Hello Katalians! Our latest release of Katalon Studio (8.4.0) is now available and comes with a set of features to make your testing experience even better by enhancing testing capacity, security, and user experience. Without further ado, let’s dive right into the details.

Enhanced API Testing with GraphQL Support

This release of Studio introduces support for GraphQL, the open-source data query and manipulation language for APIs, which significantly improves the efficiency and performance of API calls.

With support for GraphQL in Katalon Studio, you can:

• Create GraphQL queries and mutations with RESTful methods (GET and POST). 
• Use query variables in a GraphQL request.
• Validate GraphQL requests and responses against schemas.

Image: GraphQL query in Studio IDE

For detailed information on how to use this feature, check out our documentation.

Introducing NTLM and Bearer Token Authentication

What Is NTLM Authentication?

NTLM authentication is a challenge/response-based authentication technique used by Windows. NTLM is the default authentication system in Windows NT 4.0 and older versions. It assists in the coverage of API test cases in businesses that use NTLM authentication.

Since the Kerberos authentication is preferred, NTLM authentication is no longer extensively used. However, for backward compatibility purposes, Microsoft still maintains NTLM because it may be used by non-Microsoft or Microsoft programs. 

NTLM authentication support is included in Studio 8.4 in order to provide test coverage for users who have environments that require NTLM authentication.

Bearer Token Authentication

In addition to the support of three levels of authorization in Katalon Studio, Basic, OAuth 1.0, OAuth 2.0, and NTLM, Bearer token authentication is also recognized and commonly used by several modern web service servers.

These two new authentication methods are available to all Studio users under the Authorization tab. For more details please see our documentation on how to use NTLM Authentication and Bearer Token Authentication in Katalon Studio.

Schema Compliance Assertion

When users make a significant number of API requests in their test cases, the Schema Compliance assertions validate the request or response following the corresponding XML or JSON schema definitions, to help avoid time-consuming and prone-to-failure custom validations.

Studio 8.4 enables users to validate object response/string against schema via the Test Request Editor and script by:

• Introducing new keywords for schema verification
  • Validate JSON string against a schema
  • Validate an XML string against a schema
• Sending and verifying if the test request complies with its schema

For more details, please check out our documentation on how to Validate JSON/XML string against a schema for API testing.

Testing in IE Mode: IE to Edge Migration with Katalon Studio

As of June 15, 2022, Microsoft Internet Explorer reached its end of life, making Microsoft Edge the default. To minimize the impact this will have on your testing processes, Studio 8.4 will continue to support the use of existing tests and test scripts created for Internet Explorer (IE). This means that any Test Cases and Test Suites that users created in IE will automatically open up in Microsoft Edge and run in IE Mode.

For more details, please see our documentation on how to use Katalon Studio to run test cases in IE mode in Microsoft Edge.

Enhanced Product Tour

Studio is an intuitive solution designed to enable quality teams to quickly adopt and collaborate on automated quality processes across their organizations. In addition to our in-product guides, Studio 8.4 offers a new behavior-driven development testing tour that demonstrates the essential components of a BDD test, helping to familiarize users with the product's features and how to utilize them.

Wrapping Up!

We are thrilled about the latest enhancements to Studio 8.4 and we hope you are too! We encourage you to download Studio 8.4 to start taking advantage of its many new features and improvements. 

For a complete list of new features, improvements, and fixes, please visit the release notes. As always, please post any questions, ideas, or concerns on our community site, we are eager to hear from you.