- Test VoiceXML applications without the
need
to access a live telephony platform
- Run hundreds of calls through an
application in a matter of minutes
- Test every obscure corner of the
application
- A machine-readable test plan assures
repeatability
- Do regression testing
whenever an application or its
environment changes
- Reduce cost by improving the productivity of developers
and QA staff and reducing time to delivery
- Download a copy, or let us help you get started.
Thorough
testing of VoiceXML applications is
labor intensive. Each test call
requires a person and runs at human voice speed. Now, with the Invores
Quality
Assurance Tester for VoiceXML (IQAT or eye-kat), VoiceXML
applications can be tested without live phone calls at machine speed.
The savings are significant. The time to deliver an
application is reduced, quality is improved, and productivity is
increased.
Quality assurance for a VoiceXML application
usually begins with a test plan.
These tend to be scripts which are printed and given to testers to
follow
when making test calls. But with IQAT, the test plan is
machine-readable. It is
written in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), familiar to all
VoiceXML application developers as ECMAScript object literal notation.
The test plan provides the telephony input that drives the application
test.
A single test plan may encompass hundreds of calls to an application,
and will typically run in less than a minute.
Although the test plan provides telephony
input, the application
executes in a
live web environment. All web access is performed as if the application
were
actually receiving calls. IQAT makes every web access in the
same way as any production VoiceXML platform.
The IQAT test plan provides
statements that specify voice
input, DTMF
input, recording input, transfer actions, and object return values.
With regression testing, the savings with IQAT
multiply.
Normally, a regression test should be run whenever there is a change
which
might affect the application, even if the application itself is not
changing.
IQAT logs the output of each test. With regression testing, the before
and
after logs are compared, and if they match, the regression test passes.
A comparison tool, iqatdiff, performs automated comparison of
the
before and after logs to highlight any differences.
When an existing VoiceXML application is
updated, a different kind of
regression test is
performed. First, the original IQAT test plan script can
be run against the updated application. The logged output of this test
can be
compared with iqatdiff to the previous version's archived test
log to quickly
verify correct regression behavior. Then, the test plan can be updated
to
reflect the application enhancements and a new regression baseline
created with
another test run, using the updated test plan. After this output is
verified,
the updated application can
be put into production with the knowledge that it has been thoroughly
tested and is upward compatible. The updated test plan and the new
regression
baseline are archived for the next round of application enhancements.
IQAT is a VoiceXML 2.1 conformant
processor. It was verified using over 740
tests from the W3C's
VoiceXML 2.0 implementation Report and VoiceXML 2.1 Implementation Report.
The IQAT test plans used for these
tests are IQAT 2.0 test plan and IQAT 2.1 test plan. The logged
output is available for the 2.0 tests and for the 2.1 tests.
In
order to accept as many proprietary extensions of VoiceXML as
possible, IQAT ignores XML attributes it does not
recognize, and simply notes their
presence in the log. Since IQAT is running without telephony, a
recognizer, or a synthesizer, it can safely ignore extensions in these
areas.
Although IQAT is not a load tester,
it can run multiple threads
of the same
test plan simultaneously. Since IQAT runs at machine speeds,
this can provide a reasonable
web server load test. IQAT will also perform VoiceXML
syntax
verification without execution.
Get Started
We are VoiceXML developers and we use our own tools. Ask us about VoiceXML development. We are serious about quality.
