The Application Program Interfaces (APIs) have become the center of attention for application and device integration. The APIs work as a focal point between the different devices and applications in the whole process of development, data & logic transmission, and connection. For developing a crucial software application, Application Program Interface (APIs) works as a set of protocols, tools, and processes.  

With the help of instruments, protocols, and code, APIs enable connectivity between system and applications and also permit the data exchange activity among them. Application Program Interface allows communication and data interchange between diverse software systems.

With the growth of agile methodology approaches for developing software and testing are advancing. Agile processes deliver great quality products while managing teamwork more efficiently and effectively even in the budget limitation. Whatever processes companies are choosing for testing their software, API testing always stands on the first priority list. So, API testing has the topmost value in the Agile world as it provides unique profits.

In this blog, we will understand some basic things about the API Testing in the Agile world:

What is API Testing?

API testing a type of software testing that validates and performs authentication straightly at the API level. The objective of Application Programming Interface testing is to examine the utility, reliability, performance, and security of the programming interfaces. Application Programming Interface is a linking bridge between diverse systems and different layers of applications which are Presentation Layer, Database Layer, and Business Layer. The Application Programming Interface works in the business layer and directly reaches both the application and data layers. These layers describe the guidelines of user interaction with the data, services, and operations of the application. 

API testing identifies several errors and bugs concentrating on functionality, operation, performance, and safety. It also finds the missed flaws of automation testing and manual testing. 

 API testing is distinct from the GUI testing as it does not focus on the look and feel or button’s functionality of an application. It mainly concentrates on the logic, performance, and security of a business. 

Types of API Testing:

1. Validation Testing: Validation testing plays an important role in the development process and happens at the final step of the whole operation. This testing determines the quality of the product, their behavior, and performance. 

2. Functional Testing: Functional testing includes testing of specific functions in the codebase. For the confirmation of API handling within a specific system, Function testing is performed.

3. UI Testing: UI testing gives more importance to the interface which binds into the API rather than the API testing itself. UI testing is described as a test of the user interface for the API and other connected parts. It only provides a brief of the efficiency and condition of the app’s front and back ends.

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4. Security Testing: Security testing is performed to give surety of the safety of the API implementation from external risk. Security testing contains validation of encryption, methodologies, API access control and end-user rights management and authorization validation.

5. Load Testing: Load testing is executed to check the status and condition of the theoretical solutions as per the planning. Load testing controls the app’s achievement at both normal and peak conditions.

6.&nbspRuntime and Error detection Testing: Runtime and error detection testing are involved with the actual flow of the API rather than the implementation of the API to the environment. This testing focuses on one of the below feature i.e: monitoring, execution errors, resource leaks, or error detection.

Advantages of API testing above Standard UI testing:

Only through the Application Programme Interface testing, you can provide an absolutely secure, trustworthy and scalable connection between the platforms. 

These are a few advantages of API testing over UI testing:

1.  In Application Programme Interface (API) testing, end to end functional testing of a product or system is performed while in User Interface testing different functionalities of a product are tested.

2. The main advantage of Application Programming Interface testing is that it permits access to the application without having interaction with a diverse system. This supports the tester to identify and recognize the errors earlier than GUI. 

3. Application Programming Interface (API) testing is faster and can be performed quickly compare to GUI testing.

4. API testing needs outstanding inputs and requirements, which shields the application from malicious code and damage. Application Programming Interface testing helps in removing the shortcomings.

5.  Application Programming Interface (API) testing is very easy and simple than User Interface testing.

6.  API testing provides faster test results with better test coverage, as API test automation needs very less code than GUI automation. The final result of faster testing gives a large reduction in overall testing costs. API testing detects the error in a small amount of time or earlier so it also decreases the manual testing cost. 

7. Application Programming Interface (API) Testing is technology independent. So, It allows you to choose any basic language for your application while testing.

List of Tools for API testing:

Listed below are some tools which are used in API testing:

• Runscope
• Postman
• Curl
• Cfix
• Check
• CTESK
• dotTEST
• Eclipse SDK tool- Automated API testing
• Katalon Studio
• SoapUI
• Parasoft
• MicroFocus UFT
• vREST
• Jmeter

Things which verified under the API Testing are:

• Data precision
• HTTP status codes.
• Response time.
• Error codes if API returns any errors.
• Authorization checks.
• Non-functional testing such as efficiency testing, safety testing.

The Approach of API Testing:

1. Understanding the features of the API program and describe the scope of the program clearly.
2. Use testing methods such as boundary value analysis, and error guessing and record test cases for the API.
3. Input Parameters for the API should be planned and explained properly.
4. Do a comparison between the expected and actual results after the test execution.

Process of API Testing:

Set up the environment

Describe the test plan

Do an API call

Merge data with API tests.

Conclusion:

Application Programming Interface Testing is work in the business layer which links the Application layer and Data layer and easily connected with both of them. API contains a set of functions, classes, and procedures which represent the business layer logic. Testing of an API is an essential part of the application because any mistake in this step may cause an issue in both API applications and the calling application. It is a crucial test in software engineering.

API automation testing is highly recommendable and considered for a real development project and Agile world.

Innovation for business is nothing but a practice of changing the work process for better output and services. Innovation assign to constructing more effective ideas, workflow, processes, and products.  

For a business, we can say that innovation indicates modern services, ideas, and creation of effective products which changes the business model as per the current environment to deliver excel products and brands.

In innovation, one can either uses an existing key result in a different approach or create a brand new solution to meet the demand and services. In both ways, innovation gives profit to the customer. Innovation grows the business, boosts its efficiency and most essential raises its profitability. Without innovation in the trade models, estimate, charting, analysis, marketing, client experiences, and team regulation it will be impossible to promote your business in the prevailing technology period.

Some people have an opinion that innovation is only for startups and it can only add values in their business which is not completely appropriate. Innovation can be brought by both types of companies either it is a startup or well-established. Well- established companies also get new ideas and approach for their further business in the innovation process. So, it’s defined for any type of business and company which need the modernization for improved product and solutions.

In today’s period, shareholders are set to spend on the idea. But they will hesitate to invest their time and money where there will be no unique products, no rare services, no exclusive pricing, customer experiences, and advanced improvement ideas. That’s why Innovation is important.

Now, We will talk about all seven points which should be remembered by business organizations should be constructed and supported by the companies to bring the innovation.

1. Architectural Innovation
2. Disruptive Innovation
3. Progressive Innovation
4. Radical Innovation
5. Dynamic Evolution
6. Open-source Innovation
7. Discontinuous Innovation

1. Architectural Innovation: 

Architectural Innovations is an innovation that changes the direction of product factors that are associated together while concluding the origin design approach unaffected. Architectural innovation is simply approaching the practices, expertise and comprehensive technology and using them into diverse markets. As long as the new market will be proficient, Architectural innovation will surprise you at improving the new clients. In Architectural innovation, most of the time it has been seen that the risk involved in this innovation is very little due to the dependence and reinstate of determining technology. Although, most of the time this innovation needs remodeling to match and fulfill the requirements of the new market. The organization should switch to a new method of learning and spend its time and resources to catch the newly introduced architectures. For example, In variable manufacturing systems the inside aspects of the object remain the same, but the relationship between these components and the way they connected to each other changes with the time.

2. Disruptive Innovation: 

Disruptive innovation or deconstructive innovation is also known as a secrecy innovation which concerns applying the new processes and technologies to your organization’s ongoing market. This innovation is secrecy in creation as brand new technology will often be minor to live market technology. It takes only a few repetitions of the newer technologies to excel in the old tech and disrupts all the existing companies in a go. Often, the newer technologies can be more costly, with less amount of features and functionality, difficult to work, and is not as classy as they should. So, in that situation, it takes a few iterations to be perfect as the old one.

In that time, established companies might be too late to rapidly compete and participate with the newer technology.

3. Progressive Innovation:

Progressive innovation is the most ordinary known form of innovation in which your company’s existing technology will be utilized and exercised to bring the changes and improving the values to the customers within the ongoing market. It includes changes in features and functionality, designs, models and the process, etc. In one or another form every company and organization take part or involved in the progressive innovation. Progressive innovation filters, clarify and improves an existing established design or model. Each component is improved individually to keep the concepts the same for all of them. This innovation improves the feature and looks of an existing product, process, and services.  

For example, attaching, improving and removing features and functionality from an existing product, improving the quality of services and making them more reachable to the customers and changing the design and pattern of an existing product to make it more beautiful and catchable. Progressive innovation includes both small and big changes, it does not depend on the size, it only values the changes by which users can experience the updated value in your product and services. 

4. Radical Innovation:

Radical innovation defines a purely new and advanced way of improving your business ability. This transformation happens because of major improvements in technology or operation. It establishes a new ruling design in the process of innovation which increases the business value. Netflix, Google, Salesforce, and iPhones are a big and most prominent example of Radical innovation. With the help of Radical innovation, these companies push their boundaries and earn the tag of most innovative companies in the world. In Radical innovation, the organization depends on its organizational capacity to be successful. 

5. Dynamic Evolution: 

Dynamic evolution is an innovation in which Where ever or whatever new improvements are achieved in your product or processes there will still a scope to improve it more. If we talk about the Android platform, a few years back we were unable to develop some of the apps and features which we are currently developing all because of the improved ecosystem. Google provided the new tool & technologies and a better system which increases the ecosystem standard and helped the developers to build a far better and modernized app. Because of the heavy products, we got the opportunity to work on better machines with more CPU and RAM. The whole ecosystem has improved and evolution has come which improved the ecosystem organically.  

6. Open Source Innovation: 

In Open-source innovation varieties of people work together, to produce a better solution, and process for the customers. So, Open source innovation is all about working together to make something better. In open source innovation, many companies deployed their efforts to build some products at a level that adds more value and features to the product, so that customers can easily and more efficiently use the products and put their values.

7. Discontinuous innovation: 

Discontinuous innovation is an innovation in which new technologies and features or functionalities are introduced and added in a new way in the existing product to resolve the existing requirement. For example, Ola did not introduce the feature of sharing your location to your relative, parent or loved ones before but after some time it introduced this feature in their app to make the existing solution better and more useful. Through, more safety is introduced for Ola’s customer and new innovation came in the market only by adding a new feature to the existing solution. An existing system made it better to perform better in the market.

Innovation in the IT industry brings more business opportunities and an advanced way of handling the business. It will secure your position and differentiate your company from other companies in the market.

A software license is a legitimate appliance that permits a customer or purchaser to use, reuse or circulate the software in their business. The specific software license agreement describes the correct utilization way of software or product to the end-user, which means the software licensing will basically define How, When, What and How to use the specific product at your need. The fundamental principle of licensing is to provide security to shield the creative works of any creator or organization. Before installing any application, it should be officially licensed.

Every beginner should have knowledge of some basics points about the software licensing which will help them to get the idea and techniques to manage and optimize the software license.

Listed below are some of the most basic and crucial points about the software licensing which every beginner should recognize and be aware of. So, we will start with the origin:-

• What is Software Licensing? 

The software we make as per our or our client’s requirement is very important for us because we invest our idea, effort, time and money in it, so it’s our duty to secure that software from others who can misuse it. Today’s business relies on the software because it performs very essential operations for them. So, Software licensing is a contract between the owner of a software product or program and the customer that allows doing certain things like where, how and how many times one can install the software & program. Also, defines the ability for duplication, modification, and redistribution of the software, etc. Although, the content of the licensing depends on the facilities and services provided by the companies and it can be different from each other which will totally depend on the company’s agreement.

For the security of the software’s code, it’s important to understand the software licenses before using any code that you didn’t write your own self.

• Difference between the open-source and proprietary (Closed- source) licenses:

Software licensing has two different licensing models first is open-source and the second is the closed source which is also known as the proprietary licenses.

An open-source license is a license that refers to the software whose base code is accessible by anybody and they can easily share and do modification in it as per their requirement under defined terms and conditions. An open-source license authorizes for a software product to be distributed in a specific approach, for any type of communal research or development. In general, open-source licensing permits the source code of a project to be open or transparent, employed by third parties, altered or manipulated by members of a developer group.

While proprietary software refers to the software which is exclusively owned by any specific person or developer who developed it. Only those people will only be able to access, duplicate, and change that software. In closed source, source code is not distributed with the public for review and doing changes. Open Source software can be downloaded and installed multiple times and on multiple devices, whenever consumers want. They can also redistribute it as per their need without any rebound. 

• Types of license under Open- source license:

In an open-source license, four types of licenses are found which permit you to reuse the code and program in some fixed scope. Let’s go through all four types of license which comes under open-source license:

1. Public Domain License:  Public domain license is the non-restrictive license which easily gives permission to anyone for use of the software. This means anyone can easily see, modify and do changes in the software as per their demand. The public domain license concept is not specified in the same way everywhere so you should be careful at the time of utilization because it increases the risk of your codebase.

2. Permissive Software License: A permissive license is also known as the (Berkeley Software Distribution) BSD-like license which is the easiest and fundamental type of open source license. A permissive license allows doing anything with the software as long as you stand with the notice requirements. These licenses provide the software with no warranties and securities. So, in brief, a permissive license is a license that permits the user to do whatever they want to do with code with their own risk.

3. CopyLeft License: A Copyleft license offers a process of modification to the software or code distributes it back to the group and makes remains the same. Rather than restrict the freedoms of using the creative works, Copyleft license provides surety to the user to maintain the freedom to use, modify, extend and redistribute a creative, productive and innovative work. It will allow you to change the licensed code and circulate the new works based on it under the same software license. In this case, you will have to make sure that your source code is always ready as it gives permission to any end-user for code modification. GPL and LGPL is the most known example of this license.

4. LGPL License: LGPL is the license that involves some open source software that describes the way of freely copy, distribution and modification of the software and its joined source code. A Lesser General Public License is applied in both software, so it can be integrated into both free software and proprietary software. It allows the user to connect with open source libraries.

• Installation of the software license:

The installation or activation process of every software license differs from product to product. Most of the time you will get a properly described and defined step by step list of software license installation. In which every step will be defined very openly so that no one gets stuck at any point. While getting the idea about the installation process one should also be familiarized with the deactivation process so that you can protect your license and money.  Sometimes, we have to change our device for some reason and start working on another computer, during that time the deactivation process will be helpful. Some software provides a license key which is used at some point in the installation process, so you should also take care of the license key.

As stated before, the proprietary or closed-source software license’s agreement restricts the use, alteration, modification and redistribution ability. Also, it would not allow access to the underlying source code. But open-source software license does not do the same. 

In the end, you should always keep and maintain the software license documentation which consists of different type of important details like license key, software name, it’s version and many other things which can be asked in any situation or any time.   

Before knowing all the facts and signal which indicate that your company is prepared or not prepared for the digital transformation, we will explain about Digital Transformation and will know some important points on it.

So, What is Digital Transformation?  Digital Transformation is the artistic, organizational and practical change of management, business or super system through an advanced union of digital technologies, operations, and capabilities across all layers and functions in an organized way.

Digital transformation not only used in business background but also give its powerful impact in other organization such as the Governmental field, firms, and community sectors which are involved in communal challenges. Digital transformation is a deep revolution business and organizational actions, techniques, capacities, and models to full advantage of the revolution and opportunities of an associate of digital technologies and their stimulate move across society in a strategic and prioritized way.

Signs for your companies that will let you know about your company’s preparation for the Digital Transformation:

Client’s experience:  The first thing which comes in the list while reviewing the ability of your companies for the Digital Transformation is the client’s experience with your company. All the transformation and changes which are done by any organization are all for their valuable customers. If your client is not satisfied with your work and process, they are experiencing an ungraceful, graceless and unsophisticated development and do not have a smooth business relationship with your company then you should think about the Digital Transformation for your company. Because customers are the main subjective point for any company’s development and improvement. You should architect unique and personalized customer operations and counterpoints for every different customer you have.

The workflow of your company:  Workflow of a company describes how something goes from being undone to done. It’s a list of tasks need to complete in order to reach some remarkable business target. Workflow is actually a graphical representation of the company’s actions. When your company’s’ workflow is clumsy and impractical your clients will be able to see this lack of your company, they will not connect with your workers, you will feel that there is a huge barrier in your company’s communication system then you should understand that this is the perfect time when you should invest your economy in Digital Transformation.  

 Current industry situation: You should always keep your eye on the industry’s situation to be updated with the current business scenario and processes. After knowing the clients’ experience and your company workflow you will also have to analyze the industry scenario. What are the latest technologies which are running in the market, what are the different facilities which are trending and the most what the customers are demanding for their business? These are the things which you should be aware of because your client can also come to you with these demands. So, it’s better to be prepared what will you be demanded.

Organization Model: Before preparing your company for the Digital Transformation it’s necessary to find out, Is your organization model ready to grasp the Transformation? It will be a concerning point for you if you do not prepare your organizational model for the Digital Transformation. As the Digital Transformation affects your whole organization. Organization models like Business processes and performance, business rules & regulation and business policies. All of these must be digitalized when the transformation happens. So, the digitalization of the organization model is crucial. 

Proficiency of your team: You should make sure before entering into the Digital Transformation that you have a great team that can adapt the changes due to Digital Transformation. Management and other teams play a vital role in any type of change that you made for your organization. So, for the Digital Transformation, it is mandatory to build a team that can always ready to be a part of the change, who are eager to pick up and adapt the thing and be excited about the changes. 

Strategy for the transformation: Strategy in the line of business is very essential. It gives you a perfect direction for your business success, helps your organization to establish the right aims and targets and will boost you to focus on the efforts to meet the goals. In Digital Transformation, you will have to make sure that you are ready with strong strategies and a bright executable plan for the victory. Digital Transformation needs a clear strategy and plans for the implementation so that it can be beneficial for your organization. Because Digital Transformation cannot happen on its own it will need your complete headship. So, be prepared with a stable strategy.

Digital Journey of the Organization: Company which wants to be a part of Digital Transformation should think and map their digital journey which will be a part of the process of Digital Transformation. You need to sketch your digital journey around the right practices for the right customer portions and organize your journey into different channels. 

It’s frequently asked by many people that, Is digital Transformation depends on the type of business which means B2C OR B2B? We can clarify this doubt as business means to serve the client or customer in any form either its B2B or B2C. Digital Transformation does not see the type of the business, Digital transformation looks the motive of the business and the style in which clients are treated and served by the employees and management. Whichever form of business you are providing in the market the ultimate model should be delivering a high-quality product and best services to your customer and the customers’ customer too.

So, it does not matter the type of business you are giving, the type of offer you are providing, the type of process your company has and the type of selling process of your organization. It really does not matter anything even your company position and status, either you will be a startup or a well-established company in the market. The only thing which needs to remember in the whole journey is a better well-educated team, proficiency in your management and the most important is the clients’ needs.