APIs are a key aspect of our digital world and allow us to engage in digital experiences on our phones and computers every day. Every time you use an app such as Facebook or Instagram, check the weather or send an instant message, you’re using an API. So what are APIs? API stands for Application Programming Interface, which enables communication between two applications.

Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial intelligence (AI) are at the center of the hyper-competitive era in which change occurs with new technologies in the span of a single blink of an eye. Modern innovations like AI, predictive analytics, ML, and other digital disruptors are changing how businesses operate and how customers interact with brands in every sector of the economy. Moments of existential transition are becoming common for organizations.

Dev teams are stacked against an incredibly high bar of software quality, consistent end-UX, and tight release windows. While manual testing remains a cornerstone of quality, leveraging test automation enables enterprises to scale testing and meet demands for coverage and capacity. Low-code test automation provides a great place to start; it circumvents current challenges in talent pools, increases coverage, and iterates quickly.

For many years now, vendors and consultants have avoided the practice of data integration. Integrating data is complex. Systems are often undocumented, which makes searching them difficult. Assumptions must be made in order to understand business decisions from long ago. Data integration requires the proverbial four-letter word no one wants to hear: work. But anything worth doing should involve a bit of sweat and tears, right?

One of the major steps in our 8 Step Guide to Modernizing Your Testing Organization is selecting the right operating model for your testing team. Why? Because this is were you determine how your testing organization will actually run. This is where you’ll establish accountability and communication needed to continue testing innovation and maintain best practices.

Accelerating your software delivery cycle is impossible unless you also accelerate and enhance your approach to software testing. In another article we described the eight steps of the journey to transform your organization into a modern testing organization. This article will focus on defining your test strategy. You’ll learn about the importance of adopting agile practices.

Getting data *into* your database is easy, but querying large datasets is challenging—especially without the right indexes. Pavel Tkachenko teaches how to write performant SQL queries with EXPLAIN and ANALYZE.

The NoCredentialsError is an error encountered when using the Boto3 library to interface with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Specifically, this error is encountered when your AWS credentials are missing, invalid, or cannot be located by your Python script. These credentials are stored by default at ~/.aws/credentials which contains your access key and secret access key for using AWS services, along with other configuration details such as your region code.

With Ashish Khandelwal, Mainframe Modernization Engineer at Microsoft, Mukesh Kumar, Principle Group Engineering Architecture Manager at Microsoft, and Tom Griggs, Global Partner Senior Manager at Qlik

The sequel to "How to measure the success of data teams," in which Montreal Analytics explains how to evaluate the performance of individual contributors in a data team.