UI automation Infatuation, State or Observability and More TGNS113

[00:00:00] Joe Colantonio How would you compare the difference between Cypress versus Safe Tests? Are you infatuated with UI Automation? And have you seen the latest report on the state of observability? Find out in this episode of the Test Guild News show for the week of March 10th. So grab your favorite cup of coffee or tea and let's do this.

[00:00:18] Before we get into it. If you haven't already, please make sure to subscribe to our Test Guild LinkedIn newsletter. You can find the link in the comment down below and never miss another episode.

[00:00:28] And speaking of LinkedIn, if you have a news item you'd like me to feature, let me know on LinkedIn, for example, the folks at Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference 2024 wanted me to remind you that their call for proposals, Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference 2024 is open until April 1st. This is a great organization and conference, and if you are serious about software quality and you want to share your expertise on a topic, make sure to submit your paper now, to want to know why this is one of the world's most respected conferences in the space. And tell them I sent you.

[00:01:05] So I mentioned Safe Test a few weeks ago on this show, so I was happy to stumble across this next post. And this by Gleb. He's an expert in Cypress and automation and development, and he's taking a deep dive into both Cypress and Safe Tests. And he offers a real detailed analysis on his blog Between Cypress versus Safe Test. So if you don't know, Safe Test is built on top of Playwright. And it was released by Netflix aiming to streamline component testing. And Gleb contrasts it with Cypress's component testing feature using concrete examples for a real thorough comparison. Also, Gleb's analysis offers several key aspects, including whether this framework should be considered a dev or production dependency, installation process, test speed, and developer experience. Gleb notes that Safe Test appears to be a production dependency, a point he disagrees with, and advocates for testing libraries to be dev dependencies, as is the case with Cypress. He also goes over installation ease, test execution speed, and overall developer experience are among some of the criteria that he uses to compare the two. Cypress, for instance, automates much of the setup process and doesn't require running the application for testing, unlike Safe Tests. He also points out that this, along with the faster test execution and seamless integration into the developer's workflow, positions Cypress as a highly efficient tool for component testing. Also, Gleb touches on the support for Mocks and Spice and overrides in the ability to write tests easily in both frameworks. And despite the strengths of Safe Test, including its innovative approach to extracting components for testing, Cypress is highlighted for its interactive mode that really enhances test writing and debugging, and at the end, he concludes his analysis and Gleb leans towards Cypress for what he thinks is its developer-friendly approach and efficiency. And he does acknowledge the potential for Safe Tests, especially with Netflix backing. So if you want to take a deep dive and understand the comparison and see which one is best for you, definitely check out Gleb's article in the links down below.

[00:03:19] And speaking of Playwright, as you know, web overlays and pop-ups often disrupt automation tests. That's what this next article addresses. This article goes over this feature that enables seamless handling of web overlays, enhancing the reliability and efficiency of automated testing. And this post also delves into the practical application. A Playwright add a locator handler, which offers insights and how to effectively manage these web interruptions. So for developers and testers really looking to streamline the testing process and ensure a smoother testing experience or automation experience, mastering the use of locator handler with Playwright really can help you make your tests more reliable. And this advancement not only promotes and tackles the nuance of web pop-ups but also helps you to elevate the quality of your automation by making automated tests more robust and dependable using built-in features of a lot of these tools. So if you haven't tried the locator handler with Playwright, here's your opportunity to try. So right now.

[00:04:22] Joe Colantonio And while UI automation is awesome, as you can tell by the previous post, a lot of times it's not as reliable because you have all these other things going on, like pop-ups. So what do you do? Well, Alan Page revisits the subject of test automation in his new blog post titled the A Word Revisited. Check it out. And as I've been mentioned many times, I've been following Alan forever is actually featured in my Automation Awesomeness book on page 22, so definitely check this out as well. But, he goes over in his blog post, drawing from his extensive experience, Alan critiques the software industry's ongoing infatuation with UI automation. He highlights its limitations and often misplaced emphasis on automating user workflows. Instead of addressing testing challenges through code, and reflects on his own work including The ebook A word under the covers of Test Automation. Alan advocates for a shift towards developers taking a leading role in test automation. He argues this approach not only yields more robust and maintainable tests but also results in better design and more testable code. And Alan's insights underscore how test automation and the need for innovated testing solutions and approaches should really go beyond traditional UI automation to improve your software quality and development practices. I think this is a must-read, and you could check it out as well. Let me know your thoughts in the comments down below.

[00:05:50] Joe Colantonio In my trends for 2024, I mentioned how I think this is going to be the year of how observability or development for observability is going to be a big trend, and so I was excited to find this new report that goes into detail on different things as it applies to the state of observability. And this is the latest report by Dynatrace. And it surveyed over 1300 tech leaders and revealed that the average multi-cloud setup now spans 12 platforms and 88% of leaders say their tech stack complexity has increased in the past year. And this complexity, explosion is making it harder to deliver outstanding customer experiences, according to 87% of its respondents. The report also finds teams are drowning in data, with 86% of leaders saying that data volumes are too much for humans to manage, and organizations are using an average of ten different monitoring tools. Further compounding this complexity. And the report dives into a few things on how to overcome these challenges. For example, the report asserts that a mature AI and automation strategy leveraging a unified observability platform really is key. Already, 79% of organizations plan to adopt AIOps in the next 12 months to team multi-cloud complexity, and the report suggests moving beyond traditional AIOps to a more predictive, AI-driven analytics is needed to really drive innovation in the modern cloud era, especially for testers and developers. Another great report. Check it out. Let me know what you think.

[00:07:26] Joe Colantonio This next company just unveiled its latest advancement in security testing, and the offering is a tax service discovery. And it introduces scalable AI penetration testing. And it goes over how this enhancement aims to empower security teams, which often find themselves overwhelmed, to stay one step ahead of the rapidly evolving cybersecurity threats we find ourselves in. And what's really cool is this uses AI technology to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of penetration testing. And I took this really highlights how we're making that move towards how more and more companies are taking cyber threats more seriously, and how they're leveraging tools that are AI-powered to help them with the security testing as well.

[00:08:10] Joe Colantonio All right. As I was looking up security tools, and security testing, this next article came my way on my LinkedIn stream and it was posted by Monday posting to a post about OWASp Net Attacker. And this post was written by Harshleen, who talks about an automated pen testing tool called Net Tracker, which is an OWASp-developed automation penetration testing framework. It was developed with Python and Net attacker streamlines security testing phases such as information gathering, enumeration, scanning, and vulnerability assessment, and this tool stands out for its automation in discovering services, vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and generating detailed security posture reports. It's also open source and accessible on GitHub. Net attacker encourages contributions from security professionals and developers that really help to foster continuous improvement on it, and its compatibility with Python really enhances user flexibility and ease of operation. Additionally, Net attacker boosts a unique ability to bypass firewalls, IDs, and IPS, increasing its efficiency and uncovering hidden vulnerabilities. This is just another cool development and another cool tool coming away from the folks at OWASp. Definitely worthy to check out as well.

[00:09:30] Joe Colantonio All right, for links of everything value, we covered in this news episode, head over to links in the comment down below. And while you're there, make sure to subscribe to The Test Guild News Show newsletter so you never miss another episode. All right, so that's it for this episode of the Test Guild News Show. I'm Joe, my mission is to help you succeed in creating end-to-end full-stack pipeline automation awesomeness. As always, test everything, and keep the good. Cheers.