Even truly progressive companies that have modernised their Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) to stay pace with developing their complex products, struggle with complete test automation. To test at all levels (functional, integration, system, solution, load, performance, chaos, etc...) requires several test tools to do the complete job. No one testing framework in the industry provides the entire range of tools to test all levels. Different test tools are required in some verticals (like in Telecom) to functionally test all of the various protocols. Complicating things, even more, is the reality that organisations use tools from different sources - proprietary, open-source, homegrown. It is not uncommon for a Telecom vendor to use multiple tools to test their many product offerings. As an example, some customers in the Telecom vertical may use homegrown tools for testing an STP, open-source tools for testing of SIP, and/or proprietary tools for testing new 5G products.

The end result of this is a disjointed testing process as multiple test frameworks are used for one-off testing. We find in many cases; one-off testing is done with the more complex testing level scenarios like Performance testing and Chaos testing. This is the type of testing that is left to the end, or (even worse) not done at all. Another issue that can arise from one-off testing is that historical data may not be considered, eliminating valuable analytics data. This valuable Analytics data may be left out of the equation that helps Engineering leadership evaluate if the product is going in the desired direction.

Having all your tests and tools in one place gives valuable and necessary cohesiveness to the software testing process. Regal for Containers and Cloud (RCC) lends you the opportunity to integrate and orchestrate all testing tools needed to test your products.

​With RCC, there are two types of tools integration:

• one in which a well-defined REST API exists (primarily for proprietary and open-source tools)

• another in which a well-defined REST API does not exist (primarily for homegrown and some open-source tools)

The integration is swift if a well-defined REST API exists for a testing tool. The plugin that will be written will be simple to integrate with RCC. The REST API can be directly used to configure/fetch the stats (or) any other operations on the test tool.

The Telaverge team can get involved when a well-defined REST API does not exist (in the most likely instance of a homegrown tool). A sync up with the customer to understand more about the product is required. Similar operations can be performed without REST APIs by executing CLI/Linux commands and changing configuration files on the target server. It does require extra effort to capture these details in the plugin file, but it is a one-time effort. As a note, if a change is needed for the commands, the plugin will also need to be updated.

To summarise, it's simple to integrate and maintain if we have well-defined REST APIs. If we don't have the REST APIs, integration into Regal is easily possible with the help of a plugin where we capture all the details that are required to interact with the product.

Just as test tools can be integrated into Regal, the same is true for test cases. Many organisations have legacy test cases. Telaverge will integrate not only your test tools but also any test cases developed using the test tools, into RCC.

​Telaverge is committed to helping our customer base with these important integrations.