Today, with numerous solutions and applications available, it is a known fact that only the best performing among them will take the lead. Businesses need high-performing apps to deliver a great customer experience (CX) which further helps them stand in tough competition. With the technology taking up new levels of innovation, there is more demand for apps delivering exorbitant features using interconnected and complex apps. Today, complex apps with multiple layers are being added across the application’s architecture to ensure seamless service delivery to customers. These multiple underlying layers necessitate leveraging effective API testing for these complex apps to deliver a great CX.

Content 1.   What is API testing? 2.   What are the different types of API testing? 3.   Why is there an increased need for API testing across industries? 4.   What benefits do businesses get with API testing? 5.   Broad steps involved in API Testing 6.   Conclusion 7.   How can TestingXperts (Tx) help? 8.   Tx Differentiators

What is API testing?

Every application has three layers: a Data layer, an Application Programming Interface (API) layer, and a User Interface (UI) layer. An API forms the crux of an application as it contains critical business logic. It allows front-end users to interact with the back-end and enables the proper functioning of the software. Typically, API testing helps check the functionality, reliability, security, and performance of service layers or the more commonly known API layers. Since this layer directly touches the data layer and presentation layer, it is essential to check the service layers by leveraging API testing.

What are the different types of API testing?

Functional testing:

This testing method includes testing the specific functions within the API codebase. These functions represent the particular scenarios to ensure that the APIs function well and as expected within the given parameters.

UI testing:

This method tests the user interface of APIs and their constituent parts. This test method focuses more on the interface of the API rather than the API itself. Though this method does not test the API directly in terms of the codebase, it can still provide a generalized view of the API’s health, usability, and efficiency of both the front end and the back end.

Load testing:

This method involves testing whether the API responds as expected under peak and varying load conditions. This test aims to determine how actively the API responds when various servers send a request to an API. This testing method ensures the APIs meet their compliances for response time and throughput.

Contract Testing:

It is a software testing methodology that ensures two services are compatible and can communicate with each other. The contract is between the consumer who wants to receive some data and a provider, i.e., an API which provides data to the client. This test captures the interactions between services, stores them in a contract, and verifies that both parties adhere to it.

Runtime/Error detection testing:

This testing method checks the actual running of the APIs and is mainly concerned with the universal results of utilizing the API codebase. It focuses more on monitoring, execution errors, resource leaks, error detections, etc.

Security testing:

This testing method ensures secure API implementation and validates encryptions. It also verifies the design of the API access control to ensure its safety from external threats and validates the user rights and authorization.

Penetration testing:

In this testing method, ethical hackers attack the API to assess possible threats or vulnerabilities from outside hackers. This testing process aims to reveal and exploit security vulnerabilities present in the APIs before actual hackers use them.

Fuzz testing:

In this black-box testing method, a massive amount of random data often referred to as fuzz, or noise is forcibly input into the system to attempt a forced crash. The main aim of this test is to test the APIs at their absolute limits. The different types of attacks detected by fuzz testing are application fuzzing, protocol fuzzing, file format fuzzing, etc.

Interoperability/WS Compliance testing:

Interoperability testing checks whether the software can appropriately interact with other software components or not. This testing method only applies to SOAP APIs and is performed to check two fields of the functions. Firstly it reviews the interoperability between SOAP APIs and ensures it conforms to Web Services Interoperability Profiles. Secondly, WS Compliance testing ensures proper implementation and utilization of standards such as WS-Addressing, WS-Discovery, WS-Federation, WS-Policy, WS-Security, and WS-Trust.

Why is there an increased need for API testing across industries?

Today’s technology is rapidly advancing, and due to this, apps continue to become more complex in their underlying architecture. Usually, complex applications have five layers of complexity: complexities of integration, information, intention, environment, and institution. As more businesses continue to adopt modern architecture, including cloud services and mobile, large composite systems exist behind these simple-looking applications.

This complex architecture follows specific protocols such as XML, SOAP, JSON, REST, etc., and hence it becomes critically important for businesses to validate their applications for the underlying layers. These multiple layers need effective API testing to ensure the proper functioning of these APIs. These complex apps continue to dominate industries, and it showcases the need to leverage API testing to get fully functional apps.

Healthcare sector:

API testing plays an essential role in the healthcare sector as it helps:

•  To ensure apps meet complex usage, security, and regulatory compliances such as HIPPA compliance.

•  To ensure apps are bug-free and adequately integrated with third-party services.

• To ensure patient’s data, health records, identities, account details, payment information, etc., are safe within these interconnected healthcare apps.

Banking sector:

API testing plays a vital role in banks due to the following reasons:

•  Most banks now offer API banking services spread across categories such as deposits, payment gateway, loans and cards, business banking, etc.

• Ensures proper functionality and security of payment-related information; API testing is essential.

•  As banks continue to integrate with third-party services such as eCommerce sites, direct peer-to-peer transfer, ticket booking, API testing is essential.

•  To meet regulatory compliances.

eCommerce sector:

API testing of eCommerce apps is essential because:

•  Firstly, eCommerce apps have a complex architecture with multiple APIs such as:

•  Product information API, Catalog API, Site search API, Login API, Cart API.

•  Payment API, Marketing Automation API, Shipping API, etc.

•  Secondly, it is essential to ensure seamless functioning and security of these APIs data.

•  Lastly, to offer a great user experience with these eCommerce apps, API testing is required.

Media and entertainment sector:

Media and entertainment service providers require API testing of their apps due to:

•  As the consumers are shifting towards OTT platforms, there is more demand for high-quality streaming platforms and products

• Fully functional APIs help publishers to better connect with viewers and  third-party services. With the help of API, content creators and distributors combine with partner technologies and attract more customers and hence need effective API testing

•  API testing ensures seamless flow of content, good playback quality, and seamless UX for these publishing apps

Telecom sector:

Below listed are some of the reasons that depict the need for API testing of telecom apps:

•  Telecoms providers use various apps such as retailer app, mobile wallet, CRM app, vendor app, customer support app, etc., to provide services to users.

•  There are multiple types of API layers present in these telecom apps such as Voice API, SMS API, Video API, Chat API, Geolocation API, Charging or Carrier Billing API, Mobile Top Up API, IoT API, Identity API, etc., and testing of all these API layers is essential to deliver seamless UX.

•  Multiple users send multiple requests across these apps, and to ensure that their APIs function seamlessly, API testing is needed to enable seamless services to customers.

•  Since these apps store a massive load of data and are accessed by a large set of users, API testing is essential for all telecom apps.

What benefits do businesses get with API testing?

Identifies defects early:

The main advantage of API testing is that it allows testers to access the application without really interacting with the user interface. This testing helps testers to test the application faster and detect bugs early in the software development lifecycle.

Protects APIs from malicious code or breakage:

API testing helps businesses ensure that their APIs are free from all vulnerabilities and pushes applications to connective limits to ensure no code breakage occurs.

Saves time and costs:

Another benefit of this testing method is that it takes less time than GUI testing and helps businesses save time and costs in the long run.

Language independent:

API testing exchanges data using JSON or XML and comprises HTTP response and request. Both of these transfer modes are completely language-independent, allowing testers to test API using any language or automate API testing in any language.

Improves test coverage:

As compared to unit tests, API tests have a broader scope. In unit testing, the focus is limited to the functionality of the components within a single application, but the API test checks the functionality of all system components. This testing helps businesses to improve the overall software quality and to deliver seamless UX.

Boosts the security of applications:

API testing helps improve the application’s security and ensures there are no security loopholes or vulnerabilities present in the application; various security checks include security testing, penetration testing, fuzz testing, compliance testing, etc.

Enhances app performance:

API tests help remove performance-related bottlenecks present in the API of the application. This testing method helps businesses ensure their apps perform seamlessly under all conditions such as varying user load, network, bandwidth, etc.

API tests are GUI independent:

The API testing checks the business logic, and therefore this test starts even before the front-end is ready. Since this test is not related to the GUI of the app in any way, it becomes easy for testers to test the app earlier and faster.

Reuse test data for GUI testing:

The test data generated during API testing is helpful for GUI testing. Unlike the traditional software development approaches, developers now create apps by first writing the APIs. Once the APIs are tested and ready, the UI is designed around them.

Ensures API remains unaffected after code changes:

During API testing, the regression testing method ensures that recent changes do not affect or break the existing APIs or the system using them.

Broad steps involved in API Testing

API Testing involves sending the API calls and checking the responses in return. The basic steps involved in API testing are:

•  Gather information related to the kind of requests as well as the limitations involved. This information can be taken from API documentation or directly from developers.

•  Set up the test environment that allows the testers to make API calls and validate responses

•  Input the required API parameters and configure the database and server

•  Write test cases that include – Input parameters, expected responses, max response time, parsing inputs, error handling, correct formatting of the response

•  Add each test case to the test script and execute the test after every new build

•  Monitor the results to decide if the API responses are as per expectations or not

Conclusion:

Today, with the evolving technology, apps are getting more complex in their underlying architecture with multiple layers. These numerous layers need API testing to validate the underlying business layers to ensure that apps function seamlessly and deliver a  great CX.

Thus, businesses should leverage different types of API testing to get fully functional and seamless apps.  It is always preferred to leverage the services from next-gen testing services providers to get fully functional business apps.

How can TestingXperts (Tx) help?

TestingXperts (Tx) has an expert team of API testers and offers a wide range of API and Web services testing:

Unit testing – for checking the functionality of individual APIs

Functional testing – for testing end-to-end functionality of the API layer

Load testing – for validation of functionality and performance for the system under various levels of user/ transaction load

Runtime error detection – Execution of automated/manual tests to identify problems, such as exceptions and resource leaks

Security testing – Involves various types of security checks like penetration testing, authentication, encryption, and access control

Web UI testing – end-to-end testing of the entire system using the APIs

Contract testing – for checking interaction between client and API or server and for verification of data exchanges occurring between two parties

Tx Differentiators:

• Expert API testers with expertise in a wide range of API protocols like XML, SOAP, JSON, REST, Gdata, YAML, ATOM, RSS, and RDF, etc.

• Experience to perform end-to-end application validations at various layers of the application

•  Hands-on with the automation of API test cases

•  Experience in testing code level functionalities and ensure test accuracy

•  Certified team of testers, QAs, ethical hackers

• Dedicated teams with expertise in industry-leading open source and commercial tools

• Custom test execution report with a rich interface delivered to all stakeholders

• Partnership with industry leaders such as UiPath, Tricentis, AccelQ, EggPlant, etc.

The post Why is API Testing Indispensable For Today’s Complex Apps? first appeared on TestingXperts.

1. API Testing Outlook in 2023 and Beyond
2. Benefits of API Testing in Agile
3. Key Features to Look for in an API Testing Tool
4. Top 10 API Testing Tools in Software Testing Industry
5. Conclusion
6. How Can TestingXperts Help Digital Businesses in the UK with API Testing?

API Testing Tools

As more and more organizations in the United Kingdom (UK) turn to Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to integrate their applications with other systems and environments, API testing is expected to be an essential part of software development in and beyond 2025. Api Testing Tools focuses on validating APIs’ functionality, performance, security, and reliability. The process also involves testing for compatibility with various browsers and devices.

As APIs become increasingly complex regarding features and functionality, testers in the UK must develop sophisticated test plans that cover all aspects of the API. The use of API testing automation tools is also expected to increase significantly in the coming years. Automated tests help reduce manual effort and improve test case coverage by running tests quickly across multiple environments. API testing tools also help detect errors earlier in the development process, reducing costs associated with fixing bugs later in the cycle.

Benefits of API Testing in Agile

API testing is an essential part of agile software development. It helps to ensure that the application is functioning as expected and allows developers to detect any issues that may arise during development quickly. Here are some key benefits of API testing in an agile environment:

Promotes Automation:

API testing is an ideal candidate for automation, saving manual testing time and effort. Automated tests can be run more frequently, allowing for faster feedback and quick fixes to any issues that may arise.

Improves Quality:

By testing APIs early and often, developers can quickly identify problems before they become significant issues. This helps to ensure a higher quality product is delivered on time and within budget.

Quickens Dev Cycles:

By running automated tests regularly, the Dev team can reduce the amount of time needed for debugging and bug fixing, resulting in shorter development cycles. This also helps to reduce costs associated with rework or delays due to bugs or compatibility issues.

Increases Team Collaboration:

API testing encourages collaboration between different teams, such as testers, developers, and operations personnel, who all need to work together to deliver a successful product on time.

Thorough Testing Coverage:

API testing provides comprehensive coverage of the application’s functionality and performance which helps to ensure that all areas of the system are tested thoroughly before it goes live.

Data Driven Testing:

Data-driven testing in API testing is a technique that involves using various sets of test data to validate the functionality, performance, and reliability of an API. With data-driven testing, testers can create multiple test cases that cover different scenarios and variations, allowing for more comprehensive test coverage.

Key Features to Look for in an API Testing Tool

Automated Testing:

API testing tool should be able to automate the testing process, allowing you to quickly and efficiently test your APIs. Automation helps reduce the time and money spent on manual testing, allowing you to focus on other aspects of product development.

Comprehensive Reporting:

A good API testing tool should provide extensive reporting capabilities that allow you to quickly analyze the results of your tests and identify any potential issues or areas of improvement. This will enable you to make informed decisions about improving your APIs.

Cross-Platform Support:

As more applications move towards a multi-platform approach, an API testing tool must support multiple platforms, including web, mobile, and cloud-based services. This ensures that your APIs are tested across all platforms and can work seamlessly with other services and products.

Security Testing:

Security is an essential part of any application or API service, so an API testing tool needs to include security tests in its suite of features. These tests should ensure that the APIs are secure from malicious attacks and protect user data from unauthorized access or manipulation.

Ease of Integration:

The best testing API tools should be easy to integrate with existing systems and processes, allowing developers to quickly set up tests without having to learn a complex new language or system architecture. This makes it easier for developers to start their projects quickly and ensure that their APIs are appropriately tested before launch.

Non-technical Friendly:

The API testing tools’ documentation should feature support for BDD conventions, enabling even the non-tech savvy stakeholders to understand the project details via easy-to-understand reports.

Top 10 API Testing Tools in Software Testing Industry

Following are some of the tools for testing API that QA engineers use:

Katalon Studio

Katalon Studio is an automated testing platform that helps users create comprehensive end-to-end tests quickly and easily with its integrated environment for API, Web UI, mobile app testing, and cross-browser compatibility testing.

Tricentis Tosca

Tricentis Tosca is an enterprise-level API test automation solution designed to help users create reliable tests faster than ever before by taking advantage of model-based test automation technology combined with AI-powered analytics capabilities.

Postman

Postman is a popular tool that automates API testing. It is one of the API loading testing tools that allow users to easily create complex requests, save them for reuse, and share them with others. It also includes features such as automated tests, response data validation, environment variables, and more.

SoapUI

It is an open-source web service testing tool ideal for service-oriented architectures (SOA) and representational state transfers (REST services). It provides complete test coverage, from functional to security testing, and supports all major protocols, including SOAP/WSDL, REST/JSON, and GraphQL.

Apache JMeter

Apache JMeter is an open-source load and performance testing tool used to analyze the performance of web applications under various load types. It can be used to simulate a heavy load on a server or network to test its strength or analyze overall performance testing under different load types.

Parasoft SOAtest

Parasoft SOAtest is an automated and open-source API testing tool designed to help organizations ensure the quality of their services through comprehensive functional, security, performance, regression & compliance tests across multiple environments & protocols with minimal effort & cost associated with manual QA processes.

Rest Assured

Rest Assured is an open-source Java library that can be used to automate RESTful Web Services using JSON or XML payloads to perform functional validation on the response received from the server-side application over the HTTP protocol(s), including secure HTTPS requests.

Apigee

Apigee is a cross-cloud API platform that enables developers to quickly design, deploy, secure, monitor, analyse and scale APIs. The platform provides tools for debugging, mocking, traffic management, quota management, analytics, etc.

Runscope

Runscope provides a suite of API monitoring tools that allow developers to check uptime and performance metrics like latency & throughput as well as run end–to–end API tests. The tool also allows teams to collaborate on API development & troubleshooting.

Assertible

Assertible provides continuous integration & deployment tools designed explicitly for API tests. The platform allows users to set up automated integration & regression tests which can then be monitored in real-time using dashboards & alerts.

Conclusion

API testing has become an essential part of software development in the United Kingdom and is expected to continue to grow in importance beyond 2023. It involves conducting performance, security, reliability, and functionality testing of APIs and their compatibility with various browsers and devices.

Today, the advancement of technology has led to apps becoming more complex in their architecture, featuring multiple layers. To ensure that these apps function correctly and provide a positive customer experience (CX), API testing must be conducted to validate different business layers to guarantee seamless applications. Digital businesses should seek services from next-gen testing service providers for fully functional business applications.

How Can TX Help Digital Businesses with API Testing?

TestingXperts (Tx) is one of the fifth largest global pure-play software testing services providers. Tx has been chosen as a trusted QA partner by Fortune companies and ensures superior testing outcomes for its global clientele. We have rich expertise in enabling end-to-end API testing services for international clients across various industry domains like healthcare, telecom, BFSI, retail & eCommerce, etc.

API Testing Services Offered

Unit testing

Utilized to check the functionality of individual APIs.

Functional testing

Employed to test end-to-end functionality of the API layer.

Load testing

Validates both functionality and performance for the system under various levels of user/transaction load.

Runtime error detection

Involves executing automated or manual tests to identify problems, such as exceptions and resource leaks.

Security testing

Includes a variety of security checks, such as penetration testing, authentication, encryption, and access control.

Web UI testing

Entails end-to-end testing of the entire system using APIs.

Contract testing

Used to check the interaction between client and API or server and to verify data exchanges between two parties.

Why Choose Testingxperts for API Testing Services

• TestingXperts is a Katalon Solution Partner Program member, enabling clients to deliver high-quality software faster by leveraging comprehensive DevOps and testing practices.

• Team of expert API testers with expertise in various protocols, including XML, SOAP, JSON, REST, Gdata, YAML, ATOM, RSS and RDF.

• QA engineers experienced in performing end-to-end application validations at all application levels.

• Certified team with extensive knowledge of code-level functionalities to ensure high test accuracy.

• Hands-on experience with industry-leading open source and commercial.

• Our custom test execution report provides stakeholders with a rich interface for easy access to results. Lastly, we partner with renowned organizations such as UiPath, Tricentis, AccelQ, EggPlant, and more.

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API testing challenges and how to overcome them

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The post Top 5 Challenges of API testing and how to overcome them? first appeared on TestingXperts.

APIs are helping businesses with everyday tasks and accelerate data sharing, resulting in a seamless interaction between external and internal applications. This improved speed and delivered business value. As more businesses develop and integrate APIs, there is an increased number of challenges and software application complexity because of the technology changes. This creates an incessant need for effective software testing.

API Testing Overview

API testing involves testing APIs directly as a part of integration testing to ensure APIs meet requirements at various levels such as, Functionality, Integration, Reliability, Performance and Security of an application.

Potential testing needs at API level

For businesses, to forge strategic business partnerships, bring innovation and growth to the next level, it is important to have effective API testing strategies in place. API testing mainly focuses on a Business Logic layer. It ensures businesses provide truly secure, scalable reliable connections and transactions between external platforms or businesses.

Types of API Testing:

Unlike User Interface testing (GUI), which tests the interface part of an application with a key focus to test the look and feel of it, API testing tests the entire business layer of an application. It involves the following types of software testing or practices.

1. Functional Testing

It tests the functionality of a broader range of scenarios to validate whether the API functions work as expected.

2. Integration Testing

It tests third-party applications integration, validates it and exposes a range of faults during the integration as well as interaction between external applications.

3. Automation Testing

It leverages a tool to speed up the API testing process, removes human error, and supports DevOps & CICT Continuous Integration and Continuous Testing. Among various API testing, Functional API testing is a common test that is automated. Whereas automation can be applied for both Performance API Testing and Security Testing.

4. Performance Testing

It determines the number of requests an end-point can handle in API, calculates the response time of API, and validates the overall API performance by considering every instance as a part of integration testing.

5. Security Testing

It ensures that the integration and implementation of API is secure from external threats. Also, it assesses session management and finds potential vulnerabilities from external sources.

Benefits of API testing in B2B landscape:

1. Faster execution

Because API tests are faster in terms of execution, they can be done during the development stage rather than slightly at the end stage. This provides an early evaluation and early detection of errors in an application.

2. Reduces testing costs

API test provides faster results and offers maximum test coverage. It identifies bugs at early stage and thus, helps reduce the overall project cost.

3. Technology independent

The data transfer modes in API testing are completely technology/language independent, allowing enterprises to automate their API testing for their application by selecting any core language.

4. A wide range of API testing tools

There are a wide range of API testing tools that present a friendly GUI (Graphical User Interface) for constructing requests and reading responses, a few of them include: JMeter, Test Manager, Eclipse IDE, Robot Framework, Postman, and more.

Conclusion:

Since APIs are the core element in today’s ecosystem, companies need to invest in building API tests more than end-user or UI level tests. Companies need to ensure the right way to implement APIs that can cut costs, bring efficiency and boost the bottom line.

At TestingXperts, we combine test automation with Artificial Intelligence to ensure seamless business transactions and ultimately help enterprises to deliver products that are error-free and meet customer expectations.

The post Enabling Seamless B2B Transactions with Error-Free & Quality APIs first appeared on TestingXperts.

Open Banking is a technology-driven movement that is revolutionizing the financial services industry. It is based on the idea that banks should extend their customer experience abilities by integrating services and products offered by third-party providers.

As Open banking makes noise in the fintech industry by uplifting financial services, let’s discuss Open banking and its impact on the financial landscape.

What is Open Banking?

Open Banking refers to banks’ extended capability to securely share customers’ financial data with third-party providers via APIs. Open banking aims to elevate the customer experience by giving them more choices and governance over their finances.

It can be said that open banking is an open data model wherein customer data, with their consent, is shared with different stakeholders across the banking environment. Third-party providers have access to this data in the form of transactions, fund checks, commencement of credit transfers, and so on.

How is open banking reshaping the financial landscape?

Earlier, consumers had access only to the products and services offered by the banks. With open banking, consumers can tap into a diverse range of products and services provided by different banks and financial institutions.

Since open banking allows sharing customer data with third-party providers, these providers can proactively develop and launch new and customized products and services that cater to the specific needs of consumers. As a result, consumers get a more personalized experience tailored to their individual needs.

The benefits of open banking continue beyond the consumers. Financial institutions also leverage open banking to access the latest range of financial products and services that may grow their business and help them strive in the competitive market. Along with accessing third-party products and services, consumer data can be utilized to create new products and services.

What are Open Banking APIs?

Open banking APIs are the bridge that moves consumer data from a bank’s database to the service providers. This allows the bank to offer a comprehensive range of services, payment plans, and financial products tailored to each customer. Banks can develop their own unique APIs, linking them to external APIs to create a customer-centric financial ecosystem.

How are Open Banking APIs reshaping the banking experience for customers?

Smarter customer onboarding:

Knowing your customer is always important, but in some industries, verifying accounts and identities is essential to doing business. Open banking APIs let companies check the authenticity of customers’ information. This accelerates KYC processes and cuts down process complexity and cost.

Better understanding of customers’ needs:

A personalized customer experience is a great customer experience. Data APIs give more information about users’ finances and habits, allowing finance product companies to offer tailored services.

Lower fees:

Processing payments can be a pricey proposition, but open banking takes cost out of the equation for merchants. Payment APIs lack both the transaction fees and operational costs of other methods. Businesses can save up to 80% on fees compared to cards.

Faster settlement:

Waiting for funds to settle is an inconvenience many businesses hope to avoid. While cards and Direct Debit payments can take days for funds to settle, open banking APIs facilitate instant processing and settlement, ensuring that companies receive their money when needed.

Evidently, for open banking APIs to deliver acclaimed benefits to customers and financial institutions, effective API testing is required for end-to-end testing of open banking APIs.

Why is API testing critical for Open Banking apps?

When it comes to open API testing, banks must guarantee that integrations are completed and tested as thoroughly as possible. Banks will primarily need to validate API queries’ data response and behavior during API testing. Financial institutions will necessitate the design and testing of APIs that are aligned with essential business logic and procedures. Banks can automate most API testing, including functional testing, data validation, and regression testing. Here are some facts and figures highlighting how the BFSI sector, especially the banking sector, needs API testing service.

• According to Markets and Markets, “the global API testing market size is estimated to rise to USD 1,099.1 Million in 2022, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 69% during the forecast period.”

• Allied Market Research shows that the global open banking market is expected to reach $43.15 billion by 2026

• As of November 2021, the open banking ecosystem in the UK comprised more than 330 regulated firms

• The BFSI vertical is predicted to develop at the fastest rate in the API testing market by the end of 2022

6 Important Open banking testing techniques

API Testing:

Ensures that banking APIs are working as expected and efficiently handles failures by responding with the respective status codes

Security Testing:

Ensures that the banking APIs effectively perform authentication and authorization

Data Validation:

Ensures that input data such as account information, transaction details, real-time batch process details, etc. can be accessed through the interface

Integration Testing:

Ensures that all integration touchpoints of the banking API are validated to find and fix any issues

Performance Testing:

Ensures that the application is stable, scalable, and consistent under expected loads

Compliance Testing:

Ensures that the third-party providers adhere to the defined policy or regulation before they are permitted to integrate with the banking APIs

Future of API-powered Open banking: Banking-as-a-Service

Open banking APIs enable financial service providers and firms to enhance their service offerings, enhance and customize their customer engagement models, and generate new revenue channels. By embracing the capabilities of open banking through APIs, financial institutions can see themselves as banking-as-a-service providers.

Banks should look for services that can be realized with APIs. For open banking to be effective, financial services providers should strive to future-proof their innovation by leveraging effective API testing services that ensure agile, adaptable, and secure APIs, and revolutionizing the banking customer experience.

Conclusion

As more and more financial institutions look to optimize their customer experience regarding facilities and security, API testing has become a necessary aspect of open banking. API testing is critical for open banking because its products are evolving rapidly. Therefore, third-party providers may not consider API testing a one-time task. API testing for available banking apps and services calls for continuous testing to ensure that product or service APIs meet compliance and performance goals as API flows and integrations evolve with the financial revolution.

Why Choose Tx for API testing services?

Tx offers comprehensive API testing services to validate business apps. With extensive experience in offering state-of-the-art QA testing solutions for banking and financial institutions, we provide better products, services, and superior customer experience to ensure quality, transparency, and cost-effectiveness.

Tx offers the following API testing services:

Unit testing – for checking the functionality of individual APIs

Functional testing – For testing end-to-end functionality of the API layer

Load testing – For validation of functionality and performance for the system under various levels of user/ transaction load

Runtime error detection – Execution of Automated / Manual tests to identify problems, such as exceptions and resource leaks

Security testing – Involves various security checks like penetration testing, authentication, encryption, and access control

Web UI testing – End-to-end testing of the entire system using the APIs

Contact our experts now to know more about API testing services.

The post Why is API Testing Critical for Open Banking Apps? first appeared on TestingXperts.

1. How do APIs Work in FinTech?
2. Use Cases of API Integration in FinTech
3. Benefits of API Integration in FinTech
4. Conclusion
5. Why Partner with TestingXperts for API Testing?

The financial industry is witnessing a rapid digital revolution with the fusion of technology and finance, also known as FinTech. It is restructuring how financial services are delivered and digitally transforming traditional banking practices. API integration is one such technology trend that’s addressing the rising demand for interconnected and efficient financial services. APIs are becoming the backbone of modern FinTech practices, allowing the seamless integration of multiple financial services, leading to an agile, customer-friendly business environment.

The rise in API integration into the FinTech industry depends on various factors, such as the shift towards digital banking, which necessitates implementing interconnected systems into financial services. APIs make it possible by enabling multiple services and software to communicate effectively, filling the gap between traditional banking practices and FinTech innovations. APIs also facilitate the implementation of electronic payment systems, enabling secure and seamless transactions across multiple platforms. According to a report, in Europe, API marketplace growth will grow at a CAGR of 17.4% till 2030. This trend is supported by digital payments becoming more common, and the API platforms supporting this transition are in high demand. But for a successful API integration, businesses need a robust and scalable testing strategy that could provide them with better ROI.

How do APIs Work in FinTech?

Before knowing how FinTech APIs work, let’s understand what these are and why they exist. FinTech or banking APIs are the standardized protocols that enable secure communication between mobile devices and bank servers. They allow users to connect with banking personnel through a mobile app and a stable internet connection. Let’s take an example of a finance application. It uses Open Banking API to connect with the bank and fetch the user account balance in real-time. The complex process that allows such procedures to work seamlessly depends on APIs’ advanced functionalities. Now let us look into how APIs work in FinTech:

Step-1 Request and Authentication:

When a user performs an online transaction or uses a FinTech application, a request is generated. Then the banking API asks for authentication to ensure security, which includes passwords, tokens, keys, fingerprints, or other credentials to verify the user’s permission and identity.

Step-2 Retrieval and Processing of Data:

APIs forward the authentication request to the FinTech server or system, and the data processing starts. It involves accessing databases, calculations, and interacting with third-party services such as payment processors or banks.

Step-3 Exchanging Information:

After the completion of processing and obtaining necessary data, the FinTech application responds back via API. The response includes user information, transaction details and confirmation, financial information, etc.

Step-4 Data Integration:

On the receiving end, the mobile application integrates data into the user interface to display the details on the screen. The user can verify the details or perform other additional actions such as viewing the remaining balance, checking for transaction details, etc.

Step-5 Security and Error Handling:

API integration requires the implementation of robust security measures like encryption protocols to protect sensitive financial data. Additionally, FinTech APIs have robust error-handling mechanisms to handle incorrect request errors, validation errors, and server failures.

Step-6 Continuous Monitoring of APIs:

The last step in the working of APIs is the continuous monitoring of API-based banking usage. This step is necessary to ensure APIs’ optimal performance and that the integration process adheres to security standards and regulatory requirements.

Use Cases of API Integration in FinTech

APIs in FinTech offer numerous benefits to app developers and customers and serve as a crucial aspect in various applications, from ensuring regulatory compliance to enhancing customer experience. Following are some of the use cases of APIs in transforming the financial sector:

Online Payments and Transactions:

APIs in FinTech facilitate online payments and transactions. They enable peer-to-peer money transfers, real-time payments, and various financial transactions in a secure and convenient environment, enabling users to transfer money anywhere in the world seamlessly. For example, PayPal, one of the leading online payment platforms, offers a set of APIs allowing engineers and merchants to accept customer payments.

Fraud Prevention and Risk Management:

One of the important use cases of APIs is that they can integrate with multiple data sources and analytics tools, prevent fraud, and allow businesses to manage and monitor risks more efficiently. FICO, one of the leading credit scoring and analytics software providers, develops APIs that allow businesses to integrate with fraud detection and prevention tools, facilitating real-time monitoring and analytics.

APIs in Insurance:

APIs in the insurance industry help streamline processes and improve customer experience. They also improve the underwriting and claims processing by making them faster and more accurate. For example, Lemonade, one of the leading digital insurance providers, uses APIs to access various data sources (public records and social media data), assess risk, and underwrite policies.

Access to Account Details:

APIs offer real-time access to account details such as balance, transaction history, account statement, and other financial data, allowing businesses and customers to manage their finances and make informed decisions carefully. For instance, Mint, a finance management app, uses APIs to connect with customer’s bank accounts to provide real-time details of their balances and transactions.

Checking Credit Scores and Loan Lending:

APIs can automate loan lending and underwriting processes by allowing financial institutes to check credit scores accurately and quickly in real time and make lending decisions. LendingClub, for instance, is a peer-to-peer lending platform that uses APIs to connect borrowers with investors directly through the platform.

Benefits of API Integration in FinTech

Integrating APIs with the FinTech industry brings various benefits, transforming how financial services operate and improving user experience. They easily cater to the evolving digital transformation needs, providing more agile, user-friendly, and efficient financial services. Following are some of the benefits of API integration into the FinTech industry:

• Integrating APIs with finance processes allows the creation of personalized and seamless financial services. They support real-time account updates, personalized customer support, and much more.

• API Automation and seamless data exchange reduce manual efforts and errors, improving operational efficiency, cost savings, and faster service delivery.

• API integration facilitates the implementation of security measures such as advanced authentication and encryption mechanisms, thus ensuring the privacy and safety of users’ personal and financial data.

• FinTech businesses can develop and deploy new services much faster and facilitate scalability and flexibility in their new business model and offerings.

• APIs automate and streamline the compliance process by allowing finance companies to easily adhere to regulatory requirements and securely handle data reporting and compliance activities.

• APIs allow collaboration between FinTech startups, financial institutions, and other stakeholders, leading to market expansion as they leverage each other’s services to offer advanced services to customers.

Conclusion

The digital transformation of the finance industry, led by FinTech, is changing the delivery process of financial services. API integration is playing a vital role in this transformation by facilitating the rising demand for efficient and interconnected services. APIs enable the integration of various financial services, thus promoting an agile, customer-centric business infrastructure. They are also playing a key role in bridging the gap between the traditional banking and FinTech industry. But in order to successfully integrate APIs within FinTech infrastructure, businesses need a robust and scalable API testing solution. In the modern technological age, it becomes crucial for finance businesses to partner with a reliable QA partner who can help them seamlessly integrate API within their operations.

Why Partner with TestingXperts for API Testing?

For organizations that want to adopt modern architecture including Mobile and Cloud services, investing in API integration is a crucial step. With the architecture following certain protocols, such as XML, SOAP, REST, and others, the big question is, “How do you validate the finance applications?” TestingXperts offers a wide range of API testing services for the FinTech sector, which includes the following:

• Our QA experts check the functionality of individual APIs and test the end-to-end functionality of the API layer.

• Our security testing involves various security checks like authentication, access control, penetration testing, and encryption.

• Our web UI testing offers end-to-end testing of the entire system using the APIs.

• Expertise in a wide range of API protocols like XML, SOAP, JSON, REST, Gdata, YAML, ATOM, RSS, RDF, etc.

• End-to-end application validation experience at various layers of the application.

• Expertise in leading industry tools for API testing for functional, load, and security testing.

• Automation of API test cases.

To know more, contact our QA experts now.

The post How is API Integration Transforming the FinTech Industry? first appeared on TestingXperts.

1. Understanding Black Box Testing
2. Why Black Box Testing is Essential for AI Systems
3. Black Box Testing Principles for AI Systems
4. Common Challenges in Black Box Testing for AI
5. Conclusion
6. How Can TestingXperts Help with AI Testing?

According to a study, 35% of businesses have already integrated AI into their operations, while an additional 42% are actively researching its potential for future implementation. Yet, despite this surge in AI adoption, many do not know about the inner processes of these systems, leading to potential pitfalls in reliability and performance. But how can companies ensure their AI systems are dependable and free from bugs when the inner workings are inaccessible? That is where black-box testing for AI comes in.

Understanding Black Box Testing

Black Box Testing examines how a system responds to inputs without delving into internal mechanisms. Imagine giving a sealed puzzle box a shake; the user will be more interested in its sound than the hidden pieces. QA engineers assess software based on its functionality and observable behaviours in this approach. They don’t need to know the underlying code or structures. By concentrating on outputs and user experience, Black Box Testing ensures that software meets users’ needs and expectations while the complexities of its design and operation remain undisclosed.

Why Black Box Testing is Essential for AI Systems

In a traditional software system, expectations are clear. There’s a defined input and a predicted output. However, AI systems present a new challenge with their learning capabilities and dynamic behaviours. AI is shaping our future, from healthcare diagnostics to autonomous vehicles. Given the stakes, it’s no surprise that ensuring these systems perform reliably is necessary. Black Box Testing offers an unbiased, objective mechanism to evaluate AI system performance. It isolates performance from the complexities and potential biases embedded deep within algorithms.

4 Black Box Testing Techniques for AI

Sense Application

This involves simulating AI logic outcomes over a specific timeframe and comparing them with real-world results. Doing this shows how the AI performs in real-world situations. Fine-tune the control variables and improve the results to pinpoint any inconsistencies. This method, often called Posterior Predictive Checks (PPC), entails simulating and contrasting data based on a model with observed data. Testers use posterior predictive checks to identify marked differences between genuine and simulated data.

Data Application

Think about testing as a rocket launch. Every control is tested against various parameters, such as weather, temperature, and pressure. Even a slight gust of wind can cause deviations. Similarly, ensuring that all potential variables are accounted for is crucial when trying AI logic. Choosing the optimal test data, which offers the most comprehensive coverage, will deliver superior results.

Learning Application

Before starting with black box testing, it’s essential to understand the functionalities under evaluation. The more in-depth data on these functionalities, the more effective test cases will be. This principle applies to AI logic too. Neural Networks, inspired by human brain functions, can learn AI logic, which in turn helps generate test cases. Experts train this neural network using test cases from the original AI platform, focusing only on the system’s inputs and outputs. Once trained, this network can evaluate the accuracy of output produced by AI.

Probability Application

While AI models often operate on a large scale, their “common sense” comes from accurate testing and training. It’s essential to pinpoint those regression test cases that thoroughly cover the AI’s abstraction. Fuzzy Logic approaches prove beneficial here, classifying which test cases to retest based on their likelihood of accuracy. This maximises regression testing coverage, ultimately enhancing the AI solution’s performance in real-world scenarios.

But why is Black Box Testing so crucial for AI?

Firstly, AI is dynamic. A report by Deloitte highlighted that nearly 32% of AI implementations experienced unexpected decision-making shifts in their first year, highlighting the need for rigorous testing.

Secondly, some people harnessing AI are AI specialists. The complex neural networks and deep learning models are as understandable for most users as a foreign language. They’re seeking results, not an algorithmic explanation. Black Box Testing, thus, ensures these users can trust the system’s outputs without drowning in the details.

Lastly, the AI market is booming. According to a report, it’s predicted to reach $190 billion by 2025. This surging demand compels a rapid-to-market approach. With its straightforward process, Black Box Testing helps businesses confidently deploy AI systems, assuring their clients of quality and reliability.

Black Box Testing Principles for AI Systems

The importance of rigorous testing must be balanced to make AI systems reliable, secure, and functional. Black Box Testing, a critical approach, offers insights into the functionality and reliability of these systems without delving into their complex internal mechanisms. Let’s look into five fundamental principles that facilitate effective Black Box Testing for AI systems, ensuring their robustness, ethical integrity, and usability.

Comprehensive Test Scenarios

The Importance of Diverse Testing Data

An AI is only as versatile as the data it trains on. By feeding diverse testing data, AI can perform confidently across multiple industries. A well-rounded AI system, refined through comprehensive Black Box Testing, often becomes a market differentiator.

Creating Test Cases that Reflect Real-World Use

AI operates in the real world. Hence, our test cases must mirror real-life scenarios. Businesses can confidently deploy solutions that resonate with users’ needs by ensuring our AI systems have been through life-like tests.

Balancing Randomness and Representativeness

It’s a delicate dance. While randomness uncovers unforeseen issues, representativeness ensures AI’s readiness for typical scenarios. A robust Black Box Testing strategy masterfully balances both, setting AI systems up for the expected and the unexpected.

Continuous Feedback and Iteration

The Iterative Nature of AI Development

AI development isn’t linear; it’s cyclical. It learns, adapts, and evolves. Recognising this fluidity, Black Box Testing should embrace an iterative approach, mirroring the dynamic progression of AI systems.

Incorporating Feedback Loops in Testing

By integrating continuous feedback loops in Black Box Testing, AI systems can refine themselves, allowing businesses to stay ahead of the competition and meet user expectations.

Evolving Test Scenarios with System Upgrades

As AI systems undergo upgrades, so must the test scenarios. This evolution guarantees that the AI, irrespective of its version or upgrade status, remains consistently dependable.

Independence of Testing Teams

The Value of a Fresh Perspective

A QA tester view often spots what developers might miss regardless of the development process. An independent Black Box Testing team brings this invaluable perspective, ensuring a comprehensive evaluation.

Setting Boundaries Between Development and Testing

By clearly distinguishing the development and testing processes, businesses can uphold the integrity and objectivity of Black Box Testing, delivering AI solutions that genuinely stand the test of time and scrutiny.

Ensuring Objectivity in Test Evaluations

Testing teams should operate independently of the development team to maintain this objectivity. It guarantees unbiased evaluations, ensuring AI systems are built right and built to excel.

Usability and Accessibility Focus

Focus On User Experience

Focusing on UX within Black Box Testing ensures that AI doesn’t just operate – it satisfies users, setting brands distinctly apart in the competitive marketplace.

Assessing Intuitiveness and Accessibility for Diverse User Groups

AI must cater to everyone in an inclusive world. Black Box Testing emphasises accessibility, ensuring AI systems fit well with everyone, from tech enthusiasts to complete novices.

Testing AI Interpretability and Explanations

Testing for AI’s ability to offer clear interpretations ensures users trust and understand their AI companions, bridging the human-AI divide.

Ethical and Unbiased Evaluation

The Risk of Biased AI Decisions

Black Box Testing proactively identifies and rectifies biases, safeguarding brand reputation and ensuring AI’s equitable treatment of all users.

Tools and Techniques to Identify and Mitigate Biases

Black Box Testing employs sophisticated techniques to analyse and address biases, ensuring AI deployments remain fair and representative.

Ensuring Ethical Use of AI through Rigorous Testing

Through rigorous Black Box Testing, businesses can ensure that their AI solutions uphold the highest ethical standards like safety, security, robustness, transparency, explainability, etc.

Common Challenges in Black Box Testing for AI

There are some challenges to deal with when it comes to checking how well Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems perform. Let’s talk about three of these issues and figure out how to handle them.

Handling Non-deterministic Outputs 

AI systems often produce non-deterministic outputs due to their ability to learn and adapt from vast datasets. This unpredictability poses a challenge in Black Box Testing, which aims to ascertain consistent outcomes. The solution is probabilistic approaches that handle uncertainty. It gauges the AI’s performance across varying results by designing test scenarios incorporating various possible outputs. This probabilistic nature of AI outputs enhances testing accuracy and mirrors these systems’ real-world complexity. 

Scalability and Automation Challenges 

The scale at which AI systems operate often surpasses manual testing capabilities. This calls for scalable and automated testing
processes. However, automating Black Box Testing for AI isn’t simple. These systems process vast amounts of data and execute complex algorithms, making test automation non-trivial. A comprehensive strategy involving unit testing, integration testing, and end-to-end testing is essential to address this. Automating the testing process while accounting for the complexity of AI operations ensures thorough coverage and frees up valuable human resources for higher-level analyses. 

Ensuring Coverage without Understanding Inner Workings 

Black Box Testing aims to assess a system’s functionality without delving into its inner workings. However, this raises the challenge of ensuring thorough coverage of the system’s capabilities. How can we test what we don’t entirely understand? The key is to adopt a scenario-driven testing approach. By creating diverse test scenarios exploring different facets of the AI’s behaviour, QA engineers ensure the system is rigorously evaluated. Collaborative efforts between AI experts and testing professionals play a pivotal role here, where domain knowledge confirms the creation of scenarios that push AI to its limits.  

Conclusion

Black Box Testing offers a transparent approach through which businesses can understand, evaluate, and refine AI systems. By assessing the AI’s inputs, outputs, and responses, they can uncover vulnerabilities, ensure ethical compliance, and validate the system’s adaptability. This testing methodology is not just about ticking boxes; it’s about instilling confidence in AI systems that drive innovation, enhance efficiency, and augment human capabilities.

How Can TestingXperts Help with AI Testing?

TestingXperts, a leading QA company in software testing solutions, brings its expertise and innovation to AI Testing. Our commitment to excellence, coupled with a deep understanding of AI complexities, sets us apart as your trusted partner in navigating the challenges of AI testing.

Key Differentiators

Expertise in AI Testing

With a dedicated team of experienced professionals well-versed in AI technologies and testing methodologies, TestingXperts brings deep knowledge to every testing project. Our specialists understand the processes of AI systems, enabling them to design targeted testing strategies that uncover vulnerabilities and ensure optimal performance.

Comprehensive Black Box Testing

By examining AI systems from the outside, we assess their functionality, performance, and security without knowing the complicated internal workings. This approach ensures unbiased evaluations and robust validations of your AI’s outputs.

Complete Test Coverage

At TestingXperts, we believe in a holistic testing approach. We go beyond the technical aspects to consider usability, accessibility, and ethical considerations. This comprehensive perspective ensures that your AI systems function flawlessly and align with industry standards and ethical guidelines.

Scalable Solutions

As AI applications scale, so does the complexity of testing. TestingXperts offers scalable testing solutions that adapt to your AI’s growth. Whether it’s handling large datasets, complex algorithms, or dynamic learning systems, our testing solutions keep pace with your AI’s evolution. 

Ethical AI Evaluation

Ethical concerns in AI are critical. Our testing methodologies encompass ethical UK regulations, ensuring your AI systems remain unbiased and fair across diverse user groups. We test AI outputs for potential ethical errors, contributing to the creation of AI that respects user diversity and societal norms. 

Tailored Testing Strategies

Our testing strategies are tailored to your specific requirements. Whether it’s financial AI, healthcare AI, or any other domain, TestingXperts AI testing processes will align with your industry, technology stack, and business goals.
 

To know more about AI testing strategies, contact our experts now. 

The post 5 Key Black Box Testing Principles for AI Systems first appeared on TestingXperts.

Contents

1. API Testing Overview

2. What are the benefits of API testing?

3. Challenges of API Testing

4. How to Overcome API Testing Challenges

5. What type of bugs are identified with API testing?

6. What are the tools for API testing?

7. Conclusion

API Testing Overview

The consumerization of IT is changing how applications are being developed. Rather than building a single, monolithic system installed on a server in a back office, modern applications are distributed within mobile devices and web browsers so users can gain access to services from anywhere and at any time. Modern applications are no longer autonomous; they comprise several service components tied together at runtime.

As a result, the end-user experience is not driven by the well-designed user interfaces we all use, but by application programming interfaces (APIs) that expedite interactions between applications, code modules, and back-end systems.

What are the benefits of API testing?

1. Completely Language-Independent:In API testing, there are several data transfer modes, the data can be exchanged using JSON or XML. Since these languages are used for development and are technology-independent, the teams can select any core language while performing the API tests.

2. Helps for Integrated User Experience: With API, embedding the content from any application or website is easier. This way of ease in delivering information is an important benefit as it helps to maintain an integrated user experience.

3. Protects from vulnerabilities and code breakage: API testing effectively helps to eliminate the vulnerabilities with its excellent conditions and inputs. These help in protecting the application from vulnerabilities caused due to the insertion of unknown code or due to code breakage.

4. Reduces testing time: The methodologies of API testing are excellent to minimize the time consumption. Unlike validation and functional testing, API testing is faster in performing more number of tests.

5. Increases Developers Productivity: For writing any code, there are very few instances where the developers start from a scratch. While designing API, there is a code base provided to help the time consumption of developers in writing code. This existing code base helps in limiting the differentiation in the code among the developers and also eliminates the time needed for creating new code.

6. Faster results at less cost: In API testing, there is no need for using large codes. By using the lesser code which is less than the GUI automated tests, these tests help to provide easier and faster test results with better test coverage. This results in achieving faster results at reduced testing costs. Also, the faster detection of errors helps in reducing the cost involved for manual testing.

The API is the intelligence behind this connected world. APIs allow companies to become more agile, and to work together in an integrated manner. However, while testing APIs, testers face several units of work, making it challenging for the testers to test the APIs. Below are the four major challenges experienced while testing APIs along with and suggested solutions.

Challenges of API Testing

1) Use case propagation

Traditional UI testing is limited to the testing functionality of the overall application. A tester construes the output against expected outcomes after exercising an input. However, API testing follows a different approach. Being the central hub of logic and the gateway to data for interfacing applications, use cases are near-infinite in API testing. Consequently, the number of required tests rapidly exceeds the competences of the technical staff responsible for test case design.

2) Access to connected systems

APIs pull data from multiple APIs and back-end systems, in which the resulting architecture looks like the roots of a tree extending wide and deep. Thus, it’s impossible to have access to every environment on this tree. The emulation of inaccessible resources is the key to avoiding testing bottlenecks. However, the old way of building custom mocks is proving too challenging. Besides, they cannot emulate race conditions for comprehensive performance and load testing.

3) Synchronous and asynchronous methods

Modern applications are intricate, and one API can link several microservices and other APIs. Accordingly, a single call on an API can prompt ‘n’ number of serial and parallel activities. The intricacies of an API can thus grow exponentially as it is combined with other API calls. And this complexity multiplies as testers feature in the calling order of APIs in test case design. Consequently, testing APIs must be managed in both separate and nuclear units of work.

4) API versioning

Versioning is a primary cause of rising complexity in API testing. Most systems have a degree of depreciation, which should be managed by an API with the help of versioning. The API must identify missing values and allocate some default to allow the old version to work. Moreover, it can be the case that some versions are called by some versions but not others.

How to Overcome API Testing Challenges

To overcome the above-listed challenges, a modern approach should be adopted that enables you to automate API tests and integrate them into a continuous delivery cycle.

Phase I: Integration level Testing

The integration test phase will focus on service interfaces and will make sure interface behavior and information sharing are working as specified.

Phase II: Process/Orchestration Testing

This phase covers:

• Business logic
• Sequencing
• Exception handling
• Process decomposition (including service and process reuse)

Phase III: Security and Governance Testing

In this phase, SOA / API is combined with Government and Regulatory compliance, which is incorporated into the entire project life cycle. This phase comprises Quality of Service policies on Performance, Security, and Transactions.

• Regulatory policies
• Business policies
• Audit policies
• Infrastructure policies

Phase IV: System Level Testing

This test phase will cover whether the technical solution met the defined business acceptance criteria.

What type of bugs are identified with API testing?

Identifies bugs related to Authentication: With API testing, it is easier to trigger the bugs raised because of entering unacceptable characters in the apps authentication field. Though the bugs are not considered as severe for the application, it can sometimes lead to app destruction.

Resolves the issue of Browser Adaptability: For any application, browser adaptability is one of the important needs. If the application fails to respond to any browser, then it can lead to dissatisfaction among the users and affect the brand reputation. Hence, by adopting the methods of API testing, it becomes simpler to identify and resolve the issues related to the app’s ability across browsers.

Identifies configuration errors on all devices: It is necessary for the apps to be compatible across the devices. If the app is unable to meet any device resolution, then this can raise complications for the app’s future and user’s interest. With API testing, it becomes easier to find out whether the app is compatible across devices and browsers to target the audience.

Finds the bugs related to accessibility: Users always prefer apps that are user-friendly and provide a simplified understanding of the app usage. Hence, it is essential to know the importance of adding the menu, help, and search sections on the homepage. An easily accessible app is always a top choice for users.

What are the tools for API testing?

Open-Source API Testing Tools:

• JMeter
• Rest-Assured
• Karate DSL
• Citrus Framework
• Parasoft SOAtest
• Rest Assured
• Tricentis

Commercial API Testing Tools:

• Katalon Studio
• SoapUI
• Postman
• Apigee

Conclusion

Tx is proficient in a wide range of API protocols such as XML, SOAP, JSON, REST, Gdata, YAML, ATOM, RSS, and RDF, etc. Our end to end applications validation experience at various layers of the application helps in executing a successful API. Our expertise in leading industry tools for API testing for functional, load and security testing allows us to automate API test cases.

The post Top 4 Challenges of API Testing and How to Overcome Them first appeared on TestingXperts.

1. What is API Management?
2. 8 Ways API Management Secure Microservices Architecture
3. Using Azure API Management for Securing Microservices API
4. Why Partner with Tx to Secure Your Microservices API Architecture?
5. Summary

Microservices architecture is necessary for developing scalable and modernized applications in today’s interconnected digital world. Businesses are also increasingly depending on microservices architecture, making it necessary to secure each interaction. However, with the rising dependency, the challenges of managing and securing APIs are also increasing. According to statistics, unique API attacks increased by 60% from Q2 2025 to Q2 2026. APIs account for 83% of web traffic and are the prime target of cybercriminals. Now the question is, “What should businesses do to secure their microservices API?” Azure API management offers a comprehensive solution to address secure concerns and protect microservices API.

API management enhances security, streamlines operations, and improves scalability. It allows businesses to gain centralized control to monitor and manage all API interactions, ensuring every data exchange follows security protocols consistently. Let’s examine why implementing a comprehensive API management strategy is crucial to transforming microservices architecture into a scalable, secure, and efficient infrastructure.

What is API Management?

API management creates consistent and updated API gateways to support existing backend services. It allows businesses to create, disseminate, analyze, and document APIs securely and concisely. Organizations use API management to publish APIs to external and internal developers and maximize the value of their data and services. This process helps ensure that both internal and public APIs are secure and consumable. One example is the Azure API management platform, a hybrid, multi-cloud management platform for APIs across all environments. It supports the complete API lifecycle and falls under the category of platform-as-a-service.

The primary function of Azure API management is to facilitate a central interface for creating, setting up, and managing API for cloud and web applications and services. Businesses use Azure API Management to:

• Monitor APIs health

• Provide details about AI usage

• Rate limits on each API

• Identify errors

• Configure route-level throttling

8 Ways API Management Secure Microservices Architecture

API management is necessary for securing microservices architecture. It offers several key capabilities to improve security and ensure seamless communication between devices or services. Let’s take a look at some of the ways API management secures microservices:

• It allows businesses to handle authentication to verify users’ or services’ identities when trying to access microservices. The process involves using token-based systems like OAuth2, in which tokens are issued after successful authentication and used for subsequent authorization checks. Businesses can control the enforcement of authorization policies to ensure that users or services have the required permissions to perform particular actions on microservices.

• Leveraging API gateways can limit the rate at which requests are sent to microservices to prevent DoS attacks. It ensures businesses’ microservices are unaffected by too many requests, protecting the system from potential breakdown.

• API management solutions require utilizing secure communication protocols like HTTPS to encrypt data in transit between services. This ensures businesses protect their sensitive data from interception and unauthorized access as it moves across the network.

• API gateway acts as a single-entry point, providing additional security measures like SSL/TLS termination. Businesses can offload the responsibility of managing secure connections from microservices to gateways, which centralize and optimize security measures.

• API management tools monitor API traffic to detect and respond to unusual patterns indicating security threats. These threats could include repeated failed login attempts, a spike in bot traffic, or traffic from a particular source. This facilitates early detection and mitigation measures for potential security incidents.

• API management tools provide effective logging and auditing mechanics to allow businesses to track who accessed what services and when. This feature type is useful during post-incident analysis and to meet compliance requirements regarding data access and privacy.

• API management helps ensure that security updates do not disrupt service continuity by managing different API versions. It phases out all the deprecated APIs.

Using Azure API Management for Securing Microservices API

API management allows businesses to check APIs’ status, locate faults, configure throttling and set rate limits on each API. Microservices architecture helps develop scalable, modern apps but introduces security challenges due to numerous API interactions. As businesses increasingly depend on this architecture, securing APIs has become crucial. API management addresses the security requirements by offering centralized control over API interactions, enabling API management via authentication, secure communication protocols, rate limiting, etc. Azure API management further enhances this security framework by supporting the API lifecycle in a hybrid, multi-cloud environment.

To know how Tx can help you in securing your microservices architecture, contact our experts now.

Microsoft Azure offers a scalable platform for managing, handling, and securing microservices architecture by leveraging services and tools to support development, deployment, and API maintenance. Here’s how it plays a key role in securing and managing microservices.

API key Management

It offers API key capabilities to authenticate and authorize microservices API access. Businesses can generate unique API keys for each app or client and implement key-based authentication at the API gateway.

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

It streamlines Kubernetes’ deploying, managing, and operations, which helps orchestrate microservices. It offers features such as automated updates, self-healing, and scaling capabilities. AKS easily integrates with Azure Active Directory to offer network policies for managing and securing traffic flow between microservices.

OAuth 2.0 Authentication

It facilitates the implementation of OAuth 2.0 authentication for robust and secure access control. Businesses can easily integrate with identity providers, such as third-party OAuth providers or Azure Active Directory.

SSL/TLS Encryption

Businesses can enable SSL/TLS encryption to encrypt data in transit and ensure protection against man-in-the-middle and eavesdropping attacks. It supports SSL termination, allowing businesses to terminate SSL/TLS connections at the gateway to offload Azure microservices overhead. This, in turn, improves the scalability and performance of microservices while maintaining secure communication channels across servers and clients.

Azure DevOps

It supports CI/CD pipelines for microservices, facilitating secure development practices and rapid deployment of security updates and patches.

IP Filtering

Businesses can use Azure API management’s IP filtering capabilities to restrict access to microservices API based on IP addresses. It can whitelist trusted IP addresses and blacklist unsecured ones to improve security.

Virtual Networks and Network Security Groups

Azure supports creating private networks in the cloud while restricting access to resources via NSGs. Azure Firewall and NSGs create a secure environment for microservices by limiting outbound and inbound traffic to resources based on security rules.

Why Partner with Tx to Secure Your Microservices API Architecture?

As one of the leading digital QA and engineering companies, Tx is key in securing your microservices API architecture. We implement rigorous testing strategies and methodologies to identify vulnerabilities and ensure compliance with security standards. Here’s how we can contribute to securing your microservices API architecture.

• We offer comprehensive security assessments, including pen testing, security audits, and vulnerability scanning. This helps identify security vulnerabilities in API endpoints and mitigate your security risks before deployment.

• API contract testing for microservices architectures to ensure all APIs fulfill the agreed-upon specifications and interact correctly with other services.

• Load and stress testing to ensure your APIs handle a higher number of requests without affecting functional integrity and performance.

• Regulatory and compliance testing to ensure your APIs comply with legal requirements like GDPR and HIPAA. This prevents legal repercussions and improves end-user trust by protecting their data.

• We integrate our testing processes into the CI/CD pipeline to ensure every API update undergoes rigorous testing before deployment.

Summary

API management allows businesses to check APIs’ status, locate faults, configure throttling and set rate limits on each API. Microservices architecture helps develop scalable, modern apps but introduces security challenges due to numerous API interactions. As businesses increasingly depend on this architecture, securing APIs has become crucial. API management addresses the security requirements by offering centralized control over API interactions, enabling API management via authentication, secure communication protocols, rate limiting, etc. Azure API management further enhances this security framework by supporting the API lifecycle in a hybrid, multi-cloud environment.

To know how Tx can help you in securing your microservices architecture, contact our experts now.

The post How Does API Management Secure Microservices Architecture? first appeared on TestingXperts.

API automation testing has emerged as a critical component in the rapidly evolving software development business. It is clear from the expected rapid expansion of the API management market, which is predicted to grow by 34.42% annually. A clear example of the importance of this was seen in the healthcare industry in 2020. There, API usage increased by more than 400%, mainly due to the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. This highlights how crucial APIs have become in meeting the rising demands in various sectors, especially in critical times.

Furthermore, 56% of enterprise leaders acknowledge that APIs are instrumental in creating enhanced digital experiences and products. In comparison, 52% agree that APIs accelerate innovation by facilitating integration and collaboration with partners. API usage is also apparent in cloud-based software companies, with APIs accounting for 50% of their revenue, fixing their role in driving technological advancement.

However, alongside these advancements, challenges like API security remain significant concerns, with 48% of fintech companies highlighting this issue. Despite these challenges, the reliance on APIs is unmistakable, as evidenced by the fact that APIs power 57% of web applications and 56% of mobile applications. This trend is further supported by a 60% growth in API developers, reaching 4.1 million in 2020, indicating a clear shift towards API-centric development in the tech industry.

What is API Automation Testing?

API automation testing is used in software development to check whether an application’s APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) meet functionality, reliability, performance, and security expectations. This process involves automated testing tools to send API calls, get outputs, and record the system’s response. Unlike manual testing, which requires human intervention, automation testing executes these tests automatically, saving time and ensuring accuracy.

The main goal of API automation testing is to ensure that the interface functions correctly and interacts as expected with other software systems. This includes verifying that the API handles requests and returns responses correctly, manages data effectively, and works seamlessly within the application’s ecosystem. It is an essential step in software development, especially for applications relying heavily on APIs for their functionality.

Common API Automation Testing Challenges

In software development, API automation testing faces several technical challenges. These challenges can impact testing processes’ efficiency, accuracy, and reliability. Understanding and addressing these challenges is crucial for successful API testing.

Parameter Combination and Sequence Issues:

APIs often require a specific sequence of operations with multiple parameters. Automating tests to validate these sequences and parameter combinations accurately is challenging. This complexity increases with the number of parameters and potential sequences, making designing tests that can effectively simulate various real-world scenarios vital.

Handling API Rate Limiting:

APIs typically impose rate limits to control traffic and ensure stability. Automated tests must recognize and respect these limits to prevent triggering false negatives, which can lead to misinterpretation of test results. This requires implementing logic in the automation framework to adapt to rate limiting, possibly by scheduling tests or dynamically adjusting call rates.

Diverse API Standards and Protocols:

With various API standards like REST, SOAP, and GraphQL, each having unique testing needs, it’s challenging to develop a universal testing strategy. REST APIs, for instance, require a different approach than SOAP APIs, especially regarding request formats, response handling, and endpoint security. Adapting automation frameworks to cater to these diverse standards is crucial for comprehensive testing.

Data Dependency and Statefulness:

Some APIs depend on specific data states to function correctly. Managing these dependencies in an automated testing environment is complex, requiring the tests to set up necessary data states before execution or handle stateful responses during runtime. This often involves intricate scripting and careful planning to ensure data consistency throughout the testing process.

Security and Authentication:

Secure communication and authentication, such as OAuth or API keys, are critical for API operations. Incorporating these security measures into automated tests adds an extra layer of complexity. Tests must be designed to authenticate correctly and verify that the API upholds security protocols under different scenarios.

Performance and Load Testing:

Evaluating API performance under high load conditions is essential but challenging. This involves creating tests that simulate heavy user traffic and data processing to assess response times, throughput, and reliability under stress. These tests should identify performance bottlenecks and ensure the API can handle the expected load.

Error Handling and Reliability:

APIs must be tested for their ability to handle erroneous inputs and unexpected conditions. This means creating automated tests that test for expected outcomes and deliberately introducing errors to evaluate the API’s error-handling capabilities and ability to return reliable, consistent responses.

Evolution and Maintenance:

As APIs evolve with new features or changes, automated tests must be regularly updated to remain relevant. This requires ongoing maintenance to ensure tests cover new functionalities and are adjusted for any changes in API behavior. It also involves version control and backward compatibility checks to ensure new changes do not break existing functionalities.

Lack of Documentation:

One significant challenge in API automation testing is the absence of comprehensive and precise documentation. This lack of proper documentation can lead to misunderstandings about the API’s functions, endpoints, and what kind of responses to expect. It makes it difficult for testers to understand the intended use and behaviors of the API, leading to less effective and efficient testing. Inadequate documentation can also hinder the creation of accurate test cases and increase the time required for understanding and testing the API.

Best Practices for Implementing API Automation Testing

Implementing best practices in API automation testing is crucial for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the testing process. These practices streamline the testing workflow and ensure the results are reliable and the APIs function as expected in different scenarios. Here are some key best practices:

Start Testing Early in the Development Cycle:

Integrating API testing early in the software development lifecycle is vital. This proactive approach allows for early detection of issues, making them easier and less costly to fix. Early testing can identify integration problems, inconsistencies in API design, and potential performance bottlenecks before they become major issues.

Prioritize Test Coverage:

Comprehensive test coverage is critical to test all aspects of the API, including various endpoints, data handling, error responses, and performance under different conditions. It’s important to ensure that the tests cover multiple scenarios, including edge cases, to fully assess the API’s robustness and reliability.

Automate as Much as Possible:

Automation is essential for efficiency and accuracy in API testing. Automating repetitive tasks like test case execution, data generation, and result logging reduces manual effort and minimizes the risk of human error. This approach also enables more frequent and consistent testing, which is crucial for maintaining high standards of API quality.

Implement Continuous Testing:

Continuous testing, integrated into the CI/CD pipeline, allows for immediate and ongoing assessment of the API’s performance as new code is merged. This practice helps quickly identify and address any issues introduced by recent changes, ensuring that the API remains stable and functional throughout development.

Focus on Real-world Test Scenarios:

Creating test cases that simulate real-world scenarios ensures that the API can handle practical use cases effectively. This includes testing under various network conditions, user loads, and different types of data input. Doing so allows businesses to better understand how the API will perform in its used environments.

Maintain a Modular and Reusable Test Suite:

Developing a modular and reusable test suite enhances efficiency. By breaking down tests into smaller, reusable components, you can easily update tests when API specifications change without having to rewrite the entire suite. This approach also facilitates more organized and manageable testing processes.

Regularly Update and Maintain the Test Suite:

Regular maintenance of the test suite is vital to cope with the ever-evolving nature of APIs. Keeping the test suite updated with the latest API changes, fixing any broken tests promptly, scripts version control, and refining tests for improved accuracy and performance are key aspects of this maintenance.

Monitor Performance and Security Continuously:

Consistent performance and security monitoring are crucial. Performance testing should evaluate the API’s response time, load handling capacity, and stability under stress. Security testing should ensure that the API is protected against common vulnerabilities and that data handling complies with relevant standards and regulations.

Proper Documentation:

Maintaining comprehensive and clear documentation is crucial for successful API automation testing. Proper documentation should detail all aspects of the API, including its endpoints, parameters, expected responses, and error codes. This not only aids testers in understanding and validating the API’s behavior but also ensures consistency and clarity across teams working on the project. Well-documented APIs facilitate smoother onboarding of new team members and contribute to more efficient testing processes.

Mocking and Virtualization:

Utilizing mocking and virtualization techniques is an effective strategy in API automation testing. Mocking involves creating a simulated API version that mimics its behavior, allowing testers to conduct tests even when the actual API is not fully developed or accessible. Virtualization goes a step further by creating a virtual environment that can emulate the real API’s network conditions, server responses, and data. These practices allow for early testing, parallel development, and handling various test scenarios without relying on the production environment. They help identify potential issues early in the development cycle, thus reducing costs and time to market.

Business Outcomes of Implementing API Automation Testing

Integrating API automation testing within a business’s development strategy marks a significant shift towards efficiency, quality, and competitiveness. This approach is not just about streamlining the testing process; it fundamentally transforms how businesses develop, deploy, and maintain their software applications. Here are the detailed outcomes:

Increased Efficiency and Productivity:

Automating API tests streamlines the testing process, allowing test scripts to run automatically and repeatedly without human intervention. This efficiency leads to shorter development cycles, enabling teams to focus on more innovative tasks. It also means that more tests can be conducted in less time, enhancing the overall productivity of the development team.

Improved Quality and Reliability:

Automated testing ensures a consistent and repeatable process, significantly reducing the chances of human error during testing. This consistency results in higher-quality APIs, as automated tests can easily detect flaws and inconsistencies. The reliability of software products improves because APIs are thoroughly tested under various scenarios, ensuring they work correctly in all situations.

Cost Reduction:

The initial setup of automated testing requires investment in tools and training. However, over time, it leads to substantial cost savings. These savings come from a reduced workforce for manual testing, a lower incidence of bugs and errors in production, and decreased downtime. Automated testing also minimizes the costs of delayed product releases and fixing bugs in live environments.

Enhanced Customer Satisfaction:

High-performing, reliable APIs lead to better user experiences. APIs that function flawlessly and handle user requests efficiently contribute to customer satisfaction. This is particularly important in today’s digital age, where user experience can significantly impact brand perception and loyalty.

Faster Time to Market:

Automated testing accelerates the testing phase of development, enabling quicker release cycles. This speed is crucial in a competitive market where delivering updates and new features rapidly can be a significant advantage. Companies can respond faster to market changes and user feedback, keeping them ahead in the race for innovation and customer satisfaction.

Better Risk Management:

Automation allows for extensive and rigorous testing, covering more scenarios, including edge cases. This comprehensive testing helps identify potential issues and risks early in the development cycle, reducing the likelihood of post-release failures. It also ensures that APIs can handle various stress conditions, safeguarding against system crashes and data breaches.

Data-Driven Insights:

Automated testing tools often come with analytics and reporting capabilities. They provide detailed logs, error reports, and performance metrics, offering insights into the API’s behavior and areas for improvement. This data is invaluable for continuous improvement and informed decision-making in the software development process.

Scalability and Flexibility:

Automated testing frameworks are designed to be scalable and adaptable. They can accommodate changes in API specifications and handle increased loads without a significant overhaul. This scalability ensures that as the business grows and its software needs evolve, the testing processes can grow and adapt accordingly without compromising quality or efficiency.

Conclusion

In conclusion, API automation testing is vital in modern software development, addressing numerous challenges such as parameter combinations, rate limiting, and diverse API standards. Best practices like early testing, comprehensive coverage, and continuous integration enhance efficiency and reliability. The business outcomes of this approach, including increased productivity, cost reduction, and improved customer satisfaction, underscore its significance. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, API automation testing remains a crucial strategy for businesses to maintain quality, agility, and competitiveness in the market. This approach optimizes technical processes and drives overall business growth and success.

How Can Tx Help with API Automation Testing?

Tx is a trusted API automation testing partner that offers specialized services to enhance your software development lifecycle. With an expert team and advanced tools, Tx provides comprehensive API testing solutions that are efficient, reliable, and scalable.

Expertise and Experience:

Our team comprises highly skilled professionals specializing in API testing. Their extensive experience across various sectors allows them to understand and cater to industry-specific testing needs. This ensures that we can adeptly handle complex API testing challenges, tailoring their approach to meet the unique demands of each project.

Customized Testing Strategies:

Recognizing the unique nature of each project, we don’t rely on a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, we develop customised testing strategies that align with your business objectives and the specific technical complexities of your project. This bespoke approach ensures a more effective and relevant testing process, directly addressing your APIs’ distinct challenges and requirements.

Advanced Tool Utilization:

Our approach involves using cutting-edge automation tools and technologies, which allow us to handle complex test scenarios efficiently and accurately. Using these modern tools enhances the precision of the testing process, ensuring high reliability and effectiveness in the test results.

Focus on Security and Compliance:

Tx strongly emphasizes security and regulatory compliance. We incorporate security testing protocols to ensure your APIs are functional and secure against potential threats. Our testing processes are designed to ensure that APIs comply with all relevant industry standards and regulations, providing peace of mind and protecting your data and systems.

In-house Accelerators:

Our in-house accelerator, Tx-Automate, streamlines the testing process for efficiency and speed, while Tx-HyperAutomate incorporates AI and machine learning to enhance testing capabilities. This includes predictive analytics for identifying potential issues and optimizing test cases. These tools represent our commitment to leveraging technological advancements for efficient Automation testing services.

To know more, contact our experts now.

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