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ElasTest: a cloud-based test platform for testing large complex distributed software systems

03/07/2017

ElasTest
ElasTest

With € 5M of EU funding under the Research and Innovation Action from the Horizon 2020 program, the ElasTest project kicked-off in January 2017. Partners from academia, research institutions and IT companies are working together with the overall aim to increase software quality by reducing the complexity of testing large distributed software systems in the Cloud.

The demand for larger and more interconnected software systems is constantly increasing, but the ability of developers to satisfy it is not evolving accordingly. The most limiting factor is the software validation, which typically requires very costly and complex testing processes to ensure the software is free of errors and complies with requirements.  The ElasTest project aims at offering a flexible open source testing platform for rapid and accurate end-to-end testing that can significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the testing process and the overall quality of modern applications, including web, mobile, real-time video communications, and Internet-of-Things. ElasTest will be based on two innovative and unique technologies:  an instrumentalized browser service and a system for tests orchestration that allows increasing the reusability of tests.

The project team is led by the Spanish University Rey Juan Carlos and involves the Italian national research council, the Technische Universität Berlin, the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Fraunhofer FOKUS, the IMDEA Software Institute and the industrial partners Atos Spain, IBM, Naevatec, and Relational.

The ElasTest platform will operate in different environments and will be tested on both development and production systems. All in one, ElasTest will make any software development team capable of delivering software faster and with fewer defects. For those companies that have enormous testing groups there’s a need to increase the quality provided without increasing costs and execution time: the ElasTest service will simplify their testing process of complex distributed large software systems.

The ElasTest coordinator, Prof. Francisco Gortázar, says: “The motivation behind ElasTest is the huge effort needed to build end-to-end tests for large distributed applications under real conditions. We want to reduce this effort and provide new tools to aid developers and testers by building a tool that is specifically focused on end-to-end testing. We are going to leverage the partner's testing experience in areas like telecommunication networks, real-time video processing, Internet of Things, or Web and Mobile development to build something that will ease the testing process for complex applications."

The Cnr group, led by Antonia Bertolino (Isti-Cnr, Pisa), will contribute to the project with two important missions: leading the continuous research scouting in cloud testing and coordinating the experimental validation. The quantitative project objectives include reducing the time-to-market, increasing the quality of the software product, reducing the possibility of failures and improving the confidence and satisfaction of both end users and developers.

The ElasTest cloud platform will be released as Free Open Source Software and has already started creating a Community of users and contributors who will help in the endeavor for transforming ElasTest into a worldwide reference in the area of large software systems testing and guaranteeing the long term platform sustainability. To join please visit the ElasTest community website at http://elastest.io/

Per informazioni:
Antonia Bertolino
CNR - Istituto di scienza e tecnologie dell'informazione "Alessandro Faedo"
Via Moruzzi 1, 56127 Pisa
antonia.bertolino@isti.cnr.it
ElasTest coordinator: Prof. Francisco Gortázar francisco.gortazar@urjc.es

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