<Service virtualization in automation testing

Service Virtualization

Service virtualization allow the user to test the control system configuration without making any modifications to the configuration database and helps them complete their tests on the application under test (AUT). It is mainly used for testing APIs, Cloud Architectures, and Service Oriented Architecture based applications.

In this, Dev and QA teams can now work together on simulated environments. They simulate the behavior of components and the write test scripts and develop services parallelly which can lead to faster releases.

For Example: A financial organization has a unique combination of financial products. We have to put a lot of effort into finding specific customers with the set of products to ensure the test coverage. With a Service virtualization tool like ReadyAPI we can easily set up expected responses. We can easily configure “customers” with product mixes, edge case scenario responses, responses for negative tests, and one-off use case responses to ensure test coverage and quality.

Service Virtualization Benefits

Benefit 1: Reduce Dependencies & Headaches

Dependencies may come in two forms: First is an internal dependency and second is an external dependency. In first, we cannot proceed testing if a component is not fully developed. In second, a third-party component outside of your control may not be available yet or may have limited number of third-party calls. Service Virtualization can simulate specific components so that we are no longer dependent on these other components. Strong virtualization tools allow us to quickly spin up a service to interact and test with.

Benefit 2: Reduce Time to Market

Software Development Life Cycle involve in a lot of waiting process– an app developer has to wait for internal colleagues or a third-party to release API and an API developer has to wait for a fellow integrator release and after that a tester will wait for testing. By simulating components through virtualization, teams can move faster, work in parallelly and can lead to greater productivity.

Benefit 3: Increase Quality

In order to thoroughly evaluate an application, Virtualization allows us to very quickly spin up a service/API and conduct different tests such as: load tests, performance tests, and functional tests. These types of tests can be done early in the development lifecycle, and this in turn increases the productivity, reduces risk.

Benefit 4: Reduce Costs

Service virtualization reduces the costs which we give services charges to a third-party API, database or service. Secondly, it also reduces cost of infrastructure and operating expenses as less money is needed for accessing, recovering, and reusing.

Service Virtualization Tools

1) Parasoft Virtualize

Parasoft Virtualize is service virtualization software and it can create, deploy, & manage virtual test environments to help both dev and QA teams. It allows the executing of complex test scenarios.

Traits:

Simple design of complex test conditions 
Even non-technical team members who doesn’t have knowledge of internal code structure they can also use it easily

It helps with finding execution issues
This tool integrates with third-party DevOps tools such as Jenkins, Bamboo, Jira, TeamCity, or Azure DevOps

2) Traffic Parrot

Traffic Parrot is service virtualization and an API mocking tool. It simulates services and APIs by removing the problems from test data or the environment and allows you to test microservice.

Traits:

It fits and support many protocols i.e., HTTP(S), JMS, IBM MQ, File transfers, and gRPC

Traffic Parrot supports both manual testing and automation testing.
It is compatible with Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift, Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and Google Cloud.
Supports various Operating systems such as Windows, Linux, macOS etc.

3) Wiremock

WireMock is test system device for HTTP based API. It allows us to test any event, when an API doesn’t exist or if it isn’t complete. It supports the failure modes and validation of edge cases that the real API won’t reliably produce.

Traits:

Record and Playback tool.
It supports XML and JSON
Its flexible deployment allows us to run WireMock from within our JUnit test, Java application.

4) Mountebank

It is an open-source, multiprotocol tool that can execute multi-protocol tests. The codebase is Node JS.

Traits:

It aims to be fully cross-platform with native language buildings
SMTP, HTTP, TCP, and HTTPS can be tested by it
Easy to install and to get started

Service Virtualization vs Mocking

Mocks are emulation software components that are used by developers to emulate real software components for testing purposes. On the other hand, Service Virtualization can emulate the full implementation of the service and provides a more realistic, fully functioning simulated environment.

Mocking	Virtualization
Static implementation for specific situations	Full implementation of the services
State-less responses, do not have contextual information	State-ful, responses are aware of context
100% manual configuration	No configuration needed
No Re-use	Re-usable artifacts

Service Virtualization in DevOps

Service virtualization helps companies to achieve DevOps goals. DevOps provides a set of principles which enable development and operations teams to communicate more effectively. Deploying automation enables the organization to enjoy the benefits of continuous integration and continuous delivery, significantly enhancing both productivity and agility.

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Conclusion

Service virtualization overcomes the limitations of dependent systems and it helps the QA engineers to develop end-to-end tests in parallel with the development phase. It brings immense benefits with improved quality of the code and faster delivery. Service virtualization will help people to achieve various upcoming commitments and build remarkable results.

BugRaptors has set high standards for its customers and helps them obtain a maximum number of benefits of service virtualization testing services throughout their development and operational environments. We use the latest tools and methodologies for QA and digital testing for over a couple of years and do the following things for your project:

Eliminate the need for third-party systems for non-production use.
Maximize the use of test automation and ensures to provide high ROI.
Our API testing and Service Virtualization approach helps customers reduce costs and get quality for their products.
Allow enterprises to rapidly visualize and manage test environments to reduce cycle times and costs.
Utilize the best service virtualization tools and a wide variety of industry-specific accelerator kits.

Perform development and testing parallelly in real-time environments.
Our end-to-end virtualization service includes API load testing, 3rd party sandboxing & API performance testing, API integration testing, long-term automated testing, security testing, failure case testing, etc.
Use API virtualization to ensure that all of your integrations are stable and continuous while meeting the system’s requirements.

Ashima Sharma

Ashima is an ISTQB Certified QA Engineer associated with BugRaptors. She has expertise in web and mobile applications with the complete understanding of software Quality Assurance techniques and good knowledge of Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) and Software Test Life Cycle (STLC). She has an excellent knowledge and working experience with test case creation, test case execution, test designs, and test result Analysis. She is Self-motivated, pro-active, task-oriented, and good team player.

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