Software application development testing is a minefield. In some senses it is a bit of a paradox or even a misnomer, if you accept that the very process of development itself involves an inherent level of testing and regressive analysis of existing code. Regardless, software testing vendors focused on both web and desktop application development continue to ply their wares producing a wide array of both commercial and open source tools.
So what's hot in testing today, who is making headlines and what are the key USPs that these vendors are using to try and engender our devotion to with their toolsets? Ask Parasoft, a company known for the automated nature of it testing products, and you'll get two words -- integration and collaboration.
The company's latest offering, the imaginatively named Parasoft "Test" tool, is all about teamwork. Complex heterogeneous applications need support from collaborative team-centric testing tools that integrate throughout the entire development lifecycle says Parasoft.
As the teamwork principle extends to multiple automated testing techniques being used in concert in order to release applications more rapidly, the company says that Parasoft Test also provides task management and peer code review capabilities that support any programming language.
"It's becoming quite common for developers to perform static analysis and unit testing on the code, deploy it locally, then want to immediately start sending messages to it and checking that it responds correctly," explained Adam Kolawa, Parasoft CEO. "This release really streamlines that workflow…plus it adds new levels of visibility. As an end-to-end test scenario executes, teams can not only monitor how the transaction passes through services, web interfaces, ESBs and databases, but also see which classes are covered and what runtime errors occur during execution. This end-to-end visibility is essential for determining whether complex transactions really work as expected, then for ensuring that they continue to function properly as the application evolves."
If you buy the Parasoft party line, then you may agree that increasingly iterative or Agile development practices require greater quality process diligence. If, in return, you agree that greater quality process diligence will lead to better commercial results for the business function that developers are working to support (which, in theory it does) then you may find yourself working with a testing platform like this one -- or at least one from any number of major vendors out there from Borland to HP and so on.
All Parasoft's new product releases now feature 64-bit support on Windows and Linux.
