Apr 25, 2023
There are so many points of friction that can make testing microservices and APIs painful for developers, or QA, or anyone else in the CI CD food chain. Some of it has to do with Kubernetes and clusters, which some say has been making simple things complicated for many a year. Some pain comes from networking, which is rarely anyone’s favorite. Some have to do with mocking and standards like REST, gRPC, and Apache Thrift. And some of it is part and parcel of designing and building the cloud native application tests themselves, especially making them reusable/shareable and high ROI.
Problem is, different software pipeline participants have different ways and needs. Even among devs there is dissent about which of these four is particularly painful, and this usually stems from relative expertise. What is painful for some is easy for others.
Testing works best when it’s consistent among all software pipeline participants, regardless of skill level. When it’s easy to share. When it’s easy to design and deploy — low code or no code, ideally. A microservices testing solution that goes beyond simple unit testing needs to produce meaningful results, to democratize use, and to appeal to a wide audience must consider all these factors.
As we’ve built Skyramp, we’ve realized that one size does not fit all. What began as a single tool with multiple functions has evolved into simple, separate tools — each aimed at a specific point of pain, each with a single prevailing function.
And while there is undoubtedly room for glue that sticks all these tools together and unifies a multi-talented team around a common goal — delivering better cloud native software, faster — that will come in time. For now, let’s keep it simple: one tool to solve one testing pain, one step at a time.