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Automation Testing in a Microservices Architecture: Challenges and Solutions

 The architecture of a software product helps in ascertaining and analyzing the components that make up the software. The structure of the components and how they interact, communicate and coordinate with each other helps in deciding the level of quality a software product can attain. One of the popular architectural approaches is microservices architecture. Through this approach, the software is designed by taking into consideration the collaborative, distributed and independently deployable service components. Upon that, the platform of automation testing can also be used tactically in the microservices architecture. In this article, you will get to know the challenges of using automation testing in microservices architecture along with its relevant solutions.  

What is Microservices Architecture? 


Programs are simplified by Microservices architecture as they are divided into smaller, more manageable components. Specialized services are provided by microservices thereby focusing on a certain corporate requirement. Modularity and independence are provided by microservices, thereby enabling development that is autonomous, deployment and scalability without affecting others. Agility and flexibility are provided by microservices in contrast to traditional monolithic design.  

Through the strategic use of a microservices architecture platform, shorter development cycles, increased scalability and the possibility to use different technology for different services can be expected. A well-defined path to scalable, modular and efficient software development is offered by microservices architecture.    


 

Developing an automated testing process for a microservices architecture: 


The following are the steps required to develop a successful test automation process: 

1. The customer's expectations from test automation activities should be known by the team 

2. When a test strategy is being developed, quality goals need to be set up and thus tests need to be implemented 

3. The specific testing types need to be scrutinized so that the quality goals can be achieved  

4. The shift-left approach needs to be taken into perspective and thus the whole development and testing process needs to be adapted. 


 

Following are the challenges of incorporating automation testing in microservices architecture along with relevant solutions; 


1. Integration testing: When micro-services go through the integration testing process, the verification of  interactions takes place between heterogeneous modules that are represented by various services. Their interactions with external modules/services should also be verified so that the overall functioning is properly worked out. The verification of each endpoint should be done for business logic and should also be judged from a technical perspective. 


Solution: The shift-left testing approach should be used so that bugs can be caught early on in the testing process. Cloud based services such as AWS (Amazon Web Services) can be used for standardized  development.

 

 

2. Redundancies should be reduced: Multiple external libraries can be used by micro-service architecture, which is basically an eco-system of multiple services. The micro-services concept is based on decentralization, which, in turn, means that every service has its own libraries. When the plugging in of these services takes place, the cleaning of duplicate instances of libraries needs to be done.  


Solution: Periodical removal of redundant and unused libraries needs to take place and regression testing should be performed to make sure that there is nothing that has been broken. 


 

3. Issues related to contract testing: APIs play a crucial role in micro-service architecture. The exchange of overall workflow and data needs to be validated and is considered to be important to make sure that the whole system is working seamlessly. Different technologies can be used for developing different services by different teams and hence there might arise testing challenges while testing these communication protocols or service contracts. 


Solution: Standardized communication patterns with API endpoints must be provided so that communication of every micro-service with other micro-services takes place. 

      

 

Conclusion: If you are looking forward to implementing test automation for your specific project, then do get connected with a globally renowned software testing services company that will provide you with methodical testing solutions that are in line with your project specific requirements.  

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