LISA Features: RIA Testing
Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) are changing the way we deliver and use web-based applications. LISA already excels at conventional (or "Web 1.0 ") quality, by testing HTTP requests and responses against the web server. LISA's new RIA testing features enhance the quality coverage of rich browser-based enterprise applications. In a single environment, LISA tests span the implementation layers where data and business logic resides, and the new "Web 2.0 " oriented patterns of development are 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 to development is not an 'either-or' proposition, so testing shouldn't be bound to either approach. Since RIAs are becoming a common front end to SOA applications, iTKO now bakes quality into the lifecycle of these rich browser-based applications, both at the UI level, and where LISA always led, in testing the myriad of SOA and implementation layers that feed RIA apps with dynamic data and business logic.
New RIA Testing features of LISA include:
RIA approaches the way we are building web applications. The movement from web 1.0 to web 2.0 has not only the user experience become better, the application code running in the browser has 10 fold. Testing web 2.0 applications requires testing how the application is running in the browser where web 1.0 was testing http requests to the web server.
- RIA UI & DOM Simulation: LISA provides new support for asynchronous calls from a native browser (IE 6 or 7) within LISA, to the back end applications that feed them, with DOM level recording and validation of inbound and outbound data. Resulting test cases can also be staged "headlessly, " where transactions are conducted and validated without using the browser.
- AJAX, Applets, Swing, AWT: Ability to record and simulate user interaction, and then validate the behavior of these rich front-end components, both from a user point-and-click perspective, as well as the transactions and data that are input and displayed.
- RIA Performance: Measure the response time and functional integrity of the RIA under load, and on a scheduled basis over time. Monitor the application to pinpoint functional and response time problems in the front end, then extend these tests to underlying layers behind the RIA to find the root cause of bottlenecks and errors in the implementation.