Automated UI Testing for RIA and Web 2.0

User Interface (UI) testing is one of the most prevalent forms of software testing, however it is often approached from a manual "screen-level" testing perspective. Increased automation of UI testing can provide important time savings and productivity gains to any QA organization, allowing an increased focus on new functionality that needs to be validated.

However when it comes to rich browser-based application delivery models such as SaaS, portals and mashups, and the new UI technologies that support them, such as AJAX, Java Swing and many enterprise software UI frameworks (such as Oracle ADF), understanding the dynamic data that feeds today's "Web 2.0" types of applications becomes vital. In a single application environment, LISA can test these Rich Internet Application (RIA) interfaces, all the way through to the services, content and implementation layers that support them for complete test coverage.

For the enterprise today, RIAs are becoming a common front end UI to many consumer and business applications, and LISA provides a single environment to test and ensure quality across all the implementation layers where data and business logic resides. Key LISA UI test automation features include:

• Codeless UI Recording and Testing: Testers can record and playback the entire Web UI testing workflow within a native browser emulation (IE, Firefox, Safari, etc.), 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 supports direct testing of DTHML/Javascript, AJAX, Java Applet, Swing, Microsoft ActiveX, Oracle Apps and most commonly known approaches to delivering UI functionality into the browser, in addition to standard testing of HTTP-level traffic, validating and simulating all of the transactions that occur between the web page and the web server.
• Extend Test Cases from UI to Implementation: Testers no longer need to use separately acquired or developed tools to test the user 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 web UI behavior and performance, as well as validating database calls, SOAP messages and many more types of transactions.
• High-Performance UI Testing: LISA efficiently conducts high-performance user testing of RIA 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 high-capacity load tests. Test overhead is very low, with a typical CPU able to stage dozens of browser instances, Java apps or other simulators, and the load can be distributed across multiple machines in a local or remote computing network. 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.
• Synchronized 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 suites of tests with the real-world conditions and timing produced by each step of the test case.
• Virtual Service Environment: Use LISA Virtualize to capture and simulate the needed services and data required for a complete test bed, even if these dependencies are unavailable or incomplete. By using Virtual Services in conjunction with LISA's UI testing capabilities, teams get 24/7 access to all needed components and data, at a fraction of the cost of building or maintaining custom test environments.

To learn more about how LISA can help you automate and extend UI testing to deliver quality and agility for your application's most sophisticated user experiences contact us, or read more about LISA Virtualize, LISA Validate, LISA Test, and LISA Pathfinder.