Progress Software Corporation, a supplier of application infrastructure software, has announced Actional Diagnostics, a standalone quality and validation desktop product that helps application developers build, test, and deliver high quality XML-based services, including SOAP, REST, and POX (Plain Old XML). The product which leverages recently acquired Mindreef SOAPscope technology, is currently in beta testing with customers and will be available in April as a free download, Frank Grossman, vice president of technology for Actional Products, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Actional Diagnostics can detect issues early in the software development lifecycle such as policy compliance. In addition, software developers can use the product to quickly understand whether a service fits their needs before any code is written. Once services are identified for use, developers can inspect, invoke, test, and create simulations for prototyping and problem solving.
Because of the fact that so many of the checks and balances that people typically put in their IT processes are so late in the game, when they get close to deployment, if they have done something in the application that conflicts with those, they can end up having to restart from scratch, Dan Foody, vice president of Actional Products, notes. Actional Diagnostics pulls processes and capabilities back into the hands of developers, enabling them to validate that a service is going to work and scale when it gets to the later stages of the lifecycle, explains Foody. "It is bringing capabilities earlier in the lifecycle so you never end up having to rework things."
Using Actional Flow Mapping technology, Actional Diagnostics includes a new feature called Application X-Ray that enables developers to get a view of what happens inside their service, so they can identify why tests have failed or why services are not performing as designed and reengineer a service as needed before it moves to production.
Load checking is also included with Actional Diagnostics to allow users to test the performance and scalability of services before they are delivered to a performance testing team. By load testing early in the development cycle rather than before or during deployment, problems can be identified and fixed more easily.
Actional Diagnostics includes features previously offered by SOAPscope, including XML visibility and problem solving, early service simulation and design-time policy validation. For an alert when the software download is available, register here.