Welcome to Hit Subscribe’s April Monthly Digest! In this edition, we’re excited to share a collection of recent blog posts we’ve written for our clients. 

Release Management Tools: 11 to Consider Using

Release management tools are vital for modern software development and IT operations. They ensure that complex projects are delivered on time, with high quality, and minimal risk. 

In this guide, we’ll explore what release management is, the benefits of using release management tools, what features are involved, the top tools available in 2025, and how to choose one.  In short, you’ll have all the arrows you need in your quiver to make an informed decision.

Software Deployment Tools: 13 to Consider in 2025

Software deployment tools are essential for modern enterprises looking to streamline their application delivery process. These tools help ensure that applications are delivered consistently, efficiently, and with minimal risk of errors. However, beyond individual deployment tools, enterprises increasingly require a centralized platform that orchestrates and governs deployments across various teams and technologies.

In this post, we’ll explore 13 software deployment tools to consider in 2025 and highlight the role of Enov8 as a holistic IT Environment & Enterprise Release Management platform that integrates and orchestrates these tools at an enterprise level, focusing on Governance & Insight while leveraging best-of-breed deployment tools for operations.

The Definitive Guide to Test Data Generation

Test data generation is a critical part of the software testing lifecycle, ensuring that applications are tested against realistic scenarios before going live. If you’re not testing against production-like data, you’re arguably not truly testing your application.

In this guide, we explore what test data generation is, the two primary methods used to create test data, and best practices to avoid common pitfalls. Whether you’re a developer, tester, or IT manager, this guide is designed to help you understand and implement an effective test data generation strategy.

Enterprise Architecture Tools: 11 to Be Aware Of in 2025

Enterprise architecture (EA) is an essential discipline for organizations aiming to align their IT strategy with business goals. As companies become more complex and technology-driven, having the right set of EA tools is crucial to streamline operations, improve decision-making, and manage IT portfolios effectively. These tools also tend to make life better for the technologists involved in building the software.

In this post, we explore what enterprise architecture is, what enterprise architecture tools are, review 11 top tools to consider in 2025, and offer guidance on how to choose the right tool for your organization.

Docker Alternatives: Options and How to Choose

Engineering teams need smooth Docker alternatives to have a shorter software development cycle with the least infra costs. Container tools provide specialized features that almost indirectly focus on the things that Docker lacks and needs to improve. These tools cater to particular areas of development, from cloud environments to image building.

SQL BETWEEN function: A Guide with Examples

Have you struggled with filtering datasets? SQL queries are optimized to refine a result set by filtering data. For example, let’s say you need to get a dataset on a range of values. You need a recognized command that’s fast and accurate in pinpointing records within ranges. This is where the SQL BETWEEN operator shines.

The BETWEEN operator selects rows where a particular column lies within a range. It filters text, numbers, and date values. Dive into this guide to unravel the power of the SQL BETWEEN function and supercharge your SQL queries.

A Guide to Oracle Database Architecture

Oracle Database is one of the most widely used comprehensive relational database management systems designed specifically for enterprise-level applications. Renowned for its scalability and reliability, Oracle Database is a popular choice for managing critical data across various industries. In this overview, we’ll delve into its fundamental architecture, highlighting the essential components and how they contribute to efficient data management and processing.

A Guide to Making Updates in Oracle SQL

Oracle SQL is a really powerful tool for working with data in relational databases. One of the most important skills for database administrators and developers is the ability to update existing data. Keeping your data accurate and up to date is essential for making sure your applications run smoothly and that you can rely on the information you have. In our fast-paced world, where data influences almost every decision, it’s crucial to keep your database current.

Whether you’re managing user profiles, tweaking inventory levels, or recalculating financial figures, SQL updates play a key role in reflecting the most accurate state of your operations. Learning how to master this skill involves not just knowing the basic syntax but also grasping the advanced techniques and best practices that make updates efficient and reliable. Let’s explore how to get the hang of Oracle SQL updates together!

How to Insert Data in Oracle SQL

Inserting data into enterprise database systems like Oracle SQL Developer is a fundamental operation used to add new records into the database. This data remains up to date and relevant for analysis and decision-making thanks to the built-in SQL INSERT statement. In this article, we’ll explore how to insert data in Oracle SQL but first, let’s discuss why this operation is essential.

A Look at Different Versions of the Oracle Database

Oracle Database has been a cornerstone of data management for decades. Known for its reliability, scalability, and innovation, it powers businesses worldwide. But with so many versions released over the years, it can be challenging to keep track of what each one offers. This article will walk you through the evolution of the Oracle Database, highlighting the key features and advancements in each version. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned professional, you’ll gain a clear understanding of Oracle Database’s journey and its current capabilities.

How to Create a Table in Oracle SQL

Although, as routine as it might seem, understanding the context of table design, data types, constraints, and performance considerations can be quite a challenge. In this article, we’ll explore the step-by-step process of creating a table in Oracle SQL. But before diving in, let’s first explore why tables are essential to databases and why they’re important.

An Introduction to Oracle SQL Concatenation

Working with data often means needing to combine pieces of information to make them more useful or readable. In Oracle SQL, concatenation is a simple way to join strings, columns, or expressions together. This guide will help you understand how to use concatenation, step by step, even if you’re just starting out.

Oracle Data Masking: A Basic Tutorial

Data security is one of the biggest concerns for businesses today. With increasing cyber threats and stricter compliance regulations, protecting sensitive information is a priority. Oracle Data Masking is a powerful tool that helps organizations secure their databases by obfuscating sensitive data. In this guide, we will walk you through the basics of Oracle Data Masking, its importance, key features, implementation steps, benefits, challenges, use cases, and best practices. By the end of this tutorial, you will clearly understand how to implement data masking effectively in your Oracle database.

How to limit queries in Oracle SQL

When working with large datasets, managing how much data is retrieved from a database can be crucial for both performance and user experience. In Oracle SQL, limiting or paginating through query results plays a key role in optimizing backend efficiency and delivering faster query responses. This guide will walk you through the various methods for limiting queries in Oracle SQL, including how they differ from other database systems, the concept of pagination, and how to implement limits while keeping performance in mind and adhering to best practices.

Playwright Locators: A Complete Tutorial

One of the biggest issues developers face when testing websites is finding the right elements to interact with. Locators fix this by automatically waiting for elements to be ready before interacting with them for you. Whether you’re clicking a button, filling out a form, or checking if a message appears, locators provide a reliable way to point to the exact element on the page. In Playwright especially, locators automatically wait for elements to be ready and provide a host of strategies to locate them, reducing flaky tests and making automation more seamless.

In this tutorial, we’ll go over what locators are and why they matter. We’ll focus on Playwright, a leading testing solution, discussing how to use locators in Playwright and the best practices for reliable tests.

How to Handle a Playwright Timeout: A Tutorial With Examples

In automated testing, handling timeouts effectively is crucial to maintaining robust and reliable test suites. Playwright, a modern end-to-end testing framework, provides various timeout configurations to help developers manage test execution. This tutorial covers Playwright timeouts, explaining their mechanisms and offering practical examples for resolving timeout errors.

Whether you’re troubleshooting a specific error like “Timeout 30000ms exceeded” or fine-tuning timeout settings for efficient test execution, this guide will help you master Playwright’s timeout capabilities.

Getting Started with Integrating Playwright and GitHub Actions

This guide will take you step-by-step through setting up Playwright, creating test scripts, configuring GitHub Actions, and incorporating them into a CI/CD pipeline. By following this process, your web application will operate reliably, reducing bugs and improving performance.

Getting Started With Playwright and JavaScript

Playwright is a popular open-source automation tool that allows end-to-end testing across multiple browsers, including Chromium (Chrome, Edge, Opera), WebKit (Safari), and Firefox. It improves browser interactions and provides quick, reliable, automated tests for web applications.

In this post, we’ll explore how Playwright and JavaScript work together to produce efficient and effective automated tests.

11 Pivotal Best Practices for Playwright

Conventional end-to-end testing frameworks frequently suffer sluggishness, inconsistent findings in various contexts, and flakiness. Debugging unstable tests takes up developers’ valuable time, which delays releases and irritates teams. Even worse, if an application functions well in one environment, it may malfunction in another because of browser quirks, resulting in regressions only noticed in production.

To fix these issues, use Playwright, a modern, open-source testing framework by Microsoft that offers quick and dependable cross-browser automation. It includes auto-waiting, parallel processing, and robust debugging tools and integrates well with contemporary front-end frameworks. Playwright lets teams create reliable and manageable tests that reduce flakiness and increase productivity with capabilities like network interception, tracing, and headless execution.

It is essential to follow best practices to maximize Playwright’s efficiency, maintainability, and reliability. This post will cover 11 tips to help you use it effectively.

Playwright “Get by Test ID” Locator: A Detailed Guide

In this detailed guide, we’ll explore what Playwright is, dive into the specifics of locators, and provide a comprehensive walkthrough on using the “Get by Test ID” locator effectively—complete with practical examples, troubleshooting tips, and best practices. Whether you’re new to Playwright or looking to refine your automation skills, this post will equip you with everything you need to master this locator.

Playwright Page Object Model: A Detailed Tutorial

Automated testing ensures that web applications function correctly across different environments. However, as test suites expand, maintaining structured and scalable test scripts becomes challenging. Autify, a leading low-code test automation platform, simplifies this process by integrating Microsoft’s Playwright. By incorporating the Page Object Model (POM) with Playwright in Autify, testers can create more efficient and maintainable test scripts. This guide explains how to implement POM in Autify, making test automation more reliable and easier to manage.

An Introductory Guide to Mobile Web Testing

Due to the increasing adoption of smartphones and tablets, providing an optimal user experience for mobile device users is paramount. An experience that will encourage the continuous usage of mobile appliances over the web or any other medium.

In this post, you’ll learn about mobile web testing and its importance. Furthermore, you’ll explore the difference between mobile web and website testing. Additionally, we’ll examine the techniques, benefits, and common challenges in mobile web testing.

Testing Metrics: What They Are and How to Measure Them

Testing metrics are specific numbers and measurements that show the effectiveness of software testing. These metrics monitor test-pass rates, bug discovery by team, testing velocity, and so on. By providing clear data rather than guesswork, testing metrics can help teams understand whether their testing efforts are successful or require adjustments.

Creating an Effective SOC Playbook

Learn how to create an effective SOC playbook to streamline security operations, enhance incident response, and improve threat detection.

Top 9 SOAR Platforms and Vendors

When end users report suspected threats, security teams must analyze them to separate the real ones from false alarms. And end users send an overwhelming number of alerts daily, resulting in alert noise. Security teams have turned to technologies such as security, orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) to help them manage alert noise. SOAR platforms correlate, classify, and analyze alerts to identify the false alarms and log true threats as tickets.

While SOAR platforms automate many manual processes in a SOC, they do not support advanced automation. Thus, advanced security automation solution alternatives have emerged, which we’ll discuss in this article. But first, we’ll cover what SOAR is, the top platforms, and how to choose the best vendor.

SecOps vs. SOC: The Differences Explained

The need for security in every IT organization has become very important as technologies continue to evolve. Neglecting security measures can lead to severe consequences, including data breaches, financial loss, and reputational damage.

SecOps and SOCs play a vital role in helping organizations detect, respond to, and mitigate security threats more efficiently. They enable faster threat detection and improved collaboration between the security and operations teams.

In this post, we’ll explore the key differences between SecOps and SOCs, including their benefits and limitations. We’ll also discuss how they can work together to enhance security within an organization.

SOAR Replacement: A Complete Explanation

Learn about the importance of SOAR replacement, its benefits, best practices and some current replacements and future developments. This post will provide the reasons behind this shift, describe the advantages of modern solutions, and highlight the importance of replacing SOAR.

Cypress Alternatives: How to Choose and Use Cases

Cypress is a game-changer for end-to-end testing, ensuring every part of a web app works seamlessly. This powerful, easy-to-use tool is a favorite among developers and QA engineers alike.

In this post, you’ll learn about Cypress, its benefits, and its limitations. Furthermore, we’ll examine the popular alternatives, the criteria for choosing a testing framework, and emerging tools and technologies.

Selenium Alternatives: How to Choose and Use Cases

Selenium is widely used for automated web testing, but it has some drawbacks such as performance bottlenecks and complexity in modern CI/CD workflows. Faster execution, better API design, and seamless integration with headless browsers make Selenium alternatives compelling choices. (Selenium also supports headless browsers, but the setup and performance are often not as good.)

In this post, you’ll learn how you can make the right choice when it comes to picking a Selenium alternative.

Automated Regression Testing Software: Definitions and Tools

When developing software, it’s important to make sure that code changes don’t introduce unintended bugs into existing code. Regression testing ensures that new code changes don’t affect the functionality of software already in place. However, manual regression testing is slow, prone to error, and hard to scale. Automated regression testing software solves these issues. It runs tests faster, improves accuracy, and reduces cost.

With agile and DevOps driving rapid releases, automation is no longer optional—it’s necessary. This article covers what automated regression testing is, its key features, benefits, and challenges, and compares top regression testing tools, including Usetrace, Selenium, TestComplete, Ranorex, and Katalon Studio. If you’re looking for an efficient, cost-effective solution, Usetrace stands out among these tools for its ease of use and powerful automation capabilities. 

Front End Testing: An Introduction

Imagine that while using a website to book a flight, the “Proceed to Payment” button fails. Or maybe you’re shopping online, and the checkout page crashes right in the middle of payment. Frustrating, right? These avoidable issues clearly degrade the user experience, cost money, and damage a brand’s reputation. This is where front-end testing comes into play.

In this article, we’ll touch on the fundamentals of front-end testing, its importance, different testing types, best practices, common challenges, and the best tools.

8 Best Test Automation Tools

Test automation has come a long way. Our test automation tools are smarter, faster, and more accurate than ever before. But with so many choices (Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, and beyond), how do you pick the right one for your test automation success?

This guide cuts through the noise. We’ve handpicked the best test automation tools, highlighting their features and optimal use cases. Let’s dive in, supercharge your test automation strategy, and elevate your quality assurance (QA) solutions to the next level!

6 Low-Code Test Automation Tools

Test automation reduces the risk of defects in production by using tools to execute pre-defined test cases, compare outcomes, and report errors early in development. While code-based automation tools are powerful, they can create bottlenecks for teams with limited programming skills. Low-code tools simplify script creation with visual interfaces and prebuilt actions, enabling both developers and nontechnical stakeholders to collaborate effectively.

This post explores low-code test automation tools, their benefits and limitations, and best practices.

Software Testing Strategies: A Complete Guide

Creating robust software that’s able to perform in a variety of edge cases is challenging and complex. Even a small bug or mistake in the code can lead to catastrophic outcomes. For example, a hyphen that was omitted from the code destroyed NASA’s Mariner spacecraft, which resulted in an $18.5 million loss (approximately $169 million today). So, you can imagine why it’s critical to have software testing strategies.

Businesses realize this, and that’s why the software testing industry was $51.8 billion in 2023 and is estimated to grow 7% from now to 2032. Developers need to conduct rigorous testing to catch defects early, mitigate risks, and ensure quality.

In this guide, we’ll explore various types of software testing, test strategies, and best practices to improve your software testing approach.

3 Popular Methods to Shut Down or Reboot a Remote Computer

Managing IT systems in interconnected environments often requires shutting down or rebooting remote computers for several reasons. For instance, you might want to reboot the computer to troubleshoot errors and address software updates. Or you might shut it down as part of your security protocols.

In this post, you’ll learn three popular methods for rebooting or shutting down remote computers. We’ll also cover some additional considerations, including potential issues and how to solve them.

What Is Network Device Monitoring? Find Out 5 Top Monitoring Tools

Businesses, organizations, and individuals rely on networks to communicate and exchange data. The rapid growth of technology and increasing reliance on networked systems have made robust network performance and security critical. However, maintaining optimal network performance and security is a difficult task. Network failures, security breaches, and performance bottlenecks can result in substantial financial losses and reputational damage.

In this post, we’ll look at network device monitoring, what it is, and five network device monitoring tools we recommend.