Author: dawid

The Power of Automated Testing: Enhancing Testing Efficiency and Software Quality

Posted on by dawid

In the dynamic world of software development, automated testing has become an essential practice for ensuring high-quality applications and accelerating the software delivery process. This article explores the basics of automated testing, including its purpose and how it benefits testers and software developers in their daily jobs. We will also delve into various types of automated tests, such as functional tests, unit tests, integration tests, regression tests, and performance tests.

The Purpose of Automated Testing

Automated testing refers to the use of specialized tools and frameworks to execute predefined test cases or scripts, replicating user interactions and verifying expected outcomes. The primary purpose of automated testing is to streamline and optimize the testing process, enabling testers and developers to identify defects, ensure software reliability, and maintain a high level of quality. Let’s explore how automated testing benefits testers and software developers in their daily jobs:

Improved Testing Efficiency

Automated testing significantly improves testing efficiency by reducing the time and effort required to execute repetitive and time-consuming test cases. Testers can focus on more complex scenarios and exploratory testing, leading to better test coverage and higher-quality software. Automated tests can be executed at any time, allowing testers to run them overnight or during non-working hours, saving valuable time and accelerating the software development lifecycle.

Early Bug Detection and Rapid Feedback

Automated testing seamlessly integrates into the software development pipeline, enabling continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD). Test suites can be executed automatically after every code change, ensuring early bug detection and providing rapid feedback to developers. By catching issues early in the development process, automated testing enhances collaboration between testers and developers, promoting faster issue resolution and improved software quality.

Comprehensive Test Coverage

Automated testing enables testers to achieve comprehensive test coverage by executing a large number of test cases across various platforms, devices, and configurations. It allows for testing multiple scenarios, including positive and negative test cases, boundary values, and edge cases, ensuring robust coverage. With automated testing, testers can confidently assess the behavior of an application under different conditions, minimizing the risk of critical issues being missed.

Types of Automated Tests

Functional Tests

Functional tests validate the functional aspects of an application by testing individual functions, features, or user interactions. These tests verify that the application performs as expected and meets the specified requirements. By automating functional tests, testers can execute them repeatedly and consistently, ensuring that the software maintains the desired behavior across different iterations. Popular frameworks for functional testing include Selenium, Cypress, and TestComplete.

Unit Tests

Unit tests focus on testing individual units or components of an application in isolation. They verify the correctness of the smallest testable parts, such as functions or methods. Unit testing helps identify defects at an early stage, allowing developers to fix issues quickly and maintain code quality. By automating unit tests, developers can run them frequently, ensuring that changes or additions to the codebase do not introduce new defects. Popular unit testing frameworks include JUnit (Java), NUnit (.NET), PHPUnit(PHP), and PyTest (Python).

Integration Tests

Integration tests validate the interactions and collaboration between different components, modules, or systems within an application. These tests ensure that the integrated parts work harmoniously and exchange data correctly. Automation plays a vital role in integration testing, as it allows testers to simulate complex interactions and dependencies between components, ensuring a seamless integration process. Integration testing can be performed using tools like RestAssured, Postman, and SoapUI.

Regression Tests

Regression tests are performed to ensure that modifications or additions to an application do not unintentionally break existing functionality. These tests help identify regressions or unexpected behavior caused by changes in the codebase. Automating regression tests enables testers to execute a comprehensive suite of tests quickly, allowing them to verify the application’s stability and ensure that modifications do not introduce new defects. Regression testing can be performed using tools like Selenium, TestComplete, and Ranorex.

Performance Tests

Performance tests evaluate the responsiveness, scalability, and stability of an application under various load conditions. These tests assess the application’s performance, such as response times, resource usage, and throughput. Automating performance tests allows for the systematic and repeatable execution of test scenarios, facilitating the identification of performance bottlenecks and the optimization of application performance. Popular performance testing tools include JMeter, Gatling, and LoadRunner.

Conclusion

Automated testing is a fundamental practice that empowers testers and software developers to ensure high-quality software and accelerate the software development process. By leveraging automated testing, testing efficiency improves, early bug detection becomes possible, comprehensive test coverage is achieved, and performance issues are identified. Adopting automated testing as an integral part of the software development lifecycle not only enhances collaboration between testers and developers but also leads to faster issue resolution, improved software quality, and increased customer satisfaction. Embrace automated testing to unlock its full potential and reap its benefits in today’s fast-paced software development world.

Automated testing not only brings numerous technical benefits but also contributes to the job satisfaction of testers. By automating repetitive and mundane tasks, testers are relieved from the burden of manually executing the same tests repeatedly. This allows them to focus their expertise and creativity on more challenging and exploratory aspects of testing. With automated testing taking care of repetitive tasks, testers can derive greater job satisfaction by engaging in more meaningful and intellectually stimulating activities, such as test strategy development, test case design, and analyzing complex test scenarios. The ability to work on more valuable tasks not only enhances their professional growth but also promotes overall job satisfaction among testers, fostering a positive and rewarding work environment. testers implementing automated tests can also increase job satisfaction.

How to manage crontab tasks

Posted on by dawid

Cron is a powerful and widely used time-based job scheduler that operates on Unix-like operating systems. It allows users to schedule and automate a wide range of tasks, providing a convenient solution for various purposes. With Cron, you can set up recurring jobs to execute at specific times, intervals, or even complex patterns. This flexibility makes it a great tool for managing routine tasks, such as backups, automated tests, system monitoring, email notifications, and much more. By utilizing Cron’s scheduling capabilities, users can ensure timely and accurate execution of critical operations, enhancing productivity and reliability in their Unix-like environments.

Crontab is a command that lets you to manage list of tasks.

How to list crontab entries of current user

user@host:~$ crontab -l
# m h dom mon dow command
* 22 * * * /usr/local/bin/backup.sh

How to edit crontab

It will open a text editor and allows you to manually create or edit cron tasks.

user@host:~$ crontab -e

How to backup all crontab entries

user@host:~$ crontab -l > cron-backup.txt
user@host:~$ cat cron-backup.txt
# m h dom mon dow command
* 22 * * * /usr/local/bin/backup.sh 

How to remove all crontab entries

user@host:~$ crontab -r
user@host:~$ crontab -l
no crontab for user

How to install or restore crontab from file

This one is very useful if you want to install crontab during automated deployment process.

user@host:~$ crontab cron-backup.txt
user@host:~$ crontab -l
# m h dom mon dow command
* 22 * * * /usr/local/bin/backup.sh

How to redirect output of a task to a log file

Not always the process is successful. The below command ensures both standard output and error output will be logged to a file.

# m h dom mon dow command
* 22 * * * /usr/local/bin/backup.sh >> /home/user/logs/file.log 2>&1

Examples

Run task every minute.

# m h dom mon dow command
* * * * * /usr/local/bin/every-minute-task.sh

Run task every 5 minutes.

# m h dom mon dow command
*/5 * * * * /usr/local/bin/every-5-minutes-task.sh

Run task every 15 minutes.

# m h dom mon dow command
*/15 * * * * /usr/local/bin/every-15-minutes-task.sh

Run task every hour at minute 0.

# m h dom mon dow command
0 * * * * /usr/local/bin/every-hour-task.sh

Run task every hour at minute 30.

# m h dom mon dow command
30 * * * * /usr/local/bin/every-hour-task.sh

Run task every 4 hours at minute 0.

# m h dom mon dow command
0 */4 * * * /usr/local/bin/every-minute-task.sh

Run task once a day at midnight.

# m h dom mon dow command
0 0 * * * /usr/local/bin/every-day-task.sh

Run task twice a day at 10AM and 10PM.

# m h dom mon dow command
0 10,22 * * * /usr/local/bin/twice-a-day-task.sh

Run task at 8AM every day from Monday to Friday.

# m h dom mon dow command
0 8 * * 1-5 /usr/local/bin/week-days-task.sh

Run task at 8AM on the weekends.

# m h dom mon dow command
0 8 * * 6,0 /usr/local/bin/weekends-task.sh

Run task once a month at 8PM every 10th day of the month.

# m h dom mon dow command
0 20 10 * * /usr/local/bin/once-a-month-task.sh

Tools and resources