Bridging the gap with test automation tools
Today's testing teams are struggling to maintain product quality and control of product release cycles. Why?
- Devices and interoperability testing requirements are becoming increasingly complex.
- The labor and skill required to test each release is growing but headcount is not.
- Testing tools are not evolving at the same pace as tools used to design new products. (80 percent of testing is done manually.)
Spirent iTest® can help organizations effectively address these challenges. iTest enables testers, developers, and automation teams to automate testing practices at several key levels: process, asset sharing, and communication. So your team as well as others can directly contribute to your test automation initiative and maximize productivity throughout the workflow.
iTest enables QA organizations to achieve quality objectives and meet release dates without requiring late nights or sacrificing test coverage. A powerful testing tool, iTest automates critical testing processes to accelerate system and device testing throughout the QA organization.
iTest is applicable for a full range of testing scenarios, from a single device to a complex system incorporating hundreds of devices as well as test equipment and software systems. From the simplest router to the most advanced 4G technology, iTest automates testing without the need for scripting. Read more about iTest works.
Open Industry Standards
Spirent is a leading contributor to the development of industry standards that promote interoperability of commercial testing tools and test infrastructure through the Network Test Automation Forum (NTAF). iTest continues to be developed and enhanced by Spirent as a pluggable platform based on these open industry standards. We enable customers, partners, and other test equipment vendors with an open Software Development Kit (SDK) which they can use to automate virtually any device or software found in today’s lab environments.
Standard and optional modules support a wide range of session types:
- Command line tools, including telnet, SSH, HTTP, Serial Port and Tcl Shell
- GUI tools, including Web, Adobe Flash, Java Swing, and VNC
- Traffic Generators, including Spirent TestCenter, Spirent Avalanche, Ixia IxN2X, Ixia IxNetwork, Ixia IxLoad and Ixia IxOS
- Infrastructure and system test tools, including SOAP/REST Web Services and Vmware vSphere
A unified approach to testing
iTest is an integrated test authoring and execution solution built for testers, developers, and automation teams. It provides QA organizations with a unified approach for rapidly developing, automating, and maintaining test cases. With iTest, QA organizations can:
- Accelerate testing throughout the QA organization by reducing manual tasks
- Enable all QA team members to effectively contribute to automation efforts, regardless of skill level
- Automate testing by easily implementing and automating pass/fail criteria within tests
- Use virtualization technology to cut time to market and enable offline testing
- Improve collaboration across teams and between companies with a standardized communication platform
- Streamline testing by integrating automated processes with existing testing infrastructures
Looking for Fanfare?
Spirent acquired Fanfare, and the iTest product line, in February of 2011. To learn more about the acquisition, read the press release here.
Solutions for Test Engineers - Simplifying feature testing requirements
As a test engineer, you must be able to perform a wide array of tests-from feature testing to system testing-while under intense deadline pressure. But verifying the features, performance, and stability of new product releases can be complicated and time-consuming. Up to 80 percent of testing is done manually, including:
- Creating test plans
- Configuring and setting up devices or testbeds
- Executing steps
- Analyzing responses
- Creating reports (passed or defect)
iTest enables test engineers to automate core testing activities—and improve communication with developers and automation engineers. With iTest you gain a single solution for functional, performance, load, and stress testing of systems and equipment. Plus, the functionality you need to develop, document, execute, and automate sophisticated tests in a minimum amount of time.
Solutions for Automation Engineers - Building an automated regression solution
As an automation engineer, you are charged with creating automated test scripts using such languages as Tcl, Perl, or Python. Often you must automate the most challenging test cases and support the automation needs of other testers in your organization. Your day-to-day challenges include:
- Manually building and maintaining the shared test libraries, tools, and regression infrastructure
- Creating tests that can run in a "lights out" regression system
- Building robust, easily maintainable test cases
- Employing abstraction techniques to guard against minor device and software changes
- Providing assets, such as procedures and routines, for other testers to leverage
iTest is a commercially supported tool that enables regression testers to increase their contribution to automation. It enables you to run tests at night, as well as perform automatic reporting, parsing, and abstractions. iTest also provides easy script maintenance from release to release. iTest enables you to reduce the backlog of test cases to be automated, so you can focus on the more challenging aspects of test automation.
Solutions for Developers - Automating unit testing
As a developer of high-tech equipment, you know that fixing a problem early in the development cycle is far more cost-effective than having to address it in the field. Therefore you routinely encourage unit or feature testing before passing your code to the QA team. Yet, each testing cycle seems longer than the last because you must:
- Manually perform feature validation unit tests
- Manually conduct automation interoperability testing between features and/or devices
- Assemble a test suite to run for each bug fix or code check-in
- Use a manual build regression system to verify quality before going to QA
iTest helps developers deliver quality code to QA teams by enabling them to quickly create repeatable unit tests. And it allows both teams to easily share tests and test results to re-create and diagnose test failures. This results in earlier and faster defect resolution—and better quality code.
Spirent and IBM Rational are both industry leaders in their respective areas, and together they provide complementary solutions to organizations looking to implement end-to-end test optimization solutions for their infrastructures.
| IBM Rational |
Spirent iTest |
| Integrated lifecycle solution providing traceability from requirements to test plans to test results |
Rapid authoring of multi-device, heterogeneous system tests with iTest |
| Test planning and management with Rational Quality Manager |
System-level automated, script-less testing of networks, storage systems, servers, and virtual machines with iTest |
| GUI Test Automation with Rational Functional Tester |
Built on Eclipse, allowing easy extensibility and integration |
| Management of defects found in testing from information capture through to defect resolution |
|
Spirent provides two iTest integrations for IBM’s Rational suite of products.
IBM Rational Quality Manager integration
This integration includes a new iTest adapter for IBM Rational Quality Manager, which allows testers to seamlessly execute iTest tests cases from within IBM Rational Quality Manager.
IBM Rational Functional Tester integration
This integration provides a new iTest Session Type for IBM Rational Functional Tester, which enables testers to add full-featured Windows GUI tests to their environment by allowing capture and replay of IBM Rational Functional Tester from within iTest.
Both integrations have been certified as Ready for IBM Rational Software.
