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How Data Engineering Can Actually Bring Your Cloud Bill Under Control

Software Testing Magazine — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 06:49:36 +0000

Cloud platforms have made it easier than ever for organizations to scale data processing, analytics, and AI initiatives. But with that flexibility comes a challenge: costs can quickly spiral out of control. Many companies find themselves paying for unused resources, inefficient pipelines, and poorly optimized workloads. While cloud providers offer the infrastructure, it is data engineering that determines how efficiently that infrastructure is used. A well-designed data engineering strategy can significantly reduce cloud costs—without compromising performance or scalability. The Real Reason Cloud Costs Get Out of Hand Cloud spending is often not driven by a single large expense, but by many small inefficiencies that accumulate over time. These include: Overprovisioned compute resources Inefficient data pipelines Redundant data storage Unoptimized queries Lack of monitoring and cost visibility Without proper oversight, these issues remain unnoticed until monthly bills start increasing. Optimizing Data Pipelines for Efficiency One of the most effective ways to reduce cloud costs is by improving how data pipelines are designed and executed. Poorly structured pipelines often process more data than necessary, run too frequently, or use excessive compute power. Data engineering helps optimize these workflows by: Scheduling jobs based on actual business needs Reducing unnecessary data transformations Implementing incremental processing instead of full reloads Eliminating redundant steps These improvements ensure that resources are used only when needed, directly lowering compute costs. Right-Sizing Infrastructure Cloud environments offer flexibility, but that flexibility can lead to overprovisioning. Many organizations allocate more resources than required “just in case,” leading to wasted spend. Data [...]

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Streamline Quality Assurance Processes with Next-generation Test Management Tools

Software Testing Magazine — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 17:11:24 +0000

The challenges faced by QA teams can lead to delays and missed issues in software development. But AI-powered test management tools provide a way of improving efficiency, visibility, and overall software quality. Author: Andrian Budantsov, Hypersequent, qasphere.com Quality Assurance is a safety net for software companies. But it’s more than just a goalkeeper; QA teams have an important role to play at each step of the software development cycle, covering every iteration, update and release. However, many QA teams still struggle with inefficient processes, miscommunication with development and management teams, and tools that aren’t fit for purpose. But this doesn’t have to be the case, as QA test management solutions designed for teams who care about reliability, speed, and usability are available. Let’s break down some of the key challenges faced by QA teams – and how the right tools can solve them. Tedious test case creation Writing test cases manually from scratch is laborious, requiring a great deal of time and effort. As well as being slow, errors can be introduced in the writing process and during maintenance of test case libraries. There’s also a risk of duplication, missed edge cases, and inconsistencies between tests. (click on picture to enlarge it) AI-based suggestions can significantly reduce the manual workload. Next-generation test case management platforms like QA Sphere assist teams by suggesting test cases based on requirements or specifications, helping to accelerate the drafting process. In addition, these AI tools can handle direct input – updating steps, rewriting test cases, [...]

The post Streamline Quality Assurance Processes with Next-generation Test Management Tools first appeared on Software Testing Magazine.

Ensure Optimal Application Performance with Load Testing

Software Testing Magazine — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 15:59:35 +0000

Ensuring your applications perform optimally under various conditions is crucial in today’s digital landscape. Load testing is a critical aspect of performance testing because it helps organizations identify and mitigate performance bottlenecks ensuring a seamless experience for your users. In this whitepaper, we’ll explore the fundamentals of load testing focusing on the capabilities and benefits of using a powerful load testing tool like LoadView to help foster your load testing initiatives. Author: Kevin Pham What is Load Testing? Load testing is a subset of performance testing used to simulate real-world load on your software applications to determine the behavior if your application is under expected user loads. The main goal is to identify performance issues before your application reaches production. Understanding load testing and its importance is the key to implementing it into your existing workflows so that you can ensure your applications are performing optimally. Load testing is important because it ensures that your application can handle any expected traffic without performance degradation. It also identifies potential points of failure under various conditions. Load testing is also important for scalability as it helps organizations plan for their infrastructure needs based on user load predictions. Finally, load testing prevents any costly downtime and performance issues post-deployment which creates a better user experience and creates cost efficiency. Types of Load Testing Load Testing vs. Stress Testing vs. Performance Testing Load Testing: A type of testing that focuses on testing your application under expected load conditions. Stress Testing: The type of testing [...]

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Improve your Software Quality Process with Test Data Management

Software Testing Magazine — Tue, 03 May 2022 13:15:10 +0000

Software quality assurance is more dependent on test data than we all would like. You can’t escape it anymore: you need to do something with test data management. Why? Because without proper test data management you lose valuable time that is already scarce. Author: Nynke Hogeveen, DATPROF, https://www.datprof.com/ Waiting times for a test data refresh are long; on average QA teams have to wait 6 days before they have their refreshed test set. Another problem that arises in the absence of test data management is that in many organizations multiple teams are working on the same test database. One team makes adjustments to the data which often results in corrupted test data for the other team. And let’s not forget about privacy sensitive data, which is still used (unprotected) far too often. Although it is clear that it is not allowed to use personally identifiable information for testing purposes, many organizations fail to do anything about data protection. It is time to turn things around. Let’s tackle the test data issues so it can work to our advantage, instead of against us. Data protection The first step is to make sure there’s no personally identifiable information in your test environments. There are different ways to do this. You can copy and mask your production data with the help of a data masking tool like DATPROF Privacy. With the help of built-in masking rules and synthetic data generators you create a test dataset with reliable and recognizable data that doesn’t lead to a natural person. [...]

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Come To Our Great SQA Job Portal – Qualitician

Software Testing Magazine — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 13:30:36 +0000

In this era where everything is going digital, job roles are evolving too. There are new functions going online, more apps being developed for different tasks and for leisure. Technology is evolving at a pace faster than ever. With this, the role of QA is evolving too. Software quality assurance provides confidence to go live to customers. In today’s digital world, where time to market is the biggest factor of a product’s success, QA methodologies are evolving and fusing with other roles in the product life cycle. Due to this, it is very important to hire an appropriately skilled software tester for the role. Along with technology, QA role focuses on documentation, processes and at some point, merges with a Business analyst role too. The exact roles and responsibilities of your QA engineer will depend on how your team is set up. Here are some of the ways a QA engineer may interact with the team and contributes to the project, QA engineers participate in planning meetings to discuss proposals and software improvements. They provide input around the challenges of delivering projects, provide testing inputs, help set testing standards and develop evaluation methods for the work. While the software is in development, QA engineers continuously do static testing thinking from customer point of view (End-to-end). They can make or request code or design changes and ensure that integrations with other software work smoothly. Before the software release, QA engineers conduct multiple tests against the exit criteria and using different approaches [...]

The post Come To Our Great SQA Job Portal – Qualitician first appeared on Software Testing Magazine.

Best Features to Look for in API Testing Tools

Software Testing Magazine — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 07:25:20 +0000

Testing is an important activity of the deployment an API. This article shares some tips on how to choose an API testing tool with the right features for your organization requirements of your APIs as well as your business processes. Author: Ron Evan One of the most important software components in any application is the API layer. This is because it connects the client to a server and powers communication and the exchange of data between them. The API layer is also responsible for driving business processes and offering services that bring value to consumers. When an organization deploys a customer facing API, the organization is supposed to treat the API as a product on its own. This is because if such an API has performance issues, it is going to not only risk the operations of a single application but the entire business operations in that organization. Image source: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/software-window-maintenance-3663509/ API Testing This is what makes API testing important. The right way to test an API depends on an organization’s requirements. However, proper API testing should be done at the integration or the service level. Organizations should make sure that they have a good set of unit tests to cover all the functions of the API. API tests make the process of simplifying security, business logic, and compliance straightforward. They (API tests) are fast compared to other software tests and give a high return on investment since they ensure that business operations are not interrupted. There are different ways of [...]

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Minimizing Risks in QA Outsourcing

Software Testing Magazine — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 13:18:02 +0000

You have to assess the risks and the benefits of every decision you make in software testing and quality assurance. In this article, Sandra Parker explains how to minimize the risks of outsourcing your software QA activities. Author: Sandra Parker Hiring a third party to handle specific jobs within a company, especially in the IT industry, is no longer to surprise anyone. Outsourcing is already widely applied in different areas of business. Even those employers who are still confused about whether to outsource or not, do not stay away from working with international companies, providing professional software testing outsourcing services specifically. Why? Outsourcing QA is one of the most cost-effective decisions a business can make. If you need to save resources on space and equipment, outsourcing software testing can be a solution. It serves for faster and more efficient results too. Even though it has its pitfalls and risks. Outsourcing in QA First, let’s make it clear what QA outsourcing is. Outsourcing is giving a project to a service provider company that handles the execution of that particular project and hires talents if it is required. Thus, the client does not bother with any details within the project. Do not confuse outsourcing with outstaffing. Outstaffing is a type of employment when an employee carries his/her duties in a company while being officially employed by an outstaffing company. An ourstaffing company provides you with QA specialists according to the list of requirements and job descriptions you have. Your main task as an employer [...]

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Software Crash That Interfered With COVID Vaccinations Could Be Prevented with PractiTest’s Software Testing Management Product

Software Testing Magazine — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 09:41:57 +0000

PractiTest, the leader in testing management solutions, announced that its newly-released testing automation management solution update could be used to prevent software crashes similar to the one experienced in Massachusetts when it opened up COVID-19 vaccination appointments to Priority Group 2 Phase 2 residents. PrepMod, the software developer behind Massachusetts’ online appointment booking system, experienced a software crash when the system saw high traffic volumes. The incident was the latest in a series of software misfortunes for PrepMod, spanning across the country. The company had previously experienced issues in incidents across Pennsylvania, Idaho, Maryland, and California. “Had PrepMod used our testing management tools, its decision-makers could have had the data they needed to determine whether their release was ready,” said Yaniv Iny, CEO at PractiTest. “The PractiTest platform was designed to help companies like them deliver reliable software products to the market.” The updated PractiTest offering is the only Application Lifecycle Management tool on the market today that combines the management of scripted, exploratory, and automated testing in one place, as well as capture both manual and automated testing in one place. The product enables R&D teams and managers to see a release’s full quality profile, benchmarking the current release to previous versions and pointing at the areas that may require improvements before releasing them to the field. Agile and DevOps development coupled with an accelerated digital transformation has created an environment where decisions on feature releases need to be made on a daily basis. However, R&D employees and their [...]

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