iTKO LISA Ensures Quality where Web 2.0 and SOA Collide

September 14, 2007; 03:18 AM

DALLAS--iTKO, Inc., a leading provider of testing solutions for integration and SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) software, announces Web 2.0-ready features to enhance the quality coverage of enterprise applications. In a single application environment, LISA can test from the implementation layers where data business logic resides, to the new UI-oriented patterns of development becoming popular in rich browser-based application delivery models such as SaaS, AJAX and mashups.

“For the enterprise, choosing an SOA or a Web 2.0 approach is not an ‘either-or’ proposition, so testing shouldn’t be bound to either approach,” said Jim Mackay, CMO of iTKO. “Since Web 2.0 is becoming a common front end to SOA applications, iTKO is partnering with the customers and vendors who are leading the Web 2.0 movement. Now LISA can bake quality into the lifecycle of these rich browser-based applications, both at the UI level, and where we have always led, in testing the myriad of SOA and implementation layers that feed Web 2.0 apps with dynamic data and business logic.”

Testers and developers using LISA can now scriptlessly record both dynamic web elements such as Java applets, AJAX, and validate browser-specific actions, such as modal popups, file uploads and HTTPS security warnings. Then these functional tests can be expanded to validate workflows that span underlying service and implementation layers, for regression and load testing.

• Codeless UI Recording and Testing: Now testers can record and playback the entire Web UI testing workflow within a native browser emulation (IE 6, IE 7, Firefox, Netscape), and get sustainable test assets out of the process. LISA captures all user actions, from mouse clicks and data entry, to drag-and-drop functions in the web UI, and then provides several ways to leverage that test, and add dynamic data validation points without needing to re-script the test.
• Web 2.0-Ready Testing: LISA already tested Web applications at the HTTP level, simulating all of the transactions that occur between the web page and the web server. Now LISA supports direct testing of DTHML/Javascript, AJAX, custom Java Applet, Swing and AWT approaches to delivering UI functionality into the browser.
• Single Test Case, from Web 2.0 to SOA: Testers no longer need to use separately acquired or developed tools to test Web 2.0 interfaces, and all of the other implementation layers that feed them. Users can use LISA to model a single test case with steps that invoke and verify the behavior and performance of web UIs, JDBC database calls, WSDL/SOAP, an EJB server, and messaging layers on an ESB.
• Load Testing of Web 2.0: LISA also efficiently conducts multiple user testing of Web 2.0 browser applications. LISA uses a shared set of virtual users that can test any technology, leveraging pre-existing functional test cases, and dynamically staging them as load tests from a single instance of LISA. These same tests can then be extended to test every layer of the application at load. Upon staging, load tests can simulate an instance of the browser for each virtual user, or run “headlessly” to simulate only the transactions that occur between objects to conserve test system overhead.
• Asynchronous User Simulation: Unlike other tools that simulate variable user behavior and “think time” only by setting an arbitrary time frame for each successive test step, LISA allows testers to flexibly synchronize tests with the real-world conditions and timing produced by each step of the test case.

“To truly ensure quality, the entire development and QA team needs to be able to invoke at the browser, in all the meaningful ways actual end users will, and then verify the resulting actions and effects that occur in the middle-tier layers that feed that Web 2.0 application,” said Mackay. “Then, you need to immediately be able to run those functional Web 2.0 tests as load and performance tests using LISA Server, so business requirements can be continually verified across the entire system on a continuous basis.”

About iTKO

iTKO mitigates the business risk of IT quality issues, at the rate of business change. Their LISA SOA Testing solution provides Complete, Collaborative, and Continuous™ software quality for the entire development and delivery team. In a single test environment, iTKO LISA provides no-code unit, functional, regression, load and performance testing against websites, web services, Java, .NET, ESB, databases, and many more technologies. Founded in 1999, the Dallas-based company's customers include Citigroup, Sun, Capgemini, AMD, TIBCO and i2.