How Service Virtualization Improves Application Testing

If you are developing applications that connect to multiple microservices, software as a service (SaaS) APIs, legacy systems, and other third-party services, creating a robust test environment can be difficult. For example, suppose one of the APIs you’re validating is for a team-developed microservice.

Source: How Service Virtualization Improves Application Testing

In that case, you probably have devops features such as continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI / CD), infrastructure as code, and tools to create test datasets to enable the test environment for this service. However, even with these features, launching multiple test services can be costly if your team develops a large number of test services. Cloud native applications and microservices..

For third-party APIs, SaaS, or data streams, you may need to rely on the test infrastructure and capabilities of the service. These test environments should support the functionality of the production system, but may not have a complete dataset, and the load to support performance testing may violate terms of use or be costly. there is.

Service and API virtualization platforms aim to address these complexities by creating and simulating APIs and service endpoints. Instead of launching a test environment, the service virtualization platform acts as an endpoint for testing downstream applications and complex services, responding to requests and transactions for connected applications or services.

If you are using only a few APIs API mock It could be a good way to simulate an endpoint. Tools such as Mockito, JMock, WireMock are Java options.. However, if you have a large development team, a growing API, or a complex test dataset, you need a more scalable approach, such as service virtualization. In addition, if you are testing an app that processes credit cards, connects to bill payment services, or performs other complex transactions, the service virtualization platform provides validation for a wide range of user experiences and error scenarios. Will be possible.

We talked to Anna Ramadoss, a cloud engineer for financial services, about using a services virtualization platform. She states: “Service virtualization narrows the line between the main system and dependent systems as it becomes mainstream in the team. Updates are immediate and the delivery timeline is significantly shortened. As a result, the market It provides a well-crafted system with quick updates to, and reduces infrastructure needs and costs. “

How service virtualization enables shift left testing

Many organizations Shift-Leave their testing efforts To identify and resolve problems more quickly. But what if the test environment isn’t available for dependent services?

It’s natural for developers to avoid obstacles and obstacles to their engineering work. When developing an application, do developers have to wait for the API’s test infrastructure and features, or are they more likely to push this test until later in the development process? What’s even more problematic is that developers are forced to anticipate API behavior and resolve defects later in the development process, or worse, when defects are found in production.

Deploying a service virtualization platform and requiring service virtualization as a development standard has many advantages, especially for teams that require extensive testing capabilities for many APIs. Some of the benefits of using a service virtualization platform to support left shift testing are:

• Service virtualization is a natural extension of developing unit tests and initiating continuous testing of microservices. As part of the development process, the developer or quality assurance engineer must configure the endpoint with a service virtualization platform that simulates API responses. All developers can use these endpoints when building downstream apps and services.
• The service virtualization layer simplifies testing against multiple versions of the API by exposing endpoints for all supported versions. When testing against a new API version, developers can create tests that compare the latest version of the response with the older version. This type of A / B testing is especially useful for examining the downstream impact of new releases of machine learning models and predictive analytics.
• Service virtualization can be bundled with test datasets and used for transaction validation. After completing the test scenario, the developer can update the endpoint back to the original test dataset and repeat the test as needed.
• When operating in the cloud, the service virtualization platform can increase or decrease capacity based on test volume. As a result, the infrastructure can be extended to handle many developers performing concurrent or more robust performance tests.

By solving common test infrastructure challenges, teams can use the capabilities of the service virtualization platform to start new test scenarios early in the development process.

Platform providers suggest other use cases. For example SmartBear recommends that development teams use service virtualization It enhances security testing, automates different test scenarios for each message type, and supports iterative design. Parasoft recommends using service virtualization Test malformed data responses, simulate high latency, and verify responses to larger payloads. Broadcom service virtualization (Formally CA DevTest) advises development teams to chain tests into multi-step transactions and continuously validate business workflows.

Ramadoss advises the development team to determine test requirements to determine if API virtualization is sufficient or if more generalized service validation is required. For example, “service virtualization extends to TCP-based protocols to support services from credit bureaus such as TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian,” she says. Other protocols that may be required include databases (JDBC), middleware (JMS, Rabbit MQ, etc.), and mainframe protocols (CICS, etc.).

We talked to ShamiM Ahmed, DevOps CTO at Broadcom, about how DevOps organizations are using service virtualization. Virtual service environment.. He states: “As more organizations evolve into software system component architectures, there is a growing tendency to adopt microservices for development and containerize for deployment. To support this trend, virtual services are packaged and deployed in containers. You can instantiate it on demand and decommission it when you no longer need it. “

Service virtualization mechanism

The platform has different capabilities for creating service endpoints, and the general approach is:

• Linking or uploading API definitions in Web Services Description Language (WSDL), Web Application Description Language (WADL), or OpenAPI Specification (OAS) (Swagger)
• Recording transactions using a browser plugin or web server proxy
• Create the service definition manually. This is useful for downstream developers to test before the API is ready.

After creating an endpoint, the platform typically allows you to connect to a test data source, upload test data, or automate test data generation. Generating test data is very useful when verifying form and document uploads and when handling complex transactions.It’s also a safer way to create mock datasets Personally identifiable information (PII) Name, social security number, credit card number, etc.

With the existence of service endpoints, service virtualization platforms offer development kits, IDE plug-ins, and CI / CD tool plug-ins as different ways to interface and leverage them.Development teams targeting frequent deployments can improve Continuous testing practice By making more API endpoints available and expanding the breadth of test datasets.

Agile development teams using service virtualization platforms and mature continuous testing techniques should consider Some best practices, Creating negative test cases and training technical staff.A few Best practices for accelerating test cycles Includes definition of infrastructure requirements, protection of virtualization services, and regular system updates. Leaders also need to seek a concrete business Benefits such as getting new applications into production faster and reducing costs.

As more organizations modernize applications for the cloud, develop microservices, and integrate with many SaaS platforms, service virtualization will become an important platform feature to support robust and continuous testing. ..