squashed early.

Teams are an intricate balance of skills, cooperation, leadership and willingness to go the extra mile to make a quality product. Each grouping has individuals with specific roles and responsibilities, as well as a chain of command to help guide the team to success. Within a testing team, the QA Engineer plays an integral part that helps testing run smoothly and ensures that all projects are thoroughly evaluated.

Although the QA Engineer isn't the top dog in the team, he or she does report to the QA Manager. The person in the QA Engineer role essentially takes the requirements and test strategies and generates test plans. But that's not all. These individuals also execute these tests, leverage QA testing tools to report issues and analyze test results to mitigate problems and create better tests. This is obviously an important position to be in, but many don't fully understand what capabilities are needed. Let's take a look at some of the essential skill requirements for a QA engineer:

• Communication
• Product Understanding
• Coding and Creativity
• Automation

1. Continuous Integration (CI)