STARWEST 2024 - Test Automation

The DevOps movement is here. Companies across many industries are breaking down siloed IT departments and federating them into product development teams. Testing and its practices are at the heart of these changes. Traditionally, IT organizations have been staffed with mostly manual testers and a limited number of automation and performance engineers. To keep pace with development in the new “you build it, you own it” environment, testing teams and individuals must develop new technical skills and even embrace coding to stay relevant and add greater value to the business. DevOps really...

Web applications are often security critical or serve as front-ends for security critical applications, making web testing for vulnerabilities an essential part of software testing. Unfortunately, most software testers have not been taught how to identify web security issues while testing applications. Join Tom Stiehm as he shares what you need to know to security test web-based applications as part of your overall testing process. Learn about the most common web security vulnerabilities and how they are introduced into web code and exploited by hackers. Explore test techniques for...

Everybody gets frustrated when web apps are broken, but testing them thoroughly doesn’t need to be a chore. Playwright, a new open-source browser automation tool from Microsoft, makes testing web apps fun! Playwright offers a slew of nifty features like automatic waiting, mobile emulation, and network interception. Plus, with isolated browser contexts, Playwright tests can set up much faster than traditional Web UI tests. In this session, we will automate concise yet robust web app tests for a Kanban board web app with Playwright in TypeScript. You'll learn to test modern web apps of any...

In this talk, Dmitriy will delve into the transformative journey of integrating GenAI, into the core of his team's testing and development processes. This integration has not only enhanced their productivity by 15% but also yielded a 20% time saving and a significant cost reduction per test case. Want to know how? The session will explore his team's strategic implementation of GenAI, overcoming security challenges, leveraging diverse (LLMs), and the meticulous design of prompts that culminated in a prompt library. See how tailored extensions for the code editors and corporate chats...

Flaky tests pose a significant challenge in maintaining the reliability and efficiency of UI test suites. This talk delves into practical approaches for handling flaky tests, emphasizing the importance of responsibly removing or rewriting tests that consistently demonstrate flakiness. Join Zhanat to explore strategies such as implementing retries judiciously, utilizing monitoring tools for better oversight, and engaging in collaborative problem-solving sessions with iOS teams to address ambiguous failures. Through real-world examples, attendees will learn how to avoid common pitfalls that...

APIs are vital for modern software and tech. Why? Because apps are becoming more complex due to: rapid tech advancements, the need to integrate various components, and demand for sophisticated features. But more complexity means more risks of bugs, security flaws, and performance issues. To tackle these risks — API testing is crucial to ensure software reliability, security, and performance. Also, API testing helps developers save time. How? By finding issues early in development rather than fixing them in production. So…teams NEED to improve their API testing skills in today's fast tech...

This session explores the innovative ways to approach and revolutionize the art software testing by harnessing the full power of Google Cloud AI Platform. Utilizing AI-powered regression testing and natural language processing (NLP) capabilities, developers can automate mundane and repetitive tests while also analyzing software functionality and usability. Predictive analytics and custom machine learning models can be used to anticipate and identify potential issues, improve testing efficiency, and provide actionable insights. Applying reinforcement learning algorithms for GUI testing,...

In today's data-driven landscape, real-time data processing is the backbone of modern applications. Kafka, a distributed event streaming platform, has emerged as a critical component in building data-intensive systems. This presentation provides an in-depth exploration of Kafka and the essential practice of Kafka testing, offering attendees valuable insights into harnessing the power of real-time data streams while ensuring robust system reliability. Key topics to be covered are: an introduction to Kafka to understand Kafka's architecture and core components, importance of Kafka Testing,...

Using artificial intelligence to generate test code is a hybrid automation strategy that combines the best of both worlds. Tests can be created very quickly by almost anyone using AI, yet the tests are still planned by humans and maintainable by humans. With the right prompts, you can have AI construct traditional test code using open source testing tools that the world is already familiar with (Chai, Mocha, Cypress). As a result, you end up with structured code that is logical and easy to maintain without having to wonder what the AI is testing. In this session, Timothy will look at...

The barrier to entry for AI, specifically Large Language Models (LLM), is low and we can take advantage of them in our own tools, projects, and apps. In this session, we’ll build a simple app that uses an LLM which will help us cover: The steps to using AI in a program. LLM Basics. Pick the right LLM. Data Preparation. Evals and Testing. Insights and issues to consider. Tips that you can use as you build your own. Join us for a hands-on session that will help you build your first LLM app or level up your current project!

Feeling unheard in your fight for web accessibility? What if you could turn this struggle into a success story? Join this candid conversation on navigating the nuanced journey of integrating accessibility, even when convincing leadership seems like an uphill battle. Together, we'll reflect on Renata's initial stumbles, identify common pitfalls, and strategize to avoid them. Anticipate leadership concerns by understanding deeper motivations behind their resistance. Master the art of speaking their language and tailor your message to resonate with decision-makers. Empower your champions,...

Without training in software testing that includes formal methods such as equivalence class partitioning, boundary value analysis, decision tables, state diagrams, and others, an engineer, in good faith, will test the code intuitively until reaching “qualitative confidence” that testing is sufficient. The team at Trimble, Inc. provided training to engineers in a wide variety of formal testing methods so they could gain “quantitative confidence” that code has been tested sufficiently, by using methods known to achieve concrete coverage in requirements and code. Subsequently, Trimble...