Every business has its own needs & demands, and hardly a business operates in a standalone manner. A variety of operations are associated with a business. For instance, an organization may use Salesforce CRM for customer relationship and sales management & Oracle HCM for human capital management. Here, integration testing plays a crucial role in ensuring seamless communication between different devices or applications. It is the second level of software testing and is indispensable for exposing defects during interaction between integrated components or units.
In this blog, we will understand what integration testing is, the key reasons to conduct it, and the best practices to overcome the associated complexities.
What Is Integration Testing?
It refers to the process in which a software application’s components, modules, and interface are tested in a combined group. The prime reason for this testing is to expose faults in the interaction between integrated units. This testing technique verifies the interactions and data exchange between different software components.
For example, Shopify is used as an eCommerce platform, and Oracle NetSuite ERP is used for inventory management. So, whenever an order is placed through Shopify, inventory in the NetSuite should also get updated. Here, integration testing becomes crucial to test the data sync between them.
Key Reasons to Conduct Integration Testing
- Organizations rely on different applications or software for a variety of applications to carry out different operations. Therefore, integration testing becomes crucial to analyze or uncover the scope of compatibility between different systems.
- As applications are often integrated with APIs, integration testing ensures that the data accepted and the response generated by the API is correct or not.
- Sometimes, exceptions (unexpected events) may occur that can disrupt the normal flow, and it can occur due to factors like hardware failure, software bugs, and invalid user input. Integration testing helps ensure that the system can handle expeditions predictably and consistently.
General Tips to Write Integration Tests
- Identify the module or component that needs to be tested together.
- For each input and output, determine the input and desired output for every component or application
- Run integration tests as part of the CI/CD process
Complexities Associated With Integration Testing
Testing can become a challenging task when two different systems are tested simultaneously. So, the right integration testing tool should support multiple platforms and facilitate clear visibility between two different systems. Fortunately, Opkey is a no code test automation tool that thrives with integration testing by leveraging new-age technology, like AI and ML.
A test automation tool is an essential requirement to conduct continuous integration testing. However, development teams primarily use code-based or open-source tools that cannot be easily operated and require intensive programming or coding knowledge.
Robust reporting capabilities are crucial to streamline the integration testing process, as most software development practices require consistent and quick feedback. However, the QA team depends primarily on open-source tools that lag in providing quicker feedback, leading to delays that can affect the system’s quality. Furthermore, the testing matrices also degraded due to a lack of real-time dashboards.
Testing becomes more challenging when the product starts to grow. As a result, the team becomes more focused on maintenance rather than building the test cases. Hence, the scope of testing gets minimized.
Overcome the Integration Testing Complexities With These Solutions
- Use an end-to-end platform that supports a range of technology stacks, including web, app, API, legacy, desktop, and mobile. It enables QA team members to validate critical integration points to keep business risks at bay.
- Use a platform that can provide end-to-end solutions, ranging from app, web, API, mobile, and desktop. Due to this, the QA team can focus on validating the integration points and keep the risk at the minimum possible extent.
- End-to-end support can be beneficial as it eliminates the requirement of maintaining the testing platform for different applications, making it relatively cost-effective for businesses.
- Choose the best integration tool to automatically identify and correct affected test scripts, optimizing the test maintenance. Furthermore, select the platform that enables high-risk critical module testing initially.
- Going with a platform that can permit the running of test cases in parallel enhances the testing speed.
Concluding Remarks!
Integration testing is crucial for businesses to ensure robust communication between modules or systems. Proper strategy and the right platform are pivotal to getting the maximum benefits of integration testing. Opkey is a renowned no code test automation tool leveraging the integration testing process through its vital technical features, such as self-healing scripts, test-case builder, and a pre-built library of more than 30,000 cases. Furthermore, the drag-and-drop interface enables the business users to participate in the integration testing process. Its testing tool mines the process logs to immediately recognize the tests and identify the gaps in coverage. Also, Opkey works seamlessly within your organization with its dozens of pre-built connectors and integrations. Opkey empowers teams to create complex, cross-app tests without coding, complex set-up, or fine print. If you want to streamline your testing process, Opkey is the all-one solution for orgaations. For more information, visit the website.
