Software Testing Tools Blog – Testertools

TRICENTIS®, a global leader in software testing and quality assurance, today announces that their flagship product, TOSCA Testsuite™, has been named Best in Test 2012 for Functional Testing.

The highly coveted award was announced at Design Con 2012 in Santa Clara, CA, a conference devoted to the design of electronic devices and systems.

This award builds on TRICENTIS’ previous recognitions including prominent analyst Gartner, Inc., which named TRICENTIS a Cool Vendor in 2010 and followed in 2011 by naming TRICENTIS to the Visionaries Section of the Magic Quadrant for Integrated Software Quality Suites based on its market leading automation model, end-to-end, model-driven approach, effective test coverage, and strong test data facilities. In addition, TRICENTIS was recently awarded with the R.E.C.S.S. Award for outstanding customer service and support based on TRICENTIS’ customer service availability, responsiveness, and quality of care.

Unlike other test solutions, TOSCA Testsuite delivers a single administrative interface for manual, semi-automated, and fully automated test cases. This single source means that you can design the test cases once and leverage these across multiple technologies and platforms such as JAVA, .NET, SAP, Mobile, and multiple browsers – to name a few.

Gartner Research Director David Norton believes that a high quality testing solution is indispensable for business success: “Adequate software testing is required to reduce the risk of defects in production that can mean loss of orders, incorrect actions and unavailability of service. Good tools boost testing productivity and solid reporting and planning to enable efficient software delivery.” (IT Market Clock for Application Development, 16 September 2011)

Wolfgang Platz, founder and CEO of TRICENTIS states, “We are clearly setting the standard for best practices in automated functional testing. This award confirms that TOSCA Testsuite has once again been recognized by the software testing industry for world class technology. It is a challenge for our customers to increase test coverage significantly. Many of our customers struggle to test new technologies while reducing test case maintenance. 50% improvements in effectiveness and efficiency can only be achieved with a smart, integrated and automated software testing solution based on industry leading methodology. There are hundreds of tools on the market today that merely add to the huge overhead in maintenance with little improvements in test quality. TOSCA OneView℠ has leapfrogged the competition in our ability to reduce maintenance and improve testing quality.“

Gorilla Logic, (www.gorillalogic.com), the enterprise application development and automated mobile testing tools and services company, today announced the availability of MonkeyTalk, a new cross-platform iOS/Android functional record/playback functional testing platform that unites the industry leading FoneMonkey for iOS and FoneMonkey for Android open source tools. MonkeyTalk provides a single, powerful, cross-platform testing environment that helps development teams speed the delivery of higher quality mobile applications. The power of MonkeyTalk is multiplied by Gorilla Logic’s new Continuous QA in the Cloud service offering (see today’s announcement entitled, “Gorilla Logic Announces New Cloud-based Quality as a Service (QaaS) Offering”).

“Mobile application testing services are poised for enormous growth in 2012 with U.S. companies rapidly accelerating their demand for the use of third-party mobile application testing tools and services,” said Rona Shuchat, program director at IDC. “With Gorilla Logic’s new Continuous QA Cloud offering, QA professionals can effectively and efficiently automate the testing of mobile apps across multiple devices and simulators (in any combinations) to meet the increasing demand for highly usable and high performing mobile apps.”

For the first time, QA professionals have a comprehensive solution for mobile application testing. MonkeyTalk fills a huge void in the application development/delivery toolkit by recording, playing back and validating any user interaction on any mobile device or tablet. MonkeyTalk handles any gesture on any component, and supports both iOS and Android, simulators or devices.

As part of MonkeyTalk platform, Gorilla Logic has introduced the MonkeyTalk Command Language, a simple, but powerful, keyword- and data-driven language for specifying functional test scripts. Designed for QA professionals, MonkeyTalk Command Language is intuitive, readable and easy-to-learn. MonkeyTalk can be generated automatically through recording or composed from scratch with the MonkeyTalk IDE or with any text editor. In addition, testers and QA professionals can extend MonkeyTalk with their own application-specific commands without any programming. MonkeyTalk’s JavaScript API also allows tests to freely mix JavaScript and MonkeyTalk for enhanced control.

“We’ve immersed ourselves in the functional testing tools space for four years with thousands of teams using FlexMonkey and FoneMonkey, so we were able to step back and redesign with a focus on how people work in the real world,” said Edward Schwarz, vice president of engineering and co-founder of Gorilla Logic. “The MonkeyTalk command language as well as comprehensive support for JavaScript-based test scripting are examples of listening to QA pros talk about what they need to really drive value.”

Key features of MonkeyTalk include:

• Powerful data-driven functional testing for iOS and Android
• Recording and playback of user interface interactions
• Verifying expected versus actual results
• Generating readable, maintainable scripts, as well as supporting easy creation of scripts from scratch
• Automatically converting scripts to JavaScript which can be extended with custom logic
• The ability to run in continuous integration environments
• Free, open source licensing

“With MonkeyTalk, we’re taking the whole mobile testing space to the next level – not only uniting our tools across platforms, but also focusing on the entire process of mobile QA and how to make as a seamless part of a Continuous Delivery process, or what we call Continuous QA,” said Stu Stern, CEO and co-founder of Gorilla Logic.

AvailabilityMonkeyTalk is a free and open source tool and is available now. It can be downloaded at (www.gorillalogic.com/testing-tools/monkeytalk). To read more about the latest announcement and what it means for the MonkeyTalk community, please visit (http://blog.gorillalogic.com/). For more information on Gorilla Logic, please visit: (www.gorillalogic.com). To read CEO Stu Stern’s blog on this announcement please visit: (www.stu-stern.blogspot.com).

TRICENTIS®, a global leader in software testing and quality assurance, today announces a worldwide partnership with Keynote Systems subsidiary, Keynote DeviceAnywhere™, the global leader in mobile application lifecycle management (mobile ALM), as part of the comprehensive enterprise test automation solution. With TOSCA Mobile™, part of the TOSCA Testsuite™ suite of solutions, and Keynote DeviceAnywhere, companies with complex business processes can conduct rigorous performance testing on over 3,000 smart devices supporting major operating systems such as Android™, Symbian®, Apple iOS® and RIM BlackBerry®. In addition, TOSCA Mobile with Keynote DeviceAnywhere provides test automation solutions for all custom smart devices and engines to encourage future smart device innovation.

Gartner Research’s Vice President of Information Technology Sourcing, Gilbert Van der Heiden, underscores the importance of an advanced testing solution for smart devices: “Gartner predicts that application testing services will continue to grow and increase traction among buyers. The most pervasive reasons for this are the high level of cost savings recognized and the level of assurance provided in achieving more predictable application functionality and performance. When evaluating providers, ensure that you give proper weighting to the level of maturity, automation and process standardization that the provider has achieved in testing services. Do not forget to validate the industry-specific knowledge, templates, use and test cases and tools that the provider can deploy.”

TRICENTIS’ flagship product TOSCA Testsuite provides powerful integration for enterprise mobile application testing with one integrated, advanced testing solution. TOSCA customers can now access and test live mobile devices, rather than simulators, regardless of their physical location. TOSCA Mobile users can automate mobile test cases as they would for any other user interface. Further, TOSCA Mobile automated tests are suitable for cross device testing and can be run independent of the device or operating system. The new TOSCA Mobile offering reduces costs and speeds time-to-market for mobile applications and devices by greatly reducing the time it takes to complete testing.

SmartBear Software today announced that it attained record sales for the fourth quarter and the year ending December 31, 2011. SmartBear also launched a new brand identity and website reflecting the company’s renewed focus on helping software professionals support their organization’s quality needs in cloud computing, Agile and mobile development, and virtualization.

During the fourth quarter, SmartBear added over 450 new customers and approximately 12,000 new users (excluding free versions of soapUI and loadUI), grew trials to over 13,000 per month and continued strong profitability. SmartBear tools and services are now used by over one million software professionals in software development, testing and IT operations. Other milestones for 2011 include:

• Over 16,000 customers worldwide.
• Over 3 million downloads and 800,000 users of soapUI, the most popular API testing tool in the world.
• AlertSite website monitoring now averaging over 215 million page measurements per month.
• Continued to attract new talent to the leadership team. Key new hires included Richard “Rip” Haak as Chief Financial Officer; and Donna Ceriani, Chief People Officer.
• 80 percent of users that have tried a SmartBear tool would recommend it to a friend (based on a recent Net Promoter Score survey with nearly 1,000 respondents.)

Janova, an award-winning provider of web-based, automated software testing tools leveraging the power of the cloud, today announced it has partnered with Sogeti, a subsidiary of the Capgemini group and a leading provider of professional technology services. The new alliance will allow Sogeti to provide the Janova solution as a QA tool for its consulting engagements.

Adding to its mix of automated solutions, Sogeti can now offer Janova as a cost-effective automated solution for customers who currently test manually or those who don’t have the budget to invest in traditional automated tools that require large up-front license fees and additional hardware. The cloud-based Janova solution offers customers the opportunity to scale monthly user subscriptions as needed. With no download required and all tests executed in the cloud, Janova is easy to implement and requires no additional infrastructure investment.

“Sogeti is very excited about our strategic alliance with Janova and what it will mean for our business partners,” said John Schwab, Senior Vice President, Sogeti USA. “Having recently been named the global ‘best in class software test organization,’ we recognize the journey that Janova is on. Together we can bring innovation and an even more compelling business case for test automation to the market.”

“Janova is extremely pleased to announce this alliance with an industry leader like Sogeti,” said Jeff Lusenhop, founder and chief executive officer, Janova. “With Sogeti’s reputation for providing the best in automated solutions, adding Janova seems like a natural fit to help customers meet their software implementation needs. As we continue to evolve our revolutionary cloud-based solution, we’re excited to work with Sogeti on this exclusive offering.”

iBwave and Ascom Network Testing today announced a jointly developed interface for collection tools that enables the seamless integration of iBwave flagship software, iBwave Design, with Ascom’s TEMS mobile network testing solutions.

The new integration streamlines the ability for RF network engineers to test signal strength within facilities, where GPS positioning is not possible, by importing iBwave detailed floor maps to their TEMS collection tools. In one quick and easy step, the integration enables engineers to use building coordinates to align their in-building presence and provide a baseline for route planning and walk testing.  Additionally, the data enriches the TEMS application by enabling engineers to display the location of antennas on floor plans, validate their DAS configurations, and much more.

iBwave Design is the most comprehensive, and widely used software in the world for in-building wireless design-planning and deployments, helping to speed up processes and reduce costs. “This new interface, which provides an important link between the wireless network planning and testing domains, is just another example of iBwave’s ongoing commitment to improve the overall in-building wireless design and deployment process,” says iBwave CEO, Mario Bouchard.

Based on the new “IBWC” open standard for information exchange, the interface simplifies the process of exchanging files from one tool to another, bringing added value to both applications.  Ascom Network Testing is one of the first mobile network optimization  tool manufacturers to include embedded support for IBWC in three key products:  TEMS® Pocket, a mobile phone/smartphone and advanced test tool-in-one for wireless network verification, maintenance, and troubleshooting; TEMS® Investigation, the industry-leading solution for wireless network drive testing, troubleshooting, verification, optimization, and maintenance;  and TEMS® Discovery,  a wireless network reporting and analytics tool for indoor test post-processing, drive test analysis and network diagnostics.

“With more than half of all data traffic being consumed by subscribers indoors, operators and services providers know that their ability to meet subscriber quality expectations increasingly relies  on how well they can test, optimize and troubleshoot  in-building coverage,” says Ascom Network Testing General Manager, Rikard Lundqvist. “By co-developing an open standard for information exchange between our platforms, Ascom and IBwave are helping operators meet this demand with greater efficiency, and economy, than ever before.”

Veracode, Inc., the leader in cloud-based application security testing, today announced the availability of a whitepaper, ‘Outsourcing the problem of software security’, produced by primary research and analysis company, Quocirca.

This whitepaper is based on original research, commissioned by Veracode, and examines how UK and US businesses are deploying both in-house developed and commercially acquired software and the measures in place for ensuring the security quality of these applications.

Quocirca interviewed 100 medium to large organisations with greater than 1,000 employees, distributed equally in the US and the UK in the financial services, manufacturing, retail, distribution, transport and other commercial sectors.

Hundreds of applications are tracked by the average business

One key finding from the report is that companies are now tracking more critical applications than ever (the average for a financial services company is approximately 800 separate applications) and that the use of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and the use of mobile apps is now widespread.

While the breadth of available applications has productivity benefits for businesses and their employees, it also increases security issues, especially as more and more applications are web-enabled. The research found that many customers and auditors seek assurances from suppliers with regards to the security of applications that underpin business processes. In the US, 50 percent of the organisations interviewed said that customers demand guarantees about software security, in the UK it was 20 percent. However, auditors are more focused on software security in the UK than in the US, with 50 percent of UK auditors seeking guarantees, as opposed to 40 percent in the US.

Measuring software security against established benchmarks

Both commercial software developers and end-users developing applications in-house face challenges in ensuring the software they develop and deploy meets key security criteria, often defined by external standards, including the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP), Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and the CWE/SANS Top 25 most dangerous software errors. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) estimates that fixing a flaw in a production application can cost up to 25 times as much as it would if the flaw was prevented during the coding phase.

The report also reviews the different approaches to establishing an application security program, from developer education, (static and dynamic), through penetration testing (pen-testing), static and dynamic code and binary analysis to web application firewalls (WAFs).

The benefits of on-demand vs on-premise software testing

The report concludes that techniques such as maximising the use of software testing early in the application development life cycle is key to keeping costs down and improving productivity for end-users and application developers. This can be done through on-demand software testing services or in-house tools. Out of these two approaches the report concludes that on-demand services have the benefit of scale; their providers scan software from hundreds of customers a day and are cognisant of all the common flaws as well as rarely seen ones.

Software testing services are also generally paid for on a per- application basis with unlimited scanning rights regardless of the number of programmers. The infrastructure and staffing overheads are incurred by the service provider and therefore shared between many customers. Any analysis of the relative costs of on-premise tools and on-demand services must take this into account.

“Outsourcing the software security testing process has benefits for both commercial software developers and companies developing applications in-house,” said Bob Tarzey, Director at Quocirca. ”The use of on-demand services should not only be more cost effective, but they should be far more comprehensive in identifying flaws and preventing vulnerabilities because of the scale of the operations of the providers of such services.”

“Testing just your mission-critical applications is no longer an option. Organizations have to find a way to test all applications (both the ones they build or buy) quickly to truly manage risk from this exposed layer of their infrastructure. Leveraging automation to achieve scale and applying multiple testing techniques is the key to success,” said Sam King, SVP, Product Marketing, Veracode.

To download the whitepaper, please visit: http://info.veracode.com/Quocirca_Outsourcing_Software_security.html

Coverity, Inc., the development testing leader, announced today that Drager Medical GmbH, a leading international provider of medical devices and technology, has successfully deployed Coverity® Static Analysis as its development testing solution. Software code testing via static analysis is an FDA recommended testing activity according to the FDA General Principles of Software Validation guidance. With Coverity Static Analysis, Drager Medical is enabled to find hard-to-spot yet critical software defects earlier in the software development lifecycle, as the code is being written, when it is easiest and least expensive to find and fix. Such testing helps ensure the quality of software code in a broad set of life-saving medical devices and thus helps Drager meet FDA guidelines for software verification.

Drager delivers critical equipment to global healthcare markets to enable emergency response, bring about faster patient recoveries, and allow hospitals to more affordably access cutting-edge medical treatments. Its guiding principle is “Technology for Life”, which means more than merely technical excellence. It also means assuming responsibility for the lives of those who use Drager products and depend on them. From medical ventilation systems and monitoring equipment to anesthesia workspaces and devices for neonatal care, Drager needs to ensure that the embedded software in its medical devices is of the highest quality and does not impact patient safety.

“Drager Medical creates technology that saves lives, and we continually strive to further improve the process of safeguarding the integrity of the medical devices that the healthcare industry relies on,” commented Florian Mösch, Senior Software Engineer at Drager Medical. “A combination of defects in medical devices could cause malfunctions that may lead to serious injury of patients. Coverity helps us identify and eliminate these defects more easily.”

“Development testing complements traditional quality assurance measures to help ensure the quality, safety and security of devices people use every day,” said Jennifer Johnson, VP of Marketing at Coverity. “We are excited to be part of Drager Medical’s development process to help them continue to bring innovative and high quality products to market.”

An ongoing problem with specialized platforms is the lack of support for unit testing. Developers are forced to compromise the quality of their tests or their build process in order to get anything working. Recently MonoTouch has made progress in this area, but Windows Phone and Mono for Android still lag behind.

Windows Phone 7 / Silverlight

For Windows Phone 7 there are two testing routes available to developers. The first is to hack the Silverlight unit testing framework so that it will run on a Windows Phone device. Many Silverlight developers are already familiar with this, as the unit testing framework itself is advertised as “experimental” and modifications are needed to support a non-trivial number of tests. Jeff Wilcox provided one such modification for unit testing Silverlight 3 and Windows Phone 7.0.

Pro: This offers more accurate tests than the other options.
Con: Cannot be included in the build process. No IDE support.

Christofer Löf went took a completely different route. Rather than trying to push a decent testing framework into Windows Phone, he pulled the code he wanted to test out of it. By using the Portable Library Tools to implement his models and view-models he was able to run the same code under a standard unit testing framework as well as the device. Unfortunately the Portable Library doesn’t support observable collections, necessitating the use of a “ListFactory” to provide the correct type.

Pro: Can be included as part of a build cycle. May be any standard unit test framework. IDE Integration.
Con: Limited API available through Portable Library Tools

A third method is to use separate projects that share the same source code. Ideally the code will be identical, but preprocessor directives can be used to smooth over most differences. This approach makes the most sense when you will are already planning on sharing the same code with MonoTouch or Mono for Android as they would need separate builds.

Pro: Can be included as part of a build cycle. May be any standard unit test framework. IDE Integration.
Con: Longer build times. Differences between the platforms may be problematic.

iOS / MonoTouch

MonoTouch recently gained an on-device unit testing framework. And unlike the Windows Phone version, this one is officially supported. The Touch.Unit framework is essentially just a test runner with some basic IDE support in MonoDevelop. At its core is NUnitLite, a subset of the respected NUnit framework tailored to fit on limited resource devices.

Pro: This offers more accurate tests than the other options.
Con: Cannot be included in the build process. No IDE support.

Prior to the release of Touch.Unit, developers would use separate projects that share the same source code much as we see for Windows Phone. But of course in this case they would target the full Mono runtime and NUnit instead of the Microsoft alternatives.

Pro: Can be included as part of a build cycle. IDE Integration.
Con: Longer build times. Differences between the platforms may be problematic.

Android / Mono for Android

Currently the only option for unit testing Mono for Android projects is the multiple-project option. Mono for Android is a less mature product than MonoTouch, but eventually we should see it getting a comparable testing framework

LDRA, the leader in standards compliance, automated software verification, source code analysis and test tools, has created LDRA Certification Services (LCS), a division devoted to helping customers develop certification-ready products. The LCS team includes Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Designated Engineering Representatives (DER) and safety engineering experts, who offer product certification solutions at a fixed price. They are able to offer this client-centered, risk-free approach, based on their vast experience.

The LCS team is also aligned with world-class product development and verification specialists, who use the LDRA tool suite and other tools to address critical project requirements at the highest design assurance levels. By guiding certification applicants through the compliance process, the LCS comprehensive solution provides company management confidence that their certification efforts are accurate, complete, and fully compliant.

Leading the LCS team is Todd R. White, a systems and equipment FAA DER with Level A authority on all aircraft systems and equipment for both software and airborne electronic hardware. Todd’s expertise is flanked by Marty Gasiorowski, a systems, safety, software and complex electronic hardware FAA DER, and Dr. Holly Hildreth, a safety engineer with expertise in a wide range of US and international standards, to provide certification expertise in DO-178/DO-278, DO-254, DO-297, IEC 61508, IEC 62304, ISO 26262, IEEE 1012:2004 and CENELEC EN 50128. The team is well known and highly regarded in the certification community, playing an instrumental role in crafting the RTCA DO-178C standard.

“Todd and his team have a stellar reputation in the certification community, earning recognition from certification authorities, government agencies and industry leaders alike,” confirmed Ian Hennell, LDRA Operations Director. “Their collective expertise and policy-making experience in all phases of software, hardware, system development, verification, configuration management and quality engineering assures certification applicants that industry standards will be interpreted and applied correctly.”

LDRA’s leading certification technology, developed over nearly 40 years of helping clients achieve certification readiness, provides a suite of tools fine-tuned to the needs of safety-critical markets. From requirements traceability to analysis, unit testing and validation, the LDRA tool suite supports certification objectives at all levels of design assurance. Widely-used certification templates and checklists establish standard-specific processes that allow applicants to meet management, development and verification objectives at a fixed price.

“LDRA has earned a strong reputation in the certification community by developing a suite of world-class certification tools that not only help certification applicants produce fully compliant products, but help them produce safe products, too. That is the goal. They have earned this reputation over many years of helping companies show compliance,” commented Todd R. White, FAA DER and LCS Team Lead. “It’s an honor to work in close affiliation with LDRA in this effort to empower companies with the expertise and resources needed to outline a correct plan of action that can then be carried out with confidence. Such an approach offers the most effective way to minimize certification risk and its associated cost.”

Hennell confirmed, “We look forward watching the LCS team, combined with the field-proven LDRA tool suite, aid certification applicants across industries as diverse as avionics, automotive, industrial and medical to adopt superior development processes and programming standards. With best-of-breed expertise and certification tools, companies will be brought to certification readiness using methodology that is guaranteed to reduce risk, time and development costs.”

The comprehensive LCS solution is complemented by a team of safety-critical software and electronic hardware development and verification specialists. This renowned team has over 10 years’ experience designing, building and/or testing products that meet the rigorous DO-254 criteria. Using the LDRA tool suite, this team has expanded its capabilities by bringing in top industry practitioners to develop and verify software in compliance with DO-178B/C and IEC 62304. All work is performed at a fixed price.

LCS verification and certification services can be applied across industry standards in various vertical markets. Certification services include: avionics (DO-178B/C), industrial safety (IEC 61508), automotive (ISO 26262), medical (IEC 62304), nuclear power (ieee 1012:2004), and transportation (CENELEC EN 50128) systems.

Todd R. White and other DO-178C Committee Leaders will be offering an LDRA-sponsored, 3-day training event on DO-178C entitled “Learn DO-178C from the People Who Wrote It!” on March 13–15 in Ontario, California. The training will focus on the recently published DO-178C, DO-278A, DO-248C, and Technology Supplements. Those interested in attending please visit: LearnDO-178C.com.

The full capabilities of the LDRA certifiable support packages will be demonstrated at Embedded World in Nurnberg, Germany from February 28 to March 1 in Hall 4-410. Come to the stand to see how a software project can achieve certifiable readiness through requirements traceability from requirements creation through development and validation for the certification standard you need.