Oniyosys Cloud Testing: providing testing and quality assurance services for projects

Cloud computing is an internet based platform that renders various computing services like hardware, software and other computer related services remotely. Cloud computing is opening up new vistas of opportunity for testing. Cloud testing is the process of testing the performance, scalability and reliability of Web applications in a cloud computing environment.

Type of Testing in Cloud

The whole cloud testing is segmented into four main categories

1. Testing of the whole cloud: The cloud is viewed as a whole entity and based on its features testing is carried out. Cloud and SaaS vendors as well as end users are interested in carrying out this type of testing

2. Testing within a cloud: By checking each of its internal features, testing is carried out. Only cloud vendors can perform this type of testing

3. Testing across cloud: Testing is carried out on different types of cloud like private, public and hybrid clouds

4. SaaS testing in cloud: Functional and non-functional testing is carried out on the basis of application requirements

Cloud testing focuses on the core components like

Application: It covers testing of functions, end-to-end business workflows, data security, browser compatibility, etc.

Network: It includes testing various network bandwidths, protocols and successful transfer of data through networks.

Infrastructure: It covers disaster recovery test, backups, secure connection and storage policies. The infrastructure needs to be validated for regulatory compliances

Other Testing types in Cloud includes

• Performance
• Availability
• Compliance
• Security
• Scalability
• Multi-tenancy
• Live upgrade testing

Task performed in Cloud Testing:

Types of Cloud Testing	Task Performed
SaaS or Cloud oriented Testing:	This type of testing is usually performed by cloud or SaaS vendors. The primary objective is to assure the quality of the provided service functions offered in a cloud or a SaaS program. Testing performed in this environment is integration, functional, security, unit, system function validation and regression testing as well as performance and scalability evaluation.
Online based application testing on a cloud:	Online application vendors perform this testing that checks performance and functional testing of the cloud based services. When applications are connected with legacy systems, the quality of the connectivity between the legacy system and under test application on a cloud is validated.
Cloud based application testing over clouds:	To check the quality of a cloud-based application across different clouds this type of testing is performed.

Test cases for Cloud Testing

Test Scenarios	Test case
Performance Testing	Failure due to one user action on cloud should not affect other users performance            Manual or automatic scaling should not cause any disruption            On all types of devices the performance of the application should remain same            Overbooking at supplier end should not hamper the application performance
Security Testing	Only authorized customer should get access to data            Data must be encrypted well           Data must be deleted completely if it is not in use by client           Data should be accessible with insufficient encryption         Administration on suppliers end should not access the customers data           Check for various security settings like firewall, VPN, Anti-virus etc.
Functional Testing	Valid input should give the expected results             Service should integrate properly with other applications           System should display customer account type when successfully login to the cloud          When customer chose to switch to other service the running service should close automatically
Interoperability & Compatibility Testing	Validate the compatibility requirements of the application under test system           Check browser compatibility on cloud environment            Identify the defect that might arise while connecting to cloud          Any incomplete data on cloud should not be transferred           Verify that application works across different platform of cloud           Test application on in-house environment and then deploy it on cloud environment
Network Testing	Test protocol responsible for cloud connectivity          Check for data integrity while transferring data          Check for proper network connectivity           Check if packets are being dropped by firewall on either side
Load and Stress Testing	Check for services when multiple users access the cloud services            Identify the defect responsible for hardware or environment failure          Check whether system fails under increasing specific load          Check how system changes over time under a certain load

           

Best Practices:

1. Testing is a periodic activity and requires new environments to be set up for each project. Test labs in companies typically sit idle for longer periods, consuming capital, power and space. Approximately 50% to 70% of the technology infrastructure earmarked for testing is underutilized, according to both anecdotal and published reports.

2. Testing is considered an important but non business-critical activity. Moving testing to the cloud is seen as a safe bet because it doesn’t include sensitive corporate data and has minimal impact on the organization’s business-as-usual activities.

3. Applications are increasingly becoming dynamic, complex, distributed and component-based, creating a multiplicity of new challenges for testing teams. For instance, mobile and Web applications must be tested for multiple operating systems and updates, multiple browser platforms and versions, different types of hardware and a large number of concurrent users to understand their performance in real-time. The conventional approach of manually creating in-house testing environments that fully mirror these complexities and multiplicities consumes huge capital and resources.

At Oniyosys, we provide an end-to-end solution that transforms the way cloud testing is done and can help an organization boost its competitiveness by reducing the cost of testing without negatively impacting mission-critical production applications.

Oniyosys Big Data Testing: Serving Perfect Data Analytics Solutions

Big data is a collection of large datasets that cannot be processed using traditional computing techniques. Testing of these datasets involves various tools, techniques and frameworks to process. Big data relates to data creation, storage, retrieval and analysis that is remarkable in terms of volume, variety, and velocity. The Oniyosys Big Data Testing Services Solution offers end-to-end testing from data acquisition testing to data analytics testing.

Big Data Testing Strategy

Testing Big Data application is more a verification of its data processing rather than testing the individual features of the software product. When it comes to Big Data Testing, performance and functional testing are the key.

In Big data testing QA engineers verify the successful processing of terabytes of data using commodity cluster and other supportive components. It demands a high level of testing skills as the processing is very fast. Processing may be of three types

1. Batch

2. RealTime

3. Interactive

Along with this, data quality is also an important factor in big data testing. Before testing the application, it is necessary to check the quality of data and should be considered as a part of database testing. It involves checking various characteristics like conformity, accuracy, duplication, consistency, validity, data completeness, etc.

Testing Steps in verifying Big Data Applications

The following figure gives a high level overview of phases in Testing Big Data Applications

Step 1: Data Staging Validation

• The first step of bigdata testing, also referred as pre-Hadoop stage involves process validation. 
•  Data from various source like RDBMS, weblogs, social media, etc. should be validated to make sure that correct data is pulled into system
• Comparing source data with the data pushed into the Hadoop system to make sure they match 
• Verify the right data is extracted and loaded into the correct HDFS location 
• Tools like Talend, Datameer, can be used for data staging validation

Step 2: "MapReduce" Validation

The second step is a validation of "MapReduce". In this stage, the tester verifies the business logic validation on every node and then validating them after running against multiple nodes, ensuring that the -

• Map Reduce process works correctly 
• Data aggregation or segregation rules are implemented on the data
• Key value pairs are generated
• Validating the data after Map Reduce process

Step 3: Output Validation Phase

The final or third stage of Big Data testing is the output validation process. The output data files are generated and ready to be moved to an EDW (Enterprise Data Warehouse) or any other system based on the requirement.

Activities in third stage includes

• To check the transformation rules are correctly applied
• To check the data integrity and successful data load into the target system
• To check that there is no data corruption by comparing the target data with the HDFS file system data
• Architecture Testing

Hadoop processes very large volumes of data and is highly resource intensive. Hence, architectural testing is crucial to ensure success of your Big Data project. Poorly or improper designed system may lead to performance degradation, and the system could fail to meet the requirement. At least, Performance and Failover test services should be done in a Hadoop environment.

Tools used in Big Data Scenarios

NoSQL: CouchDB, DatabasesMongoDB, Cassandra, Redis, ZooKeeper, Hbase

MapReduce: Hadoop, Hive, Pig, Cascading, Oozie, Kafka, S4, MapR, Flume

Storage: S3, HDFS ( Hadoop Distributed File System)

Servers: Elastic, Heroku, Elastic, Google App Engine, EC2

Processing: R, Yahoo! Pipes, Mechanical Turk, BigSheets, Datameer

Challenges In Big Data Testing:

1.Huge Volume and Heterogeneity

Testing a huge volume of data is the biggest challenge in itself. A decade ago, a data pool of 10 million records was considered massive. Today, businesses work with few Petabytes or Exabytes data, extracted from various online and offline sources, to conduct their daily business. Testers are required to audit such voluminous data to ensure that they are a fit for business purposes. It is difficult to store and prepare test cases for such large data that is not consistent. Full-volume testing is impossible due to such a huge data size.

2. Understanding the Data

For the Big Datatesting strategy to be effective, testers need to continuously monitor and validate the 4Vs (basic characteristics) of Data – Volume, Variety, Velocity and Value. Understanding the data and its impact on the business is the real challenge faced by any Big Data tester. It is not easy to measure the testing efforts and strategy without proper knowledge of the nature of available data.

3. Dealing with Sentiments and Emotions

In a big-data system, unstructured data drawn from sources such as tweets, text documents and social media posts supplement a data feed. The biggest challenge faced by testers while dealing with unstructured data is the sentiment attached to it. For example, consumers tweet and discuss about a new product launched in the market. Testers need to capture their sentiments and transform them into insights for decision making and further business analysis.

4.Lack of Technical Expertise and Coordination

Technology is growing, and everyone is struggling to understand the algorithm of processing Big Data. Big Data testers need to understand the components of the Big Data ecosystem thoroughly. Today, testers understand that they have to think beyond the regular parameters of automated testing and manual testing. Big Data, with its unexpected format, can cause problems that automated test cases fail to understand. Creating automated test cases for such a Big Data pool requires expertise and coordination between team members. The testing team should coordinate with the development team and marketing team to understand data extraction from different resources, data filtering and pre and post processing algorithms. As there are a number of fully automated testing tools available in the market for Big Data validation, the tester has to possess the required skill-set inevitably and leverage Big Data technologies like Hadoop. It calls for a remarkable mind set shift for both testing teams within organizations as well as testers. Also, organizations need to be ready to invest in Big Data-specific training programs and to develop the Big Data test automation solutions.

At Oniyosys, we conduct detailed study of current and new data requirements and apply appropriate data acquisition, data migration and data integration testing strategies to ensure seamless integration for your Big Data Testing.