Review: iTKO LISA
by Drew Falkman
Summary
Testing is as tricky as it is crucial to the development
process. Often testing is left to developers, who must write
test code while they are creating application code--and who also
may lack the perspective of a typical user. Writing this test
code takes significant development time. Q/A specialists can
perform some tests, but it is generally from a high level UI and
results are more often than not, difficult for developers to
debug and often only catch errors that can be exposed to the UI,
leaving the potential for many underlying bugs and issues.
iTKO's LISA promises a visual testing and monitoring interface
that can be used by anyone participating in application
development, from developers, to Q/A analysts and business
managers as well. LISA can perform regression, unit, load and
functional tests on Web Services, Java classes, JDBC database
calls, Web sites (J2EE and otherwise) and more. And here's the
rub: no scripting or test coding is necessary.
More Information
Introduction
Let me be honest, I don't like testing, I abhor it actually. My
head is in the brainstorming, architecture design, feature set
and putting together something that does a job which will exceed
the expectations of my clients and hopefully break barriers of
what is currently being done in their industry. But invariably
applications and all their parts, need to be tested.
Unfortunately for me, this isn't an optional step but rather a
crucial one. Testing, or lack thereof, can not only make or
break applications, but often times affects whether a project is
completed and deployed or not--an expensive proposition to say
the least. A number of tools have been available that can make
this easier, but invariably those tools end up being either
expensive or time-consuming to implement. A new software
package, mysteriously and anthropocentrically named LISA (it
actually stands for Load-bearing Internet-based Simulator
Application), promises to change all this. This could be good, I
had to check it out.
Setup and Installation
iTKO's LISA is currently available for MacOS X, Solaris, Linux
and Windows. All versions require Java 1.4.1 (or higher) JDK.
Two licensing options are available: Workstation and Server. The
workstation license is currently $1500 per seat (this may change
when 2.5 is released this month) and is used to design test
cases, perform tests and monitor testing. The server license
(price is based on configuration)can be used for SNMP
monitoring, scheduling and load testing. If you use the server,
you will need the workstation to interface with any tests done
by the server.
I had no issues with installation on Windows XP Professional,
everything installed smoothly from the Web site. Users have the
option to download and save an installation executable or
install the software directly from the Web site. Additionally,
in order to utilize the API, which will be necessary to test
components and other Java classes, the classpath of LISA's jar
file will need to be added, and/or the jar file copied to the
J2EE application server or application classpath.
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