Parasoft Virtualize Reviews

We now have the ability to test our complex applications completely detached from integration middleware. This improves the reliability, speed, cost, and simplicity of testing.

MessageQueue support: Our infrastructure was designed with the ability to detach client systems via MessageQueue queue managers.

The Parasoft Service Virtualization product is very user friendly. While there are other products in the market that achieve similar results, most all are highly technical and require a fully technical background to execute. Parasoft's product is easier to operate, and drives the user to make the right decisions and complete the work efficiently. I'm not at all implicating that the product is not technical, because if you are a technical engineer with the background in scripting and working with such products, you can go 'under the hood' of the front end user interface and be as technical with Parasoft as any of their competitors.

I would have to say that the Environment Manager (EM) component is one of the cleanest, easiest, and most impacting part of the application. The graphical interface of the EM screen allows you to setup and configure a blueprint of your environments and within this same application, you can setup the EM screen to drive the activation/deactivation of the virtualized components. With one simple click, you can run the LIVE application/environment, or you can run the virtual instance, or you can drive the application to return positive or negative results. You can also determine a delay (which is perfect for Performance Testing) to enable the virtualized response to wait X seconds to respond. You can even set it to respond in random seconds. The whole EM component gives a feel that you are behind the wheel, and you can see the whole road. Kudos to Parasoft for implementing this as part of their virtualization and SOATest solutions.

I was fortunate to execute a proof of concept with Parasoft with a previous employer. we saw the value immediately. That employer chose a competitor, but only because the competitor product was already in house and there was no cost to using their product. Otherwise, Parasoft would have won the head to head comparison.

In my current role, we use Parasoft Service Virtualization to fill gaps within our environments, to enable testing earlier, and to enable us to test situations within our test environments long before the environments are ready for use.

Captures and simulates live system behavior from recordings.

- Dependency Removal

- Not yet completed

- Controlled by a third-party or partner

- Available for testing only in limited capacity or at inconvenient times

- Needed for simultaneous access by different teams with varied test data setup and other requirements

Service Virtualization has provided a way to move forward where we do not find any way to go. Parasoft Virtualization has provided that feature or way, by creating virtual assets and implementing or achieving the real atmosphere through a Virtual Channel.

It captures and simulates live system behavior from recordings.

We primarily use the solution for API virtualization.

The solution has a lot of great features that we are able to take advantage of.

The initial setup is quite easy to manage.

The stability is good.

We've found the scalability to be very good.

• Ease of building service virtualization: Either by recording an existing data flow which can be replayed or by setting up a service simulation based on a WSDL (SOAP) or JSON schemas (REST). The product generates usable templates. Developers do not have to spend much time to set it up.
• Ease of deployment of the virtualized services: Either by graphical user interfaces for manual deployment or using the provided API for automated deployment. The latter is necessary for integrating in an automated deployment pipeline.

• Extensibility of the product in order to customize as and where needed, in case proprietary protocols or message formats are used in the customer's environment.

• By decoupling less of the available and expensive backend systems, and faster development of the dependent components was reached.
• By simulating systems, many tests can be executed earlier in the continuous delivery pipeline (shift-left principle).

• Simulation of misbehaviour for the service-providing systems made it possible to make service-consuming components more robust.

Quick generation of virtual assets from service definitions such as WSDL documents

Extend the basic functionality of virtual assets using scripting

Environment Manager providing a clear user interface for environment provisioning and configuration

Docker image available for seamless Continuous Delivery and Continuous Testing integration

I have used Virtualize in two projects now, and in both projects it has delivered impressive results.

• In the first project, at a major telecommunications service provider in the Netherlands, the test team was depending on an external (human) resource for the successful provisioning of orders in a backend system. This could lead to a delay in order (i.e., test case) preparation and execution time up to a week. Using Virtualize, this dependency has been removed completely, allowing the test team to provision many more orders in shorter time, enabling them to test much more, much faster. It also paved the way for the introduction of automated end-to-end testing and the introduction of an agile software development approach, which was previously impossible due to the long lead times required for order creation.
• The second project was completed at an organization responsible for the transfer of student- and education-related information between higher education institutions and the Dutch government agency responsible for higher education. Within this organization, only a single test environment for the government agency was available for integration with the multitude of test environments at the various higher education institutions. This meant that only a single test environment was available for proper end-to-end testing. Using Virtualize, we were able to create virtual assets that simulated the behavior of the government agency dependency, allowing all test environments to be available for realistic end-to-end testing. This allowed all higher education institutions and their partners to perform end-to-end testing at will, instead of having to wait for 'their' testing slot.

• Quick generation of virtualized services.
• Reuse of common data in other fields as test automation (using SOATest) or test data management.
• Low technical knowledge required to start using the tool.
• Environment Management gives organizations a powerful visual interface to manage and create virtualized service.

• I've used Virtualized on some different projects with different protocols and technologies such as: WSDL, IBM MQ, Proprietary protocols and XML. In general I noticed some improvements for organizations.
• Easy integration with another tools in order to boost the SDLC agility. This enables organizations to speed up their SDLC providing test environments as soon as possible.
• Allows one to discover how the services operate and disseminate information in organizations where there are undocumented processes and key individuals hold all the knowledge about specific processes. This is very helpful to have a system vision to create virtualized services as required.