** Recording available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU-M75ZejHY ** Testing large systems with multiple microservices is hard to understand. You need to understand the whole system, all connections, and how the microservices interconnect. With tracing, you get a map of everything, making your whole system easier to understand. Now imagine being able to make assertions based upon those connections between services. In this talk, we'll look at _trace-based testing_ using the open-source tool Tracetest. This is becoming a popular method to test systems at an integration or end-to-end level by applying assertions against the data contained in an OpenTelemetry trace. These tests can check your code, they can verify your trace info is added correctly and can verify processes that show up deep in the trace worked as expected. Paul will demonstrate how Tracetest (part of the CNCF landscape) can be used to verify complex systems using the trace data provided by your observability platform. Join us as we learn more about this powerful new tool.

1. Disclaimer
Paul is not employed by Tracetest, nor Kubeshop!
He simply “nicked” some of their slide content.
(he isn’t English either!)

2. ● https://github.com/kubeshop/tracetest
● 100% open source, MIT licensed
● Install in docker or kubernetes
● User Interface or Command Line
● Works with your tracing solution - Grafana, Jaeger, New Relic, etc
Trace-based testing, for a distributed, cloud native world.
Enables integration, system, and e2e tests to be easily built by
relying on the observability data contained in a distributed
trace

3. What is distributed tracing?
Distributed tracing refers to methods of observing
requests as they propagate through distributed systems.

4. Integration
Unit
e2e
Testing Pyramid

5. Ways to do integration testing
Black box testing
- Can’t tell where in the system the issue occurred
- Cannot assert deeply

6. Ways to do integration testing
Mocking
- Requires setup / extra code
- May not reflect reality - it is not reality

7. Ways to do integration testing
Code based e2e tests
- Have to instrument system so you can inspect it
- Lots of code, have to know the system, lots of
work

8. Ways to do integration testing
Trace-based testing
- If you have distributed tracing, it is…

9. Integration
Tracetests
Unit
e2e
Testing Pyramid

11. +
Load
Testing
Trace-based
Testing
=
Distributed System
Load Testing
✅
✅ ❌
New integration with k6

12. Pokéshop Microservices - Import
https://github.com/kubeshop/pokeshop
Service 1: API Service 2: Worker

13. Demo

14. THIS SLIDE INTENTIONALLY
LEFT BLANK

15. - Easy to write deep tests - visual, you have a map
- Can be less familiar with all technologies & systems
involved in the flow
- Awesome for testing async processes
- Increases the value derived by introducing distributed
tracing
- Enables Observability Driven Development (ODD),
resulting in better observability in prod
- All failed tests have a trace attached
Benefits

16. Thank
You!