Automate Codeless API Testing With Parasoft SOAtest

Users can create end-to-end test scenarios that span APIs, web services, databases, and the UI layer. From a single intuitive interface, Parasoft SOAtest automatically creates functional tests based on various service definition formats including OpenAPI/Swagger, RAML, WADL, and WSDL/XSD. A test is created for each operation, which can then be chained into functional testing scenarios and data driven with external data sources to thoroughly cover requirements and use cases.

Parasoft SOAtest has the broadest support for transports and message formats in the industry, along with an extension framework that makes it easy for users to add their own custom message formats or transport protocols. The extensive protocol support includes:

• SOAP/XML, REST/JSON, GraphQL
• HTTP(S), TCP/IP, JMS, MQ, Microsoft .NET WCF
• Microservice and IoT standards like gRPC, Kafka, AMQP, RabbitMQ, WebSocket, MQTT
• Custom message formats like Cobol copybook, ISO 8583, Fixed Length, EDI, FIX, HL7, Swift
• Many more. For a full list, click here.

Unlike other API testing tools, the award-winning SOAtest supports embedding test flow logic into your test scenarios, enabling complex test flows without complex scripting to support actions like looping, wait conditions, error recovery, or conditional data-driving of test scenarios.

In addition to visually creating tests, Parasoft’s award-winning API testing tool provides a REST API that enables users to create, modify, and execute tests programmatically.

Harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to accelerate API scenario test creation and simplify API testing for less technical testers. SOAtest automatically creates functional tests from recorded traffic, which can be imported from various sources or recorded through a message proxy. API calls from an application’s web interface can be captured directly by the Parasoft Recorder in the Chrome web browser, which SOAtest’s SMART API Test Generator uses to build tests, leveraging advanced heuristics and AI to generate meaningful and complex test scenarios that are imported into the testing workspace. Testers can easily create API tests from manual actions taken on the web UI or through recording traffic during the execution of existing web UI test scripts, enabling teams to easily create API tests to complement their web functional test suites.

ML is employed to learn about the underlying business logic from any test in your test library, enabling SOAtest to intelligently create or update any of your test assets in exact accordance with how your business has decided to test that API.

As your API testing strategy scales, your libraries of test cases will grow, and when the APIs being tested change, your tests will need to be updated. Ordinarily this causes a significant barrier to scaling your test automation strategy, but with SOAtest, you can manage change in an automated way. Easily configure Parasoft SOAtest’s Change Advisor to automatically scan API interfaces, identify changes in the services, and then create a template that shows you how the test assets are impacted by those changes and automatically updates the tests to reflect the changes.

Executing your complete test suite for every incremental build is very time consuming and becomes a bottleneck in your CI/CD pipeline. Instead of executing all the tests to verify the quality of a build, SOAtest optimizes your API test suite to execute only the tests necessary to validate the changes between builds. Within its Smart Test Execution capabilities, Parasoft SOAtest uses test impact analysis to optimize the set of tests to be executed so you can get quicker feedback from the CI/CD pipeline.

SOAtest test suites are referenceable by other test scenarios. If multiple test cases rely on specific functionality that is changing, that portion can be made a reference, modified in one location, and the changes will propagate to the rest of the test cases.

To keep track of all these changes, Parasoft fully supports versioning by storing all relevant data as comparable files that are compatible with standard version control systems.

Execute your tests and view results within the context of the test environment, while controlling the behavior of constrained dependencies to ensure predictability, leveraging service virtualization. For deployment across the enterprise, Parasoft CTP’s thin client interface enables test creation and test orchestration without users having to install testing software on their desktop.

From there, Parasoft provides everything you need to orchestrate tests, including test data management. To ensure your test data is manageable and always available, SOAtest’s data repository enables the dynamic construction of hierarchical messages for API tests.

CTP’s web interface also enables test environment management. Your entire library of test cases becomes available whenever it comes time to diagram a test flow. Test cases can simply be connected to components with SOAtest’s easy-to-use visual diagramming, and when the environment is provisioned, those test cases will execute to make test orchestration a reality. These environments can be augmented with virtual services and deployed as a part of your CI/CD pipeline.

Gain insights into your application’s test coverage with traceability workflows. Import requirements from the build system to map the associated test cases to those requirements. Managers get visibility to which requirements may not have complete test coverage. With user stories correlated to test cases, which are also aligned to the code, Parasoft SOAtest identifies which tests to run when changes are made to the code and reports on what requirements are impacted.

SOAtest’s event monitoring framework enables end-to-end validation of test scenarios with visibility into messages as they flow through ESBs, Java applications, databases, and other backend systems as you invoke the service APIs.

SOAtest collects REST and SOAP API coverage as part of test execution, reporting which tests cases are covering which parts of the service interface and which parts have missing or incomplete test coverage. SOAtest can also be integrated with Parasoft Jtest or Parasoft dotTEST to collect underlying code coverage information as the API tests are executed, delivering a holistic picture and complete traceability of how the application is tested.

Modernize testing practices and increase test thoroughness by integrating Generative AI into your API test strategy. Use SOAtest’s integration with various LLM providers, such as OpenAI and Azure OpenAI, to analyze your applications’ service definitions to generate complex, auto-parameterized API test workflows. Use natural language custom prompts to guide the generation of test scenarios, enhancing flexibility, optimizing test coverage, and ensuring result consistency.

Integrate Parasoft SOAtest with various LLM providers like OpenAI and Azure OpenAI to utilize the power of Parasoft’s AI Assistant. Ask questions in natural language and receive immediate answers about SOAtest features and functionalities. Accelerate learning, troubleshoot efficiently, and enhance your testing workflow with AI-powered support integrated directly into your toolset.

Traditional testing approaches often require running the entire test suite, no matter the extent of changes made to the codebase. This approach is time-consuming and resource-intensive. SOAtest’s test impact analysis (TIA) offers an efficient alternative. It narrows the focus of test executions in CI/CD pipelines to only the parts of the application affected by recent changes, ensuring testing efforts are precise and effective.

This targeted approach allows teams to quickly uncover potential issues introduced by code modifications, reducing the risk of regression bugs and improving overall software quality.