February 2020 Summaries

The benefits of building in Storybook lie in its ability to allow developers to create UI components in isolation, making it easier to ensure ideal viewing conditions across all permutations of devices and software. This is achieved through visual testing, which focuses solely on what's being displayed to the viewer, allowing for a "step-by-step" approach to development that prioritizes end-user experience over traditional step-by-step approaches. By isolating UI components in Storybook, developers can test and record every possible state of each component separately, creating a library of UI components that can be easily maintained and updated. This approach also enables the use of visual regression testing tools like Storyshots, which take screenshots of UI components to ensure they match the desired structure across devices and screen sizes. By integrating with other tools and automating visual testing, Storybook provides a versatile and user-friendly environment for developers to build and ship applications.

Hugh McCamphill is a test engineering manager at ShopKeep, where he leads the company's internal tools and test improvement team. Testing is critical due to the demand for ShopKeep's point of sale solution provider services, which involve tracking inventory and sales for thousands of small businesses annually. With over 15 years of testing experience, Hugh has developed expertise in test automation across various languages, APIs, and tools. His presentation topic at SauceCon 2020 focuses on improving the speed of Appium tests to provide faster feedback, a goal achieved by running tests on every pull request to the app and utilizing other optimization techniques.

Sauce Connect and Sauce Visual Integration is now available for immediate use, simplifying the process of using Sauce Connect with Sauce Visual by integrating it into screener-runner and screener-storybook modules. The integration provides a secure tunnel connection between Sauce Labs virtual machines and local applications or behind corporate firewalls, improving the developer experience by automating configuration updates and reducing potential mistakes. To get started, update to the latest version of screener-runner or screener-storybook and add the "launchSauceConnect: true" configuration update in the screener.config.js file. This feature is only available when using Sauce Labs browsers.

Achieving test parallelization is crucial for efficient and effective testing. It enables users to test multiple configurations with reduced time requirements, making tests repeatable, measurable, and accurate. Nikolay Advolodkin explains the four essential ingredients necessary for successful test parallelization: atomic tests, autonomous tests, correctly managed data, and avoiding static keywords. By following these requirements, test parallelization can be achieved successfully, allowing developers to focus on improving their testing processes.

Parallel testing is a solution to speed up test execution time by running multiple tests simultaneously, allowing teams to decrease the time taken to run a test suite, increase coverage, and test continuously with more confidence. Nikolay Advolodkin introduces test parallelization using the Maven Surefire plugin, providing step-by-step guidance on implementing this best practice in production-ready code. By leveraging parallel testing, developers can achieve ultimate test automation results and improve their overall testing efficiency.

The quality platform is a group of quality components that help teams understand how well they are meeting their quality goals and where they can optimize. It provides a common structure for quality across the organization, with flexibility for customization, and potential to bring value instantly. The purpose of the quality platform is to assure more reliable engagements with audiences, build a culture that embraces quality at every stage, and drive continuous improvement and adaptation of quality practices. The platform consists of developer solutions, data insights, ambassadors, and turnkey solutions, which provide guidance, tools, and support required for quality excellence and efficiencies. These components help teams develop extendable and maintainable solutions, aggregate and analyze actionable insights, ensure accountability and ownership, and enable faster response times. The quality platform also defines best practices and standards, mentors and coaches, and provides pre-made solutions to enable functions or processes quickly. It transitions to model-based testing methodology, accelerates authoring of automated tests, and simulates user behaviors by monitoring critical paths within applications.

Sauce Labs offers a fast, secure automated app testing solution for mobile applications, utilizing open source frameworks such as Selenium and Appium. The platform supports over 800 different browser/OS combinations, allowing developers to test their apps in any user environment without writing separate test scripts. Sauce Connect provides secure TLS technology, enabling direct testing from CI/CD servers, while the cloud-based testing grid can accommodate large testing volumes and reduce testing time. With a free trial available, Sauce Labs empowers mobile app developers to ensure their products are bug-free and user-friendly.