Integration testing verifies that different modules or services in an application work correctly together. With microservices and API-driven applications becoming ubiquitous, having the right integration testing tools is crucial for quality. This post shares 5 tips to help you evaluate and choose feature-rich integration testing tools for your delivery pipelines.

1. Focus on Your Tech Stack

Every application uses a unique technology stack spanning its front end, back end, databases, APIs, and more. Prioritize tools that easily adapt to the languages, frameworks, and infrastructure powering your app. For example, Node.js-based apps require different tooling than Java enterprise monoliths. Vet each tool’s integration capabilities specifically against your stack to ensure seamless compatibility from the start. Consider how well the tool vendor understands your stack and whether they have experience automating similar applications. Look for documentation and support tailored to your framework of choice.

1. Assess Automation Capabilities

The main value of integration testing tools lies in test automation. Manual testing is slow, resource-intensive and ill-suited for code changes. Gauge automation features like auto-generated test scripts, reusable functions, CI/CD integration, test parallelization, pipelines, and more. Opt for robust tools that can accelerate the automation of your test scenarios. Consider whether the tool can support your entire testing workflow from writing automated checks to running them at different stages of your software delivery process. Determine if it is scalable to your project needs today as well as your future plans for growth.

1. Evaluate API Testing

With microservices, most integration testing centers on APIs. Great API testing tools make it easy to create integration tests that validate request parameters, status codes, response assertions, etc. Look also for mocking support to simulate services during testing. Contract testing options are also ideal for capturing dependencies between services and consumers. Consider features like auto-generated clients, robust parameterization, intelligent test data handling, and robust reporting of API test results. The right tool will simplify common tasks like authentication, response validation, and error handling. It should scale to support the continuous expansion of your API landscape over time. Overall, thoroughly assessing API testing functionality is critical for microservices architectures.

1. Check Extensibility & Customization

While out-of-the-box capabilities are useful, you’ll likely need custom tooling for your unique use cases. Assess how easily tools allow adding custom steps, plugins, extensions and writing bespoke integrations with internal frameworks. Extensibility options ranging from open-source community support to proprietary addons demonstrate a tool’s flexibility.

1. Confirm Compatibility Across Environments

Integration issues can arise depending on different staging environments like development, QA, staging and production. Tools with native support and configurations for multi-environment test runs identify environment-specific defects early. Confirm ecosystem support spanning internal and cloud deployments for debugging before production release.

Conclusion

Opkey is a leading testing automation platform that automates integration testing. By supporting over a dozen apps and 150 technologies out-of-the-box, Opkey allows teams to create complex, cross-application tests without coding. Tests can be set up quickly through an intuitive interface, shortening the testing lifecycle. Opkey empowers customers to fully embrace best practices in their ERP implementations. With Opkey, IT teams see stress reduced as tests can be run automatically on each code change. This all-in-one solution helps enterprises adapt to the new age of rapid development by simplifying testing and helping “grow up” their software processes.