Technology is growing exponentially and to be in the game, organisations have no choice but to be technologically enabled. Talking about ‘technology’ basically means creating solutions that are ‘faster, ‘convenient’ and ‘qualitative’. To keep up with the highly demanding technological dynamics, not only human resources need to be equipped with the contemporaneous developments of this industry but there is also a dire need of highly standardized processes in order to deliver the top-class results. That’s when the need of DevOps emerges. Right from the planning through delivery, the idea of introducing DevOps is to maintain the quality streak by a systematic collaboration of development and automation across the continuous delivery and continuous Integration. To make it simpler, there must be a convenient way to tackle the complicated scenarios without delays and for on time delivery. Hence, the introduction of Continuous integration tools makes it easier for the developers to streamline the development processes.
Continuous Integration methodology enables developers to provide immediate reporting whenever any defect is identified in the code so that immediate corrective action can be taken. It is an important part of DevOps that bis used to integrate various Devops stages. The testing process is also automated and the same is instantly reported to the user. There are innumerable Continuous Integration tools available in the market providing access to different unique features. These have open source as well as paid versions, depending upon the need of the user, the most preferred could be selected. Although all the continuous Integration tools are designed to perform the same basic functions but choosing the best suitable CI tool becomes important in the long run. Depending upon many factors like features, cost, ease of use, etc. more than one tools can also be chosen meeting varied needs and not just the single solution. Comparing the best continuous Integration tools that are available in the market, below is the list of 10 best and mostly used Continuous Integration tools which must not be ignored in 2023.
Continuous Integration Tools
1. Jenkins
Jenkins is a known and the most common Continuous Integration tool available today. Based on various comparisons, Jenkins tops the list. Jenkins is opensource continuous Integration server-based application that allows developers to build, automate and test any software project at a faster pace. It was originally a part of Hudson project started by Kohsuke Kawaguchi in the year 2004 but it was later on released by the name Jenkins in the year 2011. The tool has evolved over the years and has become the most reliable software delivery automation tool. The source code is in JAVA with few Groovy, Ruby and Antlr files. It has almost 1400 plugins to support the automation of the development tasks. Jenkins supports the entire software development life cycle right from building, testing, documenting and deploying. Jenkins comes with WAR file that allows easy installation of the tool which needs to be dropped into the JEE container and the setup can be run easily henceforth.
Key Features:
1. It is an open-source server for Continuous Integration tool
2. It is written in JAVA and comes with thousands of plugins that help in build, automation and deployment of any software project
3. It can be installed easily on any operating systems
4. User friendly interface that is easy to configure and with easy upgrades.
2. Buddy
Buddy is a web-based, self- hosted Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) tool also known as Buddy.Works.Buddy is a serious advancement as one of the trusted CI CD tools. It has an extremely friendly user-interface and is also the simplest tool to use for the web developers, designers and quality assurance teams. Git developers can use this tool for building, testing and deploying the websites and applications using Github, Bitbucket, GitLab codes.
Key Features:
1. Steps for launching containers, automating deployment, and setting up
monitoring can be easily customised
2. Build, Ship and Deploy as inbuilt stack feature
3. Can be deployed to any hosting and cloud service providers
4. Supports Grunt. Gulp, MongoDB, and MySQL
5. Real-time reports on progress, logs and history can be monitored
6. Docker based builds and tests.
3.TeamCity
Teamcity, first released in 2006 is a continuous Integration tool developed by JetBrains. It runs in Java environment and is used to build and deploy different projects. It supports integration with many cloud technologies like Microsoft Azure, VMWare, Amazon.
Key Features:
1. It is a free of cost Continuous Integration tool
2. Supports platforms like Java, .Net and Ruby
3. Allows easy integration with IDEs like Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, Visual studio
4. Allows code coverage, inspection and performs duplicates check and creates history
reports of any changes made
5. It supports running multiple builds and tests under different platforms and
environments.
4. Bamboo CI
Bamboo is another Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) software developed by Altassian. It is written in Java and supports other languages and technologies like CodeDeply, Ducker, Maven, Git, SVN, Mercurial, Ant, AWS, Amazon, etc. The tool performs automatic build, testing and deployments. Automation thus saves time and allows developers some extra time to focus on the strategic aspects of the product.
Key Features:
1. Bamboo can build, test and deploy multiple projects simultaneously and in case of any build failure, it provides the analysis and the failure reports
2. Current status of the builds and server status can be monitored with the help of the REST API provided by Bamboo
3. Bamboo supports testing tools like PHPUnit, JUnit, Selenium
4.It is compatible with JIRA and BitBucket
5. Bamboo is related to other products like JIRA, Confluence and Clover by Altassian allowing the developers and the other team members to be at the same page
6. It can also import data from Jenkins.
5.GitLab CI
GitLab Continuous Integration tool is a complete code management platform with multiple mini tools each performing a different set of function for the complete SDLC. It is owned by GitLab Inc and was created by engineers Dmitriy Zaporozhets and Valery Sizov . It provides important analysis on the code views, bug management,CI CD in a single web-based repository which also makes it the most demanded CI CD tool. GitLab CI is written in Ruby and Go and its core functionality is released under an open-source MIT license, keeping rest of the functions under proprietary license.
Key Features:
1. It is directly integrated with the GitLab Workflow
2. Allows all critical information on the code progress in a single dashboard
3. Free for the community edition, the enterprise version is paid one
4. Language Programming CMD build scripts available allowing to program them in
any language
5. APIs are provided to allow better product integrations
6.Circle CI
Circle CI is one of the best Continuous Integration and Delivery tool available in the market. CircleCI provides a great platform for build and test automation along with comprehensive deployment process. It can be integrated with GitHub, GitHub Enterprise and Bitbucket to create builds. It also supports on-cloud Continuous Integration. Because of its strong features and efficient performance in this space, it is highly recommended by experts.
Key Features:
1. It easily Integrates with Bitbucket, GitHub, and GitHub Enterprise
2. It allows branch focused deployment
3. It performs easy bug-cleanup, runs tests quickly and is highly customizable
4. Easily integrates with AWS, Google cloud and other services
5. Build tools like Maven, Gradle can be easily integrated
7.Codeship
Codeship Continuous Integration tool was acquired by Cloudbees. It is praised by its users for its combination of features for build and deployment. It is efficient, simple and deploys directly from the Github and Bitbucket. Its features of integration and delivery are combined in such a way that it makes more reliable deployment as soon as the code is automatically tested.
Key Features:
1. It allows a very supportive environment when it comes to compatibility with different technologies, languages, deployment in different environments of choice.
2. It has a very fast and strong developer support and is very easy to use.
3. It also supports third party tools integration very well.
4.It requires a single sign-up for Github, Bitbucket and Gitlab
5. Allows simple file management configuration, easy monitoring and scale-up as per the need.
8. Cruise Control
CruiseControl is a Java based Continuous Integration platform. It is popular for allowing various source controls, email notifications and build technologies with the help of plugins. It is written in Java and has versions of .Net (CCNet) and Ruby (CruiseControl.rb.) as well.
Key Features:
1. Supplies builders for Ant, Nant, Maven, Phing, Rake, and Xcode.
2. It is an Open source Framework
3. Allows Custom build loops for build cycles
4.Its web interface provides visual status of the builds
5. Provides JSP Reporting for managing build results
9. BuildBot
Buildbot is a software development continuous integration platform that allows automatic compilation and testing in order to validate any changes occurred in the project. It is written in Python. Originally created by Brian Warner, it is now maintained by the developer Dustin Michelle. It is popular for performing complex automation testing of the Development Life Cycle processes and for application deployment. This is among one of those tools that allow distribution and execution of programs parallelly on different platforms.
Key Features:
1. It is an Open source Continuous Integration Platform
2. Automates complex building, application deployment and manages complicated software releases
3. Allows time estimation of build completion as it provides real-time insights of the build progress.
4. Uses Python, C and host requirements of Python and Twisted
5. Supports distributed, parallel execution across multiple platforms and provides extensive status reporting
10. GoCD
GoCD Continuous Integration server is owned by Thoughtworks. It streamlines the build, automation and deployments of complex build cycles. Its top USP is to enable plugins or design custom plugins for any requirements during the CI CD process. It follows business continuity concept under which it sets up multiple servers is possible in order to keep the data readily available at the time of emergency. It is compatible with Windows, OSX, AWS AMIs, Docker, Debian/APT, RPM/YUM, and Zip. It can run tests in multiple languages and provides robust reports on the insights.
Key Features:
1. It is an opensource Continuous Integration server.
2.It allows the deployment of any preferable versions of applications
3.It easily configures the dependencies based on the last report and allows on
demand deployments
4. There are numerous plugins available for this and can also be customized as per the
requirement.
5. It re-uses the pipeline configuration keeping the configuration organized with the
help of its template system
6. The entire workflow can be tackled and watched with good tracking and feedback
system allowing the developer to track changes from committing through
deployment at a single place.
Conclusion
The above list of best Continuous Integration tools describes each of the ten tools in detail and covers the best of all along with their main features. This information is insightful for those who still haven’t thought of inculcating these automation tools to build and deploy various aspects of the Software development projects. Continuous Integration, delivery and deployment are very critical and complex systems in the Software theory. They need to be handled with care in order to fetch great results. Choosing the right tool for your business would certainly help handle this responsibility well. It is not about choosing one best tool, but multiple tools can also be selected based on the requirements of the project. As the CI CD continues to grow and evolve, it leaves the innovators with more chances to explore on creating the best versions of such tools.
With Appium creating a buzz in enterprise mobility, mobility teams are still finding ways to successfully automate tests leveraging Appium. Appium being an open source tool is the perfect choice for automating native, mobile web and hybrid applications on their respective platforms.
Let us now see the major factors behind Appium being the best choice for mobile automation tool:
An impressive expression by Appium.io showing why to choose Appium
1. Use of standard API: Appium is widely popular because modification of codes or a recompilation of your app is not required as it uses the standard API in all the platforms. Appium makes it effortless to create your tests against iOS and Android platforms with same API. But, separate iOS and Android scripts are still needed as the UI elements vary on both the platforms.
2. Use any WebDriver compatible language: Appium gives the freedom from getting locked into a particular language or framework to write and run the tests. Any WebDriver compatible language like Perl with Selenium WebDriver API, Java, PHP, C#, Python, Ruby, Javascript with Node.js can be used for writing the tests.
3. Testing Framework of Choice: Appium gives flexibility to mobility teams to use testing framework of their choice. Earlier, tests could only be written through Javascript using the UI Automation of library for Apple or Java based tests could only be written through UI Automator of Google. Appium completely changed this scenario.
4. Cross-platform test automation: Having the capabilities to test on both Android and iOS devices makes it the best cross-platform mobile app test automation tool. In order to interact with Android and iOS with Selenium WebDriver, Appium uses the JSON wire protocol. Appium makes use of the libraries provided by Apple with the help of an application called Instruments to automate iOS apps. In newer versions of iOS after v9.3, the Instruments api has been deprecated and now use XCUITest framework.
The method is similar in Android also where Appium proxies the automation command to the UIAutomator test case running on the device. Android has a native UI automation framework called UIAutomator which supports running JUnit test cases from the command line directly into the device.
5. Open Source: Being an open source testing framework is one of the biggest advantages of Appium as it supports Simulators, Emulators, real devices, and of course, native, hybrid and web application testing of iOS and Android. Appium having a large and thriving open community makes it easier for new automation engineers to clarify their doubts.
You can instigate test scripts created from Appium libraries locally, on a session reserved by the Cloud, for any iOS or Android device. Appium integrates with continuous integration servers to ensure better results and drives GUI-related widgets and controls, allowing the same scripts to run for different software versions of various apps. Appium can automate native, web and hybrid mobile apps, and you can test on a real device, a simulator, or an emulator. It also supports Safari on iOS and Chrome Mozilla or any built-in ‘Browser’ app on Android.
There are many automation tools for mobile application testing. Testers usually choose Appium as the best mobile testing tool. Mobile automation testing tools comparison can be done on the basis of language support and continuous integration. The most common automation testing tools used for mobile application testing are Appium, Robotium, and Calabash. If you are looking for iOS app automation testing tools then Appium and Calabash can do the job for you.
Here is tabular representation for you to understand Appium’s compatibility with different features and tools.
Teams who are getting started with Automation or are considering Appium as an option, must explore an alternative to go for a mobile device cloud with built-in Appium.
A mobile device cloud not only assists in managing and sharing devices, but also helps in streamlining automated testing and continuous delivery processes. A mobile device cloud with built-in Appium makes it easy for teams to get started with automation and scale up later. Furthermore, it will give additional cushion against any sort of roadblock that might occur while using an open-source platform for tests. Let’s have a look at some of the benefits of having a built-in Appium support on a mobile device cloud:
At pCloudy, we are dedicated towards helping enterprise mobility teams make the process of mobile development, testing and device sharing seamless and faster by integrating it with cutting edge tools like Appium. Read this blog to get a comprehensive analysis sheet to quickly choose which open-source test automation tool will be right for your automation testing.
Sign up on pCloudy and automate your tests using best open source automation tool for faster and better delivery of apps.
Did you know that there are nearly 1.8 million apps listed on the App Store for users to explore and make use of? And nearly 10% of these iOS apps are classified into business apps securing second place leaving games at the top with 21%. With many businesses, game developers, eCommerce ventures, fashion industries, etc, striving to venture out into the digital space; the need for high-quality iOS apps has become a necessity in today’s day and age. The power of developing an iOS app that is successful and purposeful gives you an option to interact with the customers directly. iOS app development is the way forward for many that want to tap into the millions of users that avail of its services on Apple devices. Mobile app marketing is setting the tone for a new way of advertising that companies are leveraging to level the playing field. While social media marketing and digital advertising seem to be gaining momentum, reaching audiences through app marketing seems to be taking shape as well. The future of mobile app marketing makes it all the more important for developers to ace the skill of app development to get ahead in the game.
iOS App Development
The high demand for mobile apps has raised the standard of iOS app development. The need for designing apps that look sleek and perform fast has always been a daunting goal of many iOS app developers. When building an iOS app, it is important to not just create apps that look good but also build them to ensure smooth functionality in fulfilling the requirements. The stringent app guidelines and the rigorous quality checks that are set by Apple makes it all the more difficult for developers to develop iOS apps that make the cut and become App Store worthy. Hence, It is crucial to assess the performance of the iOS app at every stage of the development process. The response time of the app and the speed at which it functions are a few other vital components that play an important role in qualifying to be listed on the App Store. Providing a practical application-based solution for the requirements of the stakeholders is more important now than ever before due to the changing environment.
Here are a few iOS app development tips that are trialed and tested to be beneficial when developing high performing iOS apps.
Planning and Market Research
Before you jump straight into writing the code for the app, it is advisable to understand the requirements thoroughly to chart out a plan for app development. Performing an extensive market research to ideate a unique offering to the customers’ needs is sure to save you a lot of time that you may have spent reworking a plan if you were unprepared. Conducting a thorough app research about the requirements at hand will equip you to not only build an app that meets the needs but also will help you avert duplication of any sort.
Plan your app well, think about the target audience, chart out the requirements and ask all the questions needed before you initiate the iOS app development.
Stick to a Simple Design
The mind of a developer generally wanders off to different tangents to build an app that overachieves the requirements. While most of the thought processes would be directed at adding additional features to the solution; most times these additional features become additional baggage of complexity to a simple solution. This in turn leaves the users confused of its usability and functionality. Designing a seamless UX/UI that speaks simplicity enables users to get around the app comfortably for its utility. Designing an app that addresses the key problem area tends to attract growth organically. The mantra is to take a simplistic approach to address the requirements of the app users and not complicate things.
Designing a seamless UX/UI that speaks simplicity enables users to get around the app comfortably and use it with ease.
Spend Time on the Fundamentals
Brushing up your basics often is sure to set you on the path to developing apps faster. Getting your fundamentals in place, diving into algorithms, inheritance, polymorphism, and data structures are sure to enhance the use of the software fundamentals for building applications faster in the future. Every tool that you use to develop iOS apps be it Xcode, CocoaPods, Alcatraz, etc surely have shortcuts that you can take advantage of to speed up your build time.
Taking the time to learn various commands and shortcut keys are an added advantage that will put you on the fast-lane to become proficient at iOS app development.
Use Storyboard for Transitions
A storyboard is an outlandish feature that provides an overview of the apps’ user interface on a screen. The beauty of this feature is captured in its capacity to help with designing multiple controller views on a single screen. Using the storyboard would not only provide you a roadmap of your prototype but also gives you the liberty to design your transitions between the view controllers. Talking about designing the content around the app, it is fundamental for app developers to stick to the principles of depth, clarity, and deference.
Storyboarding will ensure that your users get an immersive experience as they navigate through screens and follow the instructions that are thoughtfully constructed for a seamless functionality of the app.
Don’t Block Main Thread, Use Git early
Another best practice that is followed by most iOS app developers is adopting Git at an early stage. Using Git early is sure to help with your build in a significant way especially if the app that you are designing is a combined collaborative effort. Using Git early makes it easy to roll back the changes when things go south. It also allows you to view any changes that may have been made to the code by others. Also, blocking the main code by performing app development tasks on it would make the app seem unresponsive, it is best to refrain from working on the main code as the UIKit constantly runs functions like drawing, touch functionality, and input functions on it.
Hampering with the main code could become a recipe for disaster leading the app to perform poorly and attract dreadful reviews on the App Store.
Swift and Objective-C
Many app developers switching to Swift for creating applications has left the iOS app development industry in a dilemma. While the use of Swift has an edge over Objective-C, it sure has its set of audience that still favor the latter. Although Swift is an easier programming language that new coders can learn and pick up without much knowledge of additional code, a majority of the iOS programming community speaks the language of Objective-C for their iOS app development needs. Swift encapsulates a ton of advantages that is beneficial to paving the future of iOS app development and builds. It is still a work in progress and is consistently evolving with the changing needs of the app industry. Learning Swift is surely an advantage considering the future of app development.
Learn new programming languages like Swift which are easier and intuitive but also make an effort to be well versed with a widely used language like Objective – C to make the best use when the need arises.
Ensure Compatibility
A crucial factor that you need to keep in mind while building an iOS app is its compatibility with different iOS versions. Running tests to ensure compatibility across devices on cloud-based testing platforms gives you the option to perform your tests on multiple devices running different iOS versions conveniently and effectively. It is advisable to optimize the apps to run smoothly on all iOS versions to ensure a maximum user-base.
Optimizing your app to perform well on different iOS versions is sure to fetch some brownie points to the apps’ success journey as you accommodate both the new and the old iOS versions.
Streamlined interaction through Social Network Integration
One of the best features that you can include while developing and iOS app is the Social Network integration which allows you to streamline the interaction between the mobile app to the web app or the website. Developing this feature on the mobile app would surely help businesses engage with their users better through customizing their offerings to a particular geography or demography. Users would find it easy to use an app on their phone and pick up from where they left off on other devices that are in sync with the particular user account. The social network integration would allow the developers to diversify their tools for a future offering as well.
Integrating social networking platforms to the app would enable businesses to curate offerings to customers based on their interests, demographics, and geographies.
Traffic Management
Prevention is better than cure. With the right tools and features in place for the app’s success, it is the responsibility of the developers to ensure that the app does not crash. Optimizing the memory usage, or timely updates to cater to the OS updates are a few of the vital elements to keep in mind. Putting systems in place for the app to function smoothly even when marketing efforts direct traffic toward the app should keep it going with a hassle. The last thing you want is for the app to crash during these promotional campaigns or marketing events.
Make sure that your app is optimized to handle the traffic during any promotional events or marketing campaigns, because an app that crashes during a sale is no good at all.
Thorough Testing
The App is only as good as its functionality and performance. Assessing the app’s performance by conducting several tests multiple times will ensure a successful launch/release. Making sure that the iOS app achieves the requirements on different devices will secure a pivotal standing in the market gaps that it fills. Since Apple performs a much more rigorous assessment on the app as compared to the Google Play store, it is advisable to perform continuous testing at every stage of the iOS app development to monitor its functionality and make changes accordingly.
Testing for functionality, UI, compatibility, security, etc in different environments and devices running different iOS versions will ensure high quality and ROI on its release.
Apps when done right are sure to be on the path to success. However, in order to design an app that is successful, you will need to constantly plan, develop, integrate and test rigorously using continuous testing methods to save time on releasing the app at the earliest. App development can be a tedious task at first, however, with the right mindset, tools, and tricks up your sleeve you are sure to make it an enjoyable one. A pro tip would be to explore cloud-based continuous testing platforms like pCloudy for testing your iOS app on different devices before you submit it to the App Store for review. Ensuring that the iOS app that you built goes through a continuous testing process will ensure a quicker debugging and faster release cycle. We hope this was beneficial and wish you the best on your iOS app development journeys.
Google has announced Android 11 roll out for select Pixel phones, as well as flagship smartphone models from Xiaomi, Oppo, OnePlus, and Realme. The manufacturers are releasing final beta ROMs based on Android 11 for their individual UIs. Google informed that the update brings changes to improve multitasking, and give users more control over their privacy with one-time app permissions. It also brings built-in screen recording to Android. The new Android 11 comes with many changes but the developers and QA needs to make sure that their app is compatible with the new Android version.
The most effective way to test the compatibility of apps with the latest Android is by testing them on pCloudy devices that have been updated to Android 11. Currently we have Google Pixel devices that are updated to the latest Android version. The new Android OS comes with changes in conversation notification, chat bubbles, media controls, smart device controls, etc. Let’s dive deeper into the updates to understand them better. Screen recorder
There are plenty of apps on the Google Play Store that will record your phone’s screen. Android 11 might seem a bit late to the party, but it’s still exciting as there is one less app you’ll need to download. The screen recorder function lives in the Quick Settings tiles. You tap the Screen Record feature which gives you a few options before you start recording. For example, you can choose whether or not your screen-taps should also be recorded and whether the phone should capture audio, too. The whole thing is very simplistic, but it gets the job done.
Chat bubbles
Chat bubbles were planned for Android 10 but they faded into the background when the stable version of the OS launched. Now chat bubbles are here in Android 11 and taking centre stage. If you’ve ever used Facebook Messenger on Android, you already know how chat bubbles work. With Messenger, a “chat head” appears on your phone that overlays on top of pretty much every other app. A quick tap of the icon launches the chat and then you can minimize the chat back to an icon. You can remove the chat head until the next conversation starts. This is exactly how the system-wide bubble feature works, with the only major difference being that it can work for any chat app, not just Messenger or other apps that have a similar design.
Dark Theme Scheduling
Google finally introduced a native dark mode to Android 10 last year. However, it was fairly simplistic: it was either on or off. Meanwhile, Android skins from other manufacturers allow users to control when and why dark mode should be activated. With Android 11, users can now schedule the dark theme using one of two different metrics. Users can schedule a dark theme to turn on or off when the sun sets or rises. Users can also set up a custom schedule for dark mode activation if you wish.
Wireless Android Auto
Till now your phone had to be plugged in to use Android Auto. But in Android 11, every smartphone running the OS can take advantage of wireless Android Auto connections. The only limitation will be that the head unit in your car will need to support the feature. Obviously, this will still be a hefty limitation for folks who own cars that are a few years old, but it will start the transition towards every Android Auto experience eventually being totally wireless.
Share sheet
There is no doubt that Android’s sharing system was a mess. Thankfully, it is about to get more useful with Android 11. You can now pin apps to your share sheet in order to easily access them whenever you want to share something. This feature allows users to control which apps appear at the top of the list when you want to share something. Android’s current system of presenting apps in an order that it determines is confusing.
Improved voice access
By turning on voice access, you can simply tell your Android phone what to do using the power of Google Assistant. With Android 10, though, certain functions required you to voice-activate numbered on-screen elements. For example, you would say “Tap 4” while using the Twitter app to compose a new tweet (every link on the page would have a small number next to it). Now, though, you could say, “Open Twitter, compose tweet,” making your interactions with the phone much more fluid and natural. While this will only be helpful for a minority of users, it shows how Google is taking accessibility within Android very seriously.
Conclusion
To wrap it up, there are many minor changes in the new Android OS and many apps might get affected from the updates. This is why it is required to test the apps on the devices loaded with Android 11. This will ensure that the app works fine on different devices and also on different OS versions. So instead of buying the flagship devices on which the latest Android is available, you can just login to the pCloudy platform and test your app on real devices. It’s much more efficient as there is no issue of sharing the devices with other team members and you can perform manual and automated tests from anywhere, anytime.
Most of the businesses have websites as the primary source of branding and communication. This is why they are looking for testing platforms that can improve the overall performance of the website and make an impactful first impression to gain a huge customer base. pCloudy has launched a groundbreaking feature called browser cloud, where you can test desktop web apps on real Windows/Mac machines. Testing your website in pCloudy’s browser cloud will ensure a stable and responsive user interface to provide a great digital experience.
The factors that mostly obstruct the smooth functioning of a website are the various combinations of browsers, operating systems, and devices available in the market. To perform cross-browser testing on various combinations can be difficult as you might have to set up a device lab. pCloudy’s browser cloud consists of a gamut of OS, browser, and device combinations which will easily facilitate browser compatibility testing. Also, pCloudy being a cloud platform that is ideal for parallel testing increases the speed of testing web applications by multiple folds.
Once you login to pCloudy, you just need to select the browsers tab and you will see all the devices with their OS versions and pre-installed browser versions. You can change the resolution of the screen and take screenshots of the issues that you find on the website. Testing websites on local networks is also possible through the Wildnet tool available in the browser cloud. These are some of the features which make pCloudy highly recommendable for testing and developing high-performance web applications. Enterprises are focusing on providing quality multi-experience to their customers. pCloudy is a great platform where you can test mobile apps, desktop web apps, and leverage integrations to deliver a quality experience through multiple channels.nn
“Instead of pretending that we are living some great story, we must remain focused on the execution -and on executing with excellence. We must shun the false crown and continue working on what got us here.”- Ryan Holiday
Few months back I read the book “Ego is the Enemy” by Ryan Holiday and I’ve been a huge fan of this book since then. This book belongs on the bedside of everyone who aspires to be a leader as there’s plenty of value that one can gain from this book and I thought I’d share some of those valuable advices in this article.
Whenever we hear the word enemy, we probably think of somebody else from the outside but in our quest to reach our goals, we are our only worst enemy. Ryan says “Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, your worst enemy already lives inside you: your ego.” It is true that all of us, with no exception, have a certain level of ego and pride but to succeed in life we need some serious ego eradicating work to be done.
Ego in this context refers to unhealthy belief in our own abilities, our arrogance and self centered ambition. Ego makes us believe that we are a true hero, that we know a lot more than we actually know. The ability to accurately assess our skills is extremely valuable, and by allowing ego to inflate it, prevents us from having a realistic assessment of our abilities and leads us to delusion. We really can’t learn anything if we have an “I know it all” attitude. This fantasy of greatness stops us from learning and collaborating with others and hinders our growth as Epictetus rightly said “It is impossible for a man to learn that, which he thinks he already knows.”
We must adopt a forever student mindset because there’s so much left in this world for us to learn. We can do it by striving to learn from everyone and looking for areas to improve on a daily basis. Actually, it is easy to be a student before we become successful and great but the real challenge is to stay in a student mindset even after achieving great success. If you look at the life of worlds smartest business people like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, despite being highly successful, they spend an incredible amount of time reading books to learn new things. This mindset only comes if we practice humility, accept our setbacks and are open minded to learn.
Our ego has the tendency to blow everything out of proportion, both good and bad. Sometimes, when we get good results, we overestimate our abilities and get trapped into thinking that we know a lot better than we actually are. Other times, when the results are bad, our ego tells us that it’s not our fault and blame anything and anyone but for us. Instead when we meet failure, we must respond with humility, strength and responsibility instead of pitying oneself and complaining about others.
“In life, there will be times when we do everything right, perhaps even perfectly. Yet the results will somehow be negative: failure, disrespect, jealousy, or even a resounding yawn from the world.” – Ryan Holiday
We have minimal control over the rewards for our work and effort so we shouldn’t attach our ego to people’s validation, recognition and rewards. We can’t let trivial items like these motivate us. We can control only our actions, and that’s exactly where we must find our satisfaction and peace of mind. When we meet our own standards and know that we’ve tried our best that is what must fill us with pride and self – respect.
At the end of the day, if you are experiencing success, congratulate yourself, turn right back around, get back to work, and continue learning and hustling.But if you are experiencing a failure, deal with the situation and move past it by taking responsibility, learn something from it and start working again. Always, give your best and forget the rest.
Lastly, on our journey to success, we will encounter individuals who might deceive, offend and hurt us. This might piss us off and sometimes we might even seek retribution but this is the ego’s doing. It is our ego that makes us wants to hate them and seek payback but this is a distraction. If we are busy hating and getting revenge, we aren’t focusing on our work and aren’t going anywhere near success. Instead, a far better response would be love. Love yourself and those who did wrong to you. I know this is easier said than done.
Ryan says “In failure or adversity, it’s so easy to hate. Hate defers blame. It makes someone else responsible… Does this get us any closer to where we want to be? No. It just keeps us where we are… Meanwhile, love is right. Ego less, open, positive, vulnerable, peaceful, and productive.”
Always, stay humble, stay focused, show love and remember to suppress the ego’s silent evil talk in our heads.
Automation testing can be a highly effective productivity booster and quality enhancer for both, your product pipeline and system development projects if implemented correctly. However, it can be a tedious task to apply the best practices when a team is just starting the implementation. In this blog, we are aiming at shedding light on some of the most common challenges that teams face as they pursue automation and possibly provide valuable solutions to overcome these challenges.
But first, let’s have a look at the most prevalent automation testing challenges:
Selecting a suitable automation testing approach
Testers need to find an appropriate test automation approach. To do so, they need to find answers to important questions like how to reduce the effort in both implementation and maintenance of test script and test suite? How to generate useful test reports and metrics? Will the automation test suites have a longer lifetime? Most times answering these important questions eases the process of heading in the right direction. In agile development, the app under test often changes through development cycles. So, designing and implementing automation test suites to correctly identify these changes and keeping the system up-to-date is a reasonable maintenance effort that is necessary and tedious. In these cases, an ideal solution would be to have a test automation solution that can detect these issues and automatically update & re-validate the test without any human intervention.
Choosing the right automation tools
Selecting the right automation tools can be problematic for QA teams because either their tools of choice don’t offer 100% test coverage or the cost of tools exceeds their test budget. Or maybe they even lack the expertise to make the most of a specific tool.
Nonetheless, if your team doesn’t know how to use a tool, you can buy an online course for your testers, or hire a consultant who can help your team master it. Reach out to the testing community if you’re still looking for the right automation tool – forums like Stack Exchange provide a rich source of information for questions that you might have in your mind.
Sometimes the tool you use might not do everything you need. In that case, you should start searching for solutions that cover areas critical to your team. If the tool you found is way out of your budget, just prepare a cost vs. benefit analysis and present your case to the executive team. An analysis of expenses coming from bugs would have been solved if you had the right tool in place. Comparing different frameworks is key to get the right fit for your automation needs.
Avail the right automation tool for your automation needs
Comaprison Table of the Top Automation Frameworks
Download Automation Frameworks Comparison Table
Rigorous lab management
Many teams prefer to build and maintain their labs. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, in-house labs are hard to manage and also expensive. With new operating systems, devices, and browser versions consistently being released, in-house labs can quickly become obsolete if not updated every once in a while, which is again an additional cost. As a result, teams end up spending a lot of time maintaining and running their lab instead of putting their time into testing. Having a cloud-based device lab is key for continuous testing unless there are some special testing requirements/scenarios with IoT, special networking (especially in the Telco space), etc.
Sorting through all the data
DevOps automation results in a huge influx of data that needs to be reviewed and analyzed. Teams often find they are swimming in a sea of data made up of log files, architecture diagrams, and test results. However, this data does contain a lot of useful information. The challenge comes in when we try to sort this data. For example, insights from data can inform R&D teams on what fixes need to be made. Making sense of all the data is a big undertaking for many teams, especially those that are not equipped with the right tools.
To achieve fast feedback, you need to be able to sort through the noise. Today, the reality of CI/CD is that it requires teams to execute tests and analyze results in minutes to understand where the problem lies and fix them at the earliest. Using test analytics can help you understand the problem and avoid it.
Knowing when to begin and stop testing
A big challenge that most if not all test managers face is knowing the answer to when to begin a test or when to stop it. You don’t want to initiate automated testing at the wrong stage of your software’s life cycle, as this would hamper the timelines of the production releases. A helpful piece of advice is to start with manual testing. Because when you start with manual testing the engineers will be able to tell when the system is stable enough and ready for automated testing. When your team is convinced that certain functionality or task can be pushed for automation, there is a better workflow as the team is aware of the timelines and is already prepared for closing tasks one after the other.
How to overcome these challenges?
Whether a tester is an automation ninja or a manual tester with basic knowledge of the business flow, the tools should be understandable to the level of the user. Because in the end, the automation tools will allow manual testers to begin executing automation while advanced testers can focus on higher priority tests. This refers to the ability to successfully scale test automation operations.
The solution should offer capabilities that help teams take a small, locally-run test and apply it across multiple platforms, devices, and browsers. This ensures the required scaling and test coverage.
In today’s competitive world, teams need to have the ability to conduct a test anywhere, anytime. A comprehensive solution to this need would be to provide open access to the lab and equip teams with the right tools to run and perform tests. This ultimately helps them be adaptable and keep pace with the new releases.
To achieve success with continuous testing and automation, teams need to be able to effectively see clear and accurate test results quickly. What’s more, they need to identify problems quickly. Remember, automation creates noise and false negatives, so teams need to be able to sort through this to provide the necessary evidence.
The only way to successfully address the top challenges in automation testing is to use a solution that combines the four components listed above. If a solution is missing one of the components, a critical part of the continuous testing process is lost. What’s more, there is a good chance team will spend a significant amount of money accounting for gaps or compromising quality.
Conclusion
While the challenges mentioned here are not the only ones in the list of challenges for automation testing. There are other challenges also such as lack of collaboration and skills. But those challenges are not hard to overcome. Whether we talk about mobile automation testing challenges or Selenium automation challenges for web apps, cloud-based testing is the solution. It gives you the flexibility and scalability needed to deliver a quality product in less time. With the right tools, skillset, and infrastructure, these challenges can be overcome over time.
Technology and innovation are two sides of the same coin. Technology is the power that lets the mankind turn ideas into reality within no time. At pCloudy, the power of innovation has led us to stay aligned and be in pace with the dynamics of the mobile app industry. We cannot afford to let our customers stay deprived of any technological advancements happening in mobile app testing. Once again we are back with another new feature called QR code scanner and we are proud to announce that it is already launched on our platform.
Nowadays many mobile applications use QR code scanners for a product or user identification. The QR Code scanning feature in pCloudy enables users to test the QR code feature through mobile applications on multiple devices present in pCloudy. This feature ensures the smooth functioning of the QR code function present in the mobile application. To use this feature, all you need to do is upload the mobile app under test, a QR code image file, and with the help of some simple steps, you can smoothly perform testing of the QR code scanning function of your mobile application.
The app will scan the injected QR code. You can scan multiple QR codes while testing your app on different mobile devices. So from now on you can easily perform QR code testing in pCloudy. This feature is supported on Android 5.0 devices and later versions. Supported QR Code file formats are .png,.jpeg and jpg.
Since pCloudy’s inception, we have been committed to providing the best in class mobile app testing platform equipped with unique features. We have had some hurdles in our journey but we always manage to overcome the challenges. The sense of accomplishment gives us a reason to celebrate the hard work that we put to achieve our goal. In pCloudy, often the dedication and hard work of our team is rewarded in many forms. There is a famous quote by Mahatma Gandhi – “Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stage of drudgery and triumph: a beginning, a struggle, and a victory.” In a short span of time, we have achieved a lot while we are paving our way to a bright future. So let’s catch a glimpse of all that we have accomplished in the recent past.
Accredited in multiple Gartner reports
The latest report – How to Build an Effective Remote Testing Competency, by Jim Scheibmeir, Thomas Murphy, and Joachim Herschmann indicates that enterprises are adopting remote software testing more than ever. The report also shows how remote testing clouds, like pCloudy, are helping application leaders build a remote-software quality competency by optimizing access and collaboration, investing in test environments, and keeping their promises to the business.
Another Gartner report – Market Guide for Mobile App Test Automation Tools, by Maritess Sobejana and Adrian Leow elaborates on how mobile apps are critical to digital business transformation initiatives but create a demand for test automation of mobile-specific functions to deliver high-quality apps faster. The report suggests pCloudy as a vendor to help mobile app development leaders with their testing efforts.
Recognized at the most trusted review platforms
pCloudy has got 4.7 stars rating with highly appreciative reviews on Gartner peer insights. This has been made possible due to the high level of support and services we have provided to our clients. Our developers and automation team have pushed all the boundaries to ensure we deliver the quality solution as quickly as possible.
G2 Crowd has recognized pCloudy as a high performer in mobile app testing and test automation quadrant in 2019. There are many quality standards that need to be met to get into the high performer category. pCloudy was acknowledged as a high performer with a 4.6 stars rating by G2Crowd due to the trust and rapport we maintain with our clients.
Rising as a known brand
Brand exposure is essential for any business to sustain and thrive. Our marketing team had put in a lot of efforts to make pCloudy is a known brand in the mobile app testing space. pCloudy was the buzz-word in some leading software testing events and we got a chance to become the event sponsor for QAI-STC where Avinash Tiwari (Co-founder, pCloudy) was the keynote speaker.
We got a great response at the STeP-IN summit where pCloudy was the Exhibitor Sponsor of the conference and software professionals from across the globe were curious to learn and try our product. Another event that proved to be a success to us was the DOPPA Summit 2020 where pCloudy was the Gold sponsor of the event and we showcased our platform in front of industry leaders and software professionals. pCloudy was the official sponsor of the Techwell Starwest conference held at California. The event was quite instrumental in getting good brand exposure in the US and expanding our clientele.
Key product milestones
The year 2020 started on a positive note as pCloudy touched the 100K registrations mark. Recently we took another big leap by establishing our 3rd data center in Singapore. The new data center will help us to provide the best in class services to our users in South East Asia.
Talking about the features, pCloudy is the first to introduce Audio Interaction testing that enables users to test their app using the Audio in/out function in the devices. This is a big development and it will help in testing voice-enabled apps. Another feature, i.e., QR code verification has been one of the most demanded features for pCloudy that enable users to scan a QR code or a barcode on any Android device present on the pCloudy platform. To use the feature, users need an application under test which supports QR code scanning and a QR code file (test QR codes).
pCloudy now has an inbuilt object spy through which you can run the inspector sessions directly on Android and iOS devices. One big advantage is its bilateral view which makes it easy for users to click on any element on one side and view the details on the other side. Also, the generated code can be copied for future use. Wildnet is another unique feature in pCloudy that enables our users to test private or internal servers on any Android or iOS devices present on pCloudy. For this, you just need to download the executables for OS (Mac, Linux, Windows) on your local machine, Then fetch the user name and API access key for your pCloudy account settings and use it in the terminal to build a link between a device in pCloudy and your internal staging server.
Apart from this, we have been ahead of our competitors in providing the latest iPhones and other flagship phones like the Samsung Fold with the latest Android/iOS versions. Our developers and automation engineers work day and night to provide support for the latest Appium releases, enabling our users to perform automation testing conveniently and at a faster pace.
Growing readership and followers
As we grow in popularity, we have witnessed tremendous growth in the user base and the total device hours utilized by our clients also crossed the 1 Million mark. There are many factors behind this growth like a quality product, 24/7 support, competitive pricing, etc. With more than 25K social media followers, we have built an ever-growing pCloudy community that helps us enrich our product and provide better services. We provide solutions to 30+ Fortune 500 companies with data centers located at 3 different strategic locations around the world.
pCloudy is integrated with more than 20 tools and frameworks that enhance the testing and automation experience. pCloudy’s manual and automation certification course is also gaining popularity with over 2000 registrations, as it helps users to understand the product and perform testing effortlessly.
The road ahead
Our team is committed to delivering the best solution to our customers and reaching new heights. We have a long lineup of amazing features under development that we will release soon. After all, we have to beat the trend to be ahead in the competition. We will keep providing the best possible support to our customers and help them in their digital transformation efforts.
Android uses a centralized system for all logs and application programmers can also write custom log messages. The tooling to develop Android applications allows you to define filters for the log statements you are interested in. Log analysis is a phase of development and developers encounter it from time to time. Bug log helps in identifying the bugs in the Android application while in the development phase. Once the app is released into the market, the support engineers analyze the bug logs to resolve the issue. There are for different types of Logs available in the Android Eco-System – Application Logs, Android System Logs, Event Logs & Radio Logs.
The logging system consists of a kernel driver and kernel buffers for storing Android log messages, C, C++ and Java classes for making log entries and for accessing the log messages, a standalone program for viewing log messages (logcat) and the ability to view and filter the log messages from the host machine (via eclipse or ddms).
There are four different log buffers in the Linux kernel, which provide logging for different parts of the system. Access to the different buffers is via device nodes in the file system, in /dev/log. The four Android log buffers are main, events, radio and system. The main log is for the application, events is for system event information, radio is for phone related information and system is low level system messages and debugging.
Each message in the log consists of a tag indicating the part of the system or application that the message came from, a timestamp (at what time this message came), the message log level (or priority of the event represented by the message) and the log message itself (detail description of error or exception or information etc).
What Each Android Log Type Contains:
1. Application log
use android.util.Log class methods to write messages of different priority into the log
Java classes declare their tag statically as a string, which they pass to the log method
The log method used indicates the message “severity” (or log level)
Messages can be filtered by tag or priority when the logs are processed by retrieval tools (logcat)
2. System log
Use the android.util.Slog class to write message with different priority with its associated messages
Many Android framework classes utilize the system log to keep their messages separate from (possibly noisy) application log messages
A formatted message is delivered through the C/C++ library down to the kernel driver, which stores the message in the appropriate buffer(system buffer)
3. Event log
Event logs messages are created using android.util.EventLog class, which create binary-formatted log messages.
Log entries consist of binary tag codes, followed by binary parameters.
The message tag codes are stored on the system at: /system/etc/event-log-tags.
Each message has the string for the log message, as well as codes indicating the values associated with (stored with) that entry.
4. Radio log
Used for radio and phone (modem) related information
Log entries consist of binary tags code and message for Network info
Logging system automatically routes messages with specific tags into the radio buffer
Device Logs on pCloudy Platform.
Device Logs Filter Options
Log format on Android
A common log format in android:
tv_sectv_nsec priority pidtid tag messageLen Message
tag: log tag
tv_sec&tv_nsec: the timestamp of the log messages
pid: the process id of where log messages come from
tid: the thread id
Priority value is one of the following character values, ordered from lowest to highest priority:
V — Verbose (lowest priority)*
D — Debug*
I — Info*
W — Warning*
E — Error*
F — Fatal*
S — Silent (highest priority, on which nothing is ever printed)
Log-File locations
There are several directories where Android log (including those from crashes) stores and it are not standardized (i.e. some may be ROM-specific). I am putting some of common here.
/data/anr : Dalvik writes stack traces here on ANR, i.e. “Application Not Responding” aka “Force-Close”
/data/dontpanic : contains some crash logs including traces
/data/kernelpanics :- Stores “kernel panic” related logs
/data/tombstones :- may hold several tombstone_nn files (nn is a number from 0 to 10 and after 10 again repeat it)
‘Log’ command line tool
To capture Android log from the devices/emulator Below is the some command line tool. In real life project there are log capture application/tool used to capture the logs on user device and shared it back to Developer/maintainer for analysis .
adb logcat (shows all type logs for current android system
adb logcat -v threadtime (it will include date and time)
adb logcat -v threadtime> logfile.txt (Store logs in logfile.txt)
Useful filter patterns
You can use below filter in your adb command to filter logs. You can also use this filter to search your logs file(Android logs provided by user device).
adb logcat -f Save all logs into a file
adb logcat “*:E” Get all errors and fatals
adb logcat | grep -i “foo.example.” #get all logs related to “foo.example.*” tagname
adb logcat “application_or_tag_name:*” “*:S” Get all logs by application name
adb logcat -b events “gsm_service_state_change” “*:S” Get all GSM state changes
adb logcat -b radio Get all Radio events
Log Analysis
In this blog we got the basic understanding of the Android Log System. While analyzing the Android logs from your app you can divide it in two parts, debug Logs – file coming during development and testing phase and production Log – file coming directly from end user. The best way to do it is by using useful Filter Patterns and by using Some Tool like GoogleLogTool and SonyLogTool.
