Glossary of Technical Terms Related to Testing & Software Quality Assurance

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• Appium - Appium is specifically a mobile testing framework, essentially the equivalent of Selenium, except for the fact that Selenium is used to drive a desktop/laptop-based browser to test web apps, while Appium can drive a native mobile app to test a mobile app (it can also drive a mobile browser to test a web app on mobile phones). It would be used by any of our QEs on an engagement that requires automated testing on a mobile device. [SV]
• Bootstrap - a front-end CSS framework, so basically like a big (CSS and JS) template where you can pick and choose what parts you want to use in your particular project for front-end development. [SH]
• CAT (process) -
• Chai - An assertion library. Assertions are just the 'fail the test if this isn't true' part of a test and can be written in a variety of ways. Assertion libraries are often added to a project if the built-in assertions of a test framework are not sufficient for the needs of the developers. Also written in JavaScript and also a coffee related name. [EK]
• Cucumber - A BDD test framework [EK]
• Gherkin - The grammatical (specification) language that Cucumber files are written in. [EK]
• Git - A widely used source control tool. The collective thing that is being source controlled is termed a 'repository'. Because Git is designed to be decentralized, everyone has their own copy of any given repository, even if they are all ostensibly the same collection of code. [EK]
• Github - A platform made for easily sharing Git repositories, which helps everyone keep their independent copies in sync with the 'official' version on GitHub. [EK]
• GitLab - Gitlab is like a vault inside a company where all the employees store and manage their code. Github is more like social media, where people share their code across organizational boundaries. Way more people work with Github . . . you need to be in an org that has their own Github (Gitlab) to be exposed to that one. [NR]
• Jam - A replacement tool for Relish (although I don't know that I would like the taste of cucumber jam) [EK]
• Java - A programming language and also coffee. [EK]
• JavaScript - Another programming language and not related to Java at all [EK]
• JBehave - A BDD test framework (it would occupy the same place in a testing hierarchy as Cucumber). Cucumber is much more widely supported and used than JBehave, so while we might have a client that wants us to build upon an existing automated testing framework that utilizes JBehave, it's much more likely that our QEs will encounter Cucumber on client engagements instead. [SV]
• Jenkins - Jenkins is a free and open source automation server. It helps automate the parts of software development related to building, testing, and deploying, facilitating continuous integration and continuous delivery. It is a server-based system that runs in servlet containers such as Apache Tomcat. [AH]
• Jest - Jest is a JavaScript test framework. it is so named, presumably, because it is meant to be delightful. https://jestjs.io/ [EK]
• Mocha - A test framework for the JavaScript language with a coffee related name. Test frameworks execute tests. [EK]
• node.js - basically a JS interpreter [SV]
• Pickles - The internal code objects that Gherkin files are compiled into at runtime [EK]
• Postman - Postman is a tool for testing API responses. Basically, it lets you manually construct an API request, and then view the response from the API, something that would usually be done by a program without any of the above being visible to the user. [SV]
• Retro - A group undertaking where a team, at regular intervals (such as at the conclusion of a timeboxed testing effort) discusses the effectiveness of various aspects and tunes the team behavior and/or project structure accordingly.
• Relish - A website where people can host their Cucumber files as a source of documentation [EK]
• Serenity - Serenity seems to be a BDD testing tool, analogous to Cucumber. [SV]
• Stack Overflow - Stack Overflow is a free online community where programmers help each other solve problems. Should you use Stack Overflow if you are a programmer? YES. [NR]
• TravisCI - For orchestrating and automating the promotion of code from development, through testing, and into production. In the same family as Github Actions and Jenkins [NR]

• ISTQB Glossary page of more SoftwareTestingTerms