After exploring more of testing, and different strategies, I wondered about how testing could be automated. I came across a blog for Postman, on the TestProject website explaining Postman’s use in automated API testing. This blog is focused on providing a tutorial to understand how to use Postman to automate testing, rather than understanding various testing practices as seen in my previous blogs. The article’s title is Getting Started with using Postman for API Testing by Dave Westerveld

The blog first defines what an API is, as Postman is specifically for API testing. The blog defines API as Application Programming Interfaces. These APIs are extremely important in facilitating communication between software systems. Testing them is paramount for this reason, to assure they are working properly. This is where Postman comes in. It is an automated API tester, with a fully fledged application download. The article outlines the setup of Postman, and explains how to get it to cooperate with your system: First open the app of Postman that you’ve downloaded and then sign in. After this you are allowed to make API requests, the new button is then used and an API request is created. You name the request, and create a collection, where the requests are stored. Following setup, the article explains how to execute a Postman request. During setup, the article created the collection name JsonPlaceHolder, and then used that collection as the URL for the Request URL. After this, Postman will send the request for you. This can be used to compare results from different requests of an API and assure they are the same, although some manual input IS required in automated testing. However more intricate API Testing is shown in further tutorials with Postman.

This is a topic that interested me greatly, as I have been given many suggestions to look into API testing. Through the CS-443 course, I had been looking for more options to test and explore coding. Automated testing is something immensely interesting, and I appreciate the comprehensive guide provided by TestProject for Postman. This is of great value to me as I will continue to look through this guide and potentially post more blogs on this topic, as I explore automated testing. This first blog is mainly involving setup, and the basic concept of requests, but I look forward to further automated API testing using Postman, as these articles are very well structured.

Source:
https://blog.testproject.io/2020/07/15/getting-started-with-using-postman-for-api-testing/

From the blog CS@Worcester – WSU CS Blog: Ben Gelineau by Ben Gelineau and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

While looking for more articles online involving testing, I came across SauceLabs. This website is another compendium of blogs, similar to stickyminds mentioned in my last blog. The layout and articles on this website were an excellent selection of resources dedicated to testing and quality assurance. While running through many bugs in my most recent projects and assignments, I was searching for an article dedicated to programming bugs. I found an article that fit my needs, dedicated to the differences between severity and priority of bugs, which is something I had not previously considered. The article’s title is Understanding Bug Severity vs. Priority: Key Differences and Best Practices by Chris Tozzi

The article provides (as the title indicates) a breakdown of bug severity and bug priority in software testing. It explains that bug severity is primarily concerned with the impact of a bug on the system’s functionality. Issues are categorized into the following levels of severity: critical, major, minor, and trivial. Each of these have a different level of impact on the system. For example, critical bugs may cause system crashes, while trivial bugs have a small functionality and performance impact. Bug priority focuses on the order in which bugs should be addressed, considering various factors that will impact the job as well as the program, such as deadlines, or bugs that are caused by higher priority bugs. Bugs with high priority require immediate attention, and those with low priority can be addressed later as the program develops and is tested further. It is an extremely important skill to be able to identify the severity and priority of bugs throughout the system and its development, so as to facilitate a smoother and more efficient development cycle. The article also provides some examples, such as a critical severity bug that causes data loss. This bug would ALSO have high priority because it is causing a lot of damage to the system’s structure.The article offers very useful recommendations for bug reports such as: establishing clear classification guidelines for bugs (priority/severity levels), communicating efficiently within teams, or reassessing bug statuses frequently.

I chose this blog because of my most recent experience in my assignments and projects. I had found that many bugs relied on each other, and I had never previously taken the initiative to learn more about bugs. When working with a team in industry, I will now have an understanding of how bugs are classified, as well as how to manage bug reports. This is something I had very little experience with prior to this article, and I will make sure to put extra effort into bug reports in my own projects with peers. I will continue to look into articles about bugs, testing, and QA to further improve my knowledge.

Source:
https://saucelabs.com/resources/blog/bug-severity-vs-priority

From the blog CS@Worcester – WSU CS Blog: Ben Gelineau by Ben Gelineau and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

After getting through a couple weeks of my classes, and looking through blogs online about testing, I found the stickyminds blog. In my first week I was given setup tasks for CS-443 Software Quality Assurance and Testing, and one of those tasks was to discover blogs and podcasts related to the course content. I used this blog for my setup tasks, and found it a useful compendium of resources. While searching through stickyminds, I focused on the area around ‘new to testing’, and found a specific article about how to improve your skills as a performance tester quite interesting. The article’s title is How to Become a Better Performance Tester 101 by Jun Zhuang.

The blog begins with a small piece of advice based on segmenting code for testing. While some people might argue that you should test and optimize after large portions of the code are complete, this blog argues instead for doing performance testing while it is still incomplete. It is also advised to learn performance testing under someone who is very experienced in the topic, as many performance testers don’t understand or know which questions they should be asking. This is why shadowing is very important, as it allows a new performance tester to pick things up quicker, and gather an understanding of the tools used more effectively. Jun Zhuang discusses Agile software development teams that are commonly used in industry. He describes them as being used to handle performance testing responsibilities. These teams use strategies such as getting developers involved in capturing performance issues early, communication between teams and testers, and holding critical team meetings more frequently. They still face occasional struggles to meet deadlines when performance issues arise, but these teams are overall described as efficient and useful. The latter half of the blog explains the importance of performance testing, and why you should put this effort into doing it. By exploring these components like applications, or databases testers can better design tests and diagnose issues. The blog also shares some personal accounts of testers utilizing their knowledge in programming to speed up testing processes, by writing stubs and generating test data. It stresses the importance that individuals with diverse technological backgrounds, even if less experienced in performance testing, can bring valuable insights and problem-solving skills to the role.

I chose this blog because I am very interested in improving my skills at all times. When I discovered the Stickyminds blog, I was excited by the amount of information it presented. This blog on performance testing I discovered in the new to testing section, which has a lot of very useful articles to help you improve your skills. Even small pieces of advice and tactics can make the difference when it comes to coding and testing especially. A personal weakness with testing in my own projects I had, was that I was worried my code was not optimized enough, and what I learned through this blog is something I will apply to improving optimization, especially seeking out someone experienced to work with and improve my skills. 

Source:

https://www.stickyminds.com/article/how-become-better-performance-tester-101

From the blog CS@Worcester – WSU CS Blog: Ben Gelineau by Ben Gelineau and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.