Top > Webmaster > 2006 > February > 2006-02-14

Automated Software Testing

In todays world it seems that efficiency and cost effectiveness are key to successful businesses. In the software world this is most prominent prior to the release of a new software package. Testing software is tedious and time consuming, as programs are getting more complex and concise. Sheffield based companies, eLoki and Psydev, today joined forces to work on a revolutionary project charged with developing new technology to enable the automated testing of web services. "Test planning and execution is a necessary overhead in delivering reliable software systems", said Psydev Director Phil Nicholls, "and for any sizable system, rapidly becomes complex and time consuming.

eLoki and Psydev are collaborating on a tool which automates much of this process without compromising the test regime.? He concluded,?the approach we are pursuing offers significant cost savings whilst also reducing time to market." Even where open standards provide a blue print for software implementations, different vendors can build the software in different ways. This can sometimes mean that different systems don?t work together as expected.

The two companies, working on the EU 6th Framework TELCERT project, are initially focused on testing against e-learning technology specifications, such as those adopted in the e-GIF from the UK Government. "But this technology is not limited to e-learning", commented Kevin Riley, Director of eLoki, "indeed, the approach can be applied to any properly designed web-service based implementation". Their approach will allow automatic tests to be generated from the specification of the software - much as in traditional engineering. The generated tests are then used by other software developed in the project to automatically test candidate software