turn on suggestions
Auto-suggest helps you quickly narrow down your search results by suggesting possible matches as you type.
The most recent release of iTest now includes an SDK that enables customers and partners to extend iTest as follows:
In parallel with the release of iTest’s SDK capabilities, Fanfare has also proposed a new open source project to the Eclipse Foundation. This project, tentatively named the Test Automation Platform (TAP), will enable a variety of vendors, customers, and other interested parties to cooperate in the definition of a standard Eclipse-based platform upon which a variety of test automation components can be integrated together. Since Eclipse is an open source community, anyone can get involved with the TAP project by signing on as an “interested party”. And so far, the reaction has been very positive. Our proposal has only been public for a week, and already a number of industry-leading companies have signed on as interested parties. You can read more about TAP, and see the latest list of interested parties by visiting the TAP project proposal. There is also a newsgroup for TAP that has just gone live.
By providing a way for different automation components (including both proprietary and commercial products) to integrate and interoperate, TAP has the potential to dramatically change our industry for the better. It will be easier to deploy and operate a comprehensive automation solution, and therefore the key stakeholders will all benefit, including service providers, networking equipment companies, and vendors like Fanfare. It’s a bold play, but one that is worth making.
Eventually, we foresee that a lot of iTest extensibility will be via its support for TAP – meaning that partners and customers can build new components for Eclipse which can be used by any other tools that conform to the same interfaces. The net of all this is that TAP will be a foundation for innovation, and customers who are trying to assemble complicated system test infrastructures will be winners since there will be a wealth of different TAP plug-ins available to them. Some will be commercially supported (like iTest), and others will be freely available open source components.
Tools built today on top of iTest’s SDK will continue to work on future versions of iTest. But these tools will also be able to migrate easily to become full TAP tools as well -- if and when that is desirable.
I encourage you to take a look at what can be done in the new SDK. And I welcome you to participate in the TAP project. Share your needs, your ideas, and, eventually, your code!
- Users can now plug in new test tools, such as traffic generators and proprietary test tools. Once a tool has been plugged in using the SDK, it can be used interactively and/or as part of automated tests. These tools can have all of the same sophistication and simplicity as the tools which are shipped as part of the standard supported iTest product from Fanfare (For example: telnet, snmp, web, java swing, IxLoad, Spirent Test Center, Agilent N2X, etc.)
- Users can also add plug-ins that format and publish execution data to other systems. This is especially powerful since it enables customers to deeply integrate iTest with existing test management and reporting infrastructures.
In parallel with the release of iTest’s SDK capabilities, Fanfare has also proposed a new open source project to the Eclipse Foundation. This project, tentatively named the Test Automation Platform (TAP), will enable a variety of vendors, customers, and other interested parties to cooperate in the definition of a standard Eclipse-based platform upon which a variety of test automation components can be integrated together. Since Eclipse is an open source community, anyone can get involved with the TAP project by signing on as an “interested party”. And so far, the reaction has been very positive. Our proposal has only been public for a week, and already a number of industry-leading companies have signed on as interested parties. You can read more about TAP, and see the latest list of interested parties by visiting the TAP project proposal. There is also a newsgroup for TAP that has just gone live.
By providing a way for different automation components (including both proprietary and commercial products) to integrate and interoperate, TAP has the potential to dramatically change our industry for the better. It will be easier to deploy and operate a comprehensive automation solution, and therefore the key stakeholders will all benefit, including service providers, networking equipment companies, and vendors like Fanfare. It’s a bold play, but one that is worth making.
Eventually, we foresee that a lot of iTest extensibility will be via its support for TAP – meaning that partners and customers can build new components for Eclipse which can be used by any other tools that conform to the same interfaces. The net of all this is that TAP will be a foundation for innovation, and customers who are trying to assemble complicated system test infrastructures will be winners since there will be a wealth of different TAP plug-ins available to them. Some will be commercially supported (like iTest), and others will be freely available open source components.
Tools built today on top of iTest’s SDK will continue to work on future versions of iTest. But these tools will also be able to migrate easily to become full TAP tools as well -- if and when that is desirable.
I encourage you to take a look at what can be done in the new SDK. And I welcome you to participate in the TAP project. Share your needs, your ideas, and, eventually, your code!
 | Kingston Duffie is the founder and CTO of Fanfare. Learn more about Kingston >> |
You must be a registered user to add a comment on this article. If you've already registered, please log in. If you haven't registered yet, please register and log in.