IT systems testing *

Testing everything

213,04

Rating

ArticlesPostsNewsAuthors

mischmasch Aug 21 2021 at 12:11

New features of the hybrid monitoring AIOps system Monq

10 min

1.7K

Gals Software corporate blogIT Infrastructure * System administration * SoftwareIT systems testing *

In one of the previous articles, I’ve already written about the hybrid monitoring system from Monq. Almost two years have passed since then. During this time, Monq has significantly updated its functionality, a free version has appeared, and the licensing policy has been updated. If monitoring systems in your company start to get out of control, and their number rushes somewhere beyond the horizon, we suggest you take a look at Monq to take control of monitoring. Welcome under the cut.

NuGan Jun 3 2021 at 09:27

Application performance monitoring and health metrics without APM

8 min

2.8K

IT systems testing * System administration * IT Infrastructure * Web services testing * Service Desk *

Translation

I have already written about AIOps and machine learning methods in working with IT incidents, about hybrid umbrella monitoring and various approaches to service management. Now I would like to share a very specific algorithm, how one can quickly get information about functioning conditions of business applications using synthetic monitoring and how to build, on this basis, the health metric of business services at no special cost. The story is based on a real case of implementing the algorithm into the IT system of one of the airlines.

Currently there are many APM systems, such as Appdynamics, Dynatrace, and others, having a UX control module inside that uses synthetic checks. And if the task is to learn about failures quicker than customers, I will tell you why all these APM systems are not needed. Also, nowadays health metrics are a fashionable feature of APM and I will show how you can build them without APM.

silaev_ka Feb 26 2021 at 17:18

Run MongoDB Atlas locally for testing

5 min

2.4K

IT systems testing * Java * MongoDB * Programming *

What happens to your MongoDB replica set when it comes to failures like network partitioning, restarting, reconfiguration of the existing topology, etc.? This question is especially important these days because of the popularity gained by the multi-cloud model where chances of these scenarios are quite realistic.

However, is there a solution, preferably a free one, for testing such cases that would obviate the need of writing manual scripts and poring over the official documentation? As software developers, we would be better off preparing our applications in advance to survive these failures.

ultral Oct 9 2020 at 09:11

Agreements as Code: how to refactor IaC and save your sanity?

9 min

1.8K

Systems engineering * IT systems testing * IT Infrastructure * DevOps * Designing and refactoring *

Before we start, I'd like to get on the same page with you. So, could you please answer? How much time will it take to:

Create a new environment for testing?
Update java & OS in the docker image?
Grant access to servers?

There is the spoiler from the TechLeadConf. Unfortunately, it's in Russian

It will take longer than you expect. I will explain why.

itmo Jun 23 2020 at 19:16

Meet Hamstand: a smart mobile testing hub

5 min

1.8K

ITMO corporate blogOffices of IT companiesDevelopment of mobile applications * IT systems testing * Mobile applications testing *

The ITMO Accelerator continues to empower entrepreneurs. We’ve already covered some of its most successful graduates — the Laeneco staethoscope and the GoROBO robotics club. Today we’ll be discussing Hamstand — a modular hub that simplifies the process of mobile app testing. Let’s talk about how it came to be, why it’s a welcome addition to many developers’ toolkits, and what awaits the project in the near future.

ultral May 3 2020 at 13:33

How to test Ansible and don't go nuts

10 min

4.3K

DevOps * IT Infrastructure * IT systems testing * System administration * Systems engineering *

It is the translation of my speech at DevOps-40 2020-03-18:

After the second commit, each code becomes legacy. It happens because the original ideas do not meet actual requirements for the system. It is not bad or good thing. It is the nature of infrastructure & agreements between people. Refactoring should align requirements & actual state. Let me call it Infrastructure as Code refactoring.

xyli0o Apr 20 2020 at 17:14

About integration tests

2 min

2.4K

IT systems testing * JavaScript *

[Previously] I was talking about combinatorial complexity of integration tests in multicomponent systems, so let me remind. Let's build a simple system with only 3 components inside. It can be three independent modules and we want to provide some communication between them (message passing good enough for the purpose of the example) So we have 3! = 6 possible configuration to test. Before going deeper lets see how Quicksort fights a combinatorial complexity.

[Quicksort] reduces complexity on each pass of a given input. So far so good. Let's imagine example with 10 elements. How many possible permutations do we have? you are right: 10! ~= 3,6 * 10^6. So on the first pass the complexity will be reduced: 5!*5!, on the next pass it will be further reduced till 2!*3!*2!*3!… after logn times we will have 1!*1!*1!...1! = 1 possible position, and our given input is sorted. Gotcha. (attentive reader can mention about worst case scenario of quicksort, but lets discuss it someday) Coming back to our example…

xyli0o Apr 12 2020 at 11:02

About Testing

2 min

1.7K

JavaScript * IT systems testing *

Let's talk about Testing, about unit and integration tests which everyone here, i hope, likes to write.

Despite of lots of benefits, tests have two fundamental problems: there is no architecture at all (quality), nobody knows what is the meaning of the quantity.

Tests have a cost. Lets imagine dialog between manager and developer:
— John, how many hours does it take to implement?
— Approximately one week: 1,5 day for task and 3,5 days to write tests

So why people write tests? Let's try to build a mental model: we delivered a component, our beta testers found a bug, we wrote tests scenario. So, next time we try to deliver the same component, we already know about bad scenario and have automation to check it. So far so good. Next, we are trying to predict future bugs by writing lot's of tests and cover bad scenarios. Next, we deliver better components, users are happy. Profit. (Despite of all pros, the solution is not scalable — with every new component we will face a reality).

sobolevn Mar 5 2020 at 15:45

Conditional coverage

4 min

2.6K

Web services testing * IT systems testing * Website development * Python *

Cover image

Recently I had to add python3.8 for our Python linter (the strictest one in existence): wemake-python-styleguide. And during this straight-forward (at first look) task, I have found several problems with test coverage that were not solved in Python community at all.

Let's dig into it.

phillennium Mar 3 2020 at 10:10

What does «clean code» mean in 2020?

9 min

7.5K

JUG Ru Group corporate blog.NET * JavaScript * Perfect code * IT systems testing *

^{«Clean Code» and a clean cat}

There is nothing developers enjoy better than arguing about clean code: Dan Abramov, for example, has recently fueled the hype with his blog post, «Goodbye, Clean Code».

However, “clean code” per se doesn’t even have a clear definition. The main book on the subject is Clean Code, where Robert «Uncle Bob» Martin states that there are perhaps as many definitions as there are programmers. But he doesn’t walk away from the fact with a conclusion that there’s no reason to discuss clean code, rather — compare several definitions and highlight general ideas. Therefore he cites the views of several outstanding programmers on what clean code is.

So we have also become interested in what people in 2020 think of clean code. Have the views changed since the publication of the book? Do opinions vary in different IT fields (maybe backend developers perceive the idea of clean code differently from testers)?

This spring, Uncle Bob comes to St. Petersburg to give talks at our three conferences: they are about .NET development, testing and JavaScript. Therefore, we’ve asked speakers from each of those conferences to share their opinion on clean code so we could compare the opinions of the industry experts in 2020.

We've already published the results in Russian, and here's the English version. Since the topic is known to provoke discussions, feel free to give your own definition or argue about those already given!

UPD: When we posted this article, Uncle Bob had our conferences in his schedule. Unfortunately, the situation has changed. We updated this post on March 12, to avoid any misunderstanding.

+10

Okhomiak Feb 26 2020 at 22:11

Are my open-source libraries vulnerable? (2 min reading to make your life more secure)

2 min

3.1K

Mobile applications testing * Web services testing * IT systems testing * Information Security * DevOps *

The explosion of open source and issues related to it

The amount of open source or other third party code used in a software project is estimated as 60-90% of a codebase. Components, such as libraries, frameworks, and other software modules, almost always run with full privileges. If a vulnerable component is exploited, such an attack can facilitate serious data loss or server takeover. Applications using components with known vulnerabilities may undermine application defences and enable a range of possible attacks and impacts.

Conclusion: even if you perform constant security code reviews, you still might be vulnerable because of third-party components.

Some have tried to do this manually, but the sheer amount of work and data is growing and is time consuming, difficult, and error prone to manage. It would require several full time employees and skilled security analysts to constantly monitor all sources to stay on top.

azyryanov13 Jan 14 2020 at 05:59

V&V not for vendetta

13 min

950

Arcadia corporate blogIT systems testing * Web services testing *

Over the past six years, I have worked on developing and acceptance testing of the applications for conducting and supporting clinical trials. Applications of various sizes and complexity, big data, a huge number of visualizations and views, data warehousing, ETL, etc. The products are used by doctors, clinical trials management and people who are involved in the control and monitoring of research.

For the applications that have or can have a direct impact on the life and health of patients, a formal acceptance testing process is required. Acceptance test results along with the rest of the documentation package are submitted for audit to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration, USA). The FDA authorizes the use of the application as a tool for monitoring and conducting clinical trials. In total, my team has developed, tested and sent to the production more than thirty applications. In this article, I will briefly talk about acceptance testing and improvement of tools used for it.

Note: I do not pretend to be the ultimate truth and completely understand that most of what I write about is a Captain Obvious monologue. But I hope that the described can be useful to both the entry level and the teams that encounter this in everyday work, or at least it may make happy those who have simpler processes.

ultral Sep 12 2019 at 13:05

Lessons learned from testing Over 200,000 lines of Infrastructure Code

11 min

3.6K

IT systems testing * IT Infrastructure * DevOps * Configuring Linux *

IaC (Infrastructure as Code) is a modern approach and I believe that infrastructure is code. It means that we should use the same philosophy for infrastructure as for software development. If we are talking that infrastructure is code, then we should reuse practices from development for infrastructure, i.e. unit testing, pair programming, code review. Please, keep in mind this idea while reading the article.

Russian Version

Andrey2008 Sep 12 2019 at 11:23

Handling Objections: Static Analysis Will Take up Part of Working Time

5 min

1.1K

PVS-Studio corporate blogProgramming * IT systems testing * Development Management *

Talking to people at conferences and in comments to articles, we face the following objection: static analysis reduces the time to detect errors, but takes up programmers' time, which negates the benefits of using it and even slows down the development process. Let's get this objection straightened out and try to show that it's groundless.

+28

ValeryKomarov Sep 11 2019 at 07:04

Configuration of the Warnings Next Generation plugin for integration with PVS-Studio

3 min

1.8K

PVS-Studio corporate blogIT systems testing * IT Infrastructure * Development Management * DevOps *

The PVS-Studio 7.04 release coincided with the release of the Warnings Next Generation 6.0.0 plugin for Jenkins. Right in this release Warnings NG Plugin added support of the PVS-Studio static code analyzer. This plugin visualizes data related to compiler warnings or other analysis tools in Jenkins. This article will cover in detail how to install and configure this plugin to use it with PVS-Studio, and will describe most of its features.

+29

captainkoffski Sep 3 2019 at 09:21

Testing SQL Server code with tSQLt

20 min

2.9K

Arcadia corporate blogMicrosoft SQL Server * SQL * IT systems testing * Web services testing *

FYI: this article is an expanded version of my talk at SQA Days #25.

Based on my experience with colleagues, I can state: DB code testing is not a widely spread practice. This can be potentially dangerous. DB logic is written by human beings just like all other «usual» code. So, there can be failures which can cause negative consequences for a product, business or users. Whether these are stored procedures helping backend or it is ETL modifying data in a warehouse — there is always a risk and testing helps to decrease it. I want to tell you what tSQLt is and how it helps us to test DB code.

ThatAnnoyingCatAt4am Aug 29 2019 at 05:15

Escaping the Thicket of Tests: Building a Shortcut from a Fixture to an Assertion

15 min

1.7K

2ГИС corporate blogScala * Programming * IT systems testing * Functional Programming *

In this article, I would like to propose an alternative to the traditional test design style using functional programming concepts in Scala. This approach was inspired by many months of pain from maintaining dozens of failing tests and a burning desire to make them more straightforward and more comprehensible.

Even though the code is in Scala, the proposed ideas are appropriate for developers and QA engineers who use languages supporting functional programming. You can find a Github link with the full solution and an example at the end of the article.

blondnika Aug 21 2019 at 10:46

How to Make Emails and Not Mess Up: Practical Tips

23 min

4.3K

VK corporate blogWeb services testing * IT systems testing * Spamming and anti-spammingEmail layout *

Tutorial

A developer, who first encountered generating emails, has almost no chance to write an application, that will do it correctly. Around 40% of emails, generated by corporate applications, are violating some form of standard, and due to this, there are problems with delivery and display. There are reasons for this: emails are technically more difficult than the web, and operating emails is regulated by a few hundred standards, as well as an uncountable number of generally accepted (and not as much) practices, whereas the email clients are more varied and unpredictable than browsers. Testing may significantly improve the situation, but materials that are dedicated to testing the email system, are practically non-existent.

Mail.ru regularly interacts with its users by email. In our projects, all the components responsible for generating emails and even individual mailings, are subject to mandatory testing. In this article, we will share our experience (learning from our mistakes).

+37

kashtan404 Jun 5 2019 at 11:00

Moto. Mock AWS

3 min

Amazon Web Services * DevOps * Systems engineering * IT systems testing *

Testing is an important part of the development process. And sometimes developers need to run tests locally, before committing changes.

If your application uses Amazon Web Services, python library moto is the perfect thing for that.

aarner May 31 2019 at 13:27

Open source tool for intent-based search quality validation

2 min

1.1K

Search engine optimization * Development for e-commerce * IT systems testing *

No matter how cool your search solution is, without a reliable way of testing it you will not be able to do any improvement without breaking something valuable.

Even a tiny increase in overall search result quality might have a noticeable effect on conversion rate. Naturally, you can use exit-rate to judge if your search needs improvements and do required adjustments, but will you be able to make sure those changes are safe? What if improved relevancy for a specific category breaks search for several other categories?

Moreover, high exit-rate means no matter what you are going to do, the problem has taken place, so dozens of customers already didn’t manage to find what they were up to. Basically, the only way to proceed is to have a reliable search quality validation approach.