Prabakar's blog on Software Testing

Taking Selenium to Next Level

2011-07-10T13:36:00.002+05:30

Excellent Selenium testing resources:

Testing Versus Checking - Adam's opinion article on the difference between testing a Web application and checking that a Web application works
Abstracting Locators in Selenese (Se-IDE) - How to write really concise and easily changeable Selenium element locators
Selenium IDE (Se-IDE) plugin tutorial - How to write your extensions to the Selenium IDE record/playback tool
CSS Locators Reference - a one-page quick reference
Page Objects - an object oriented approach to writing Selenium tests. Read an introductory article and an article on understanding Elements and Actions
Using a Continuous Integration (CI) server as a Se-Grid replacement. Read the TestMaker CI Guide.
Read Adam's Blog
A 30-minute tutorial on Repurposing Selenium Tests as Load and Performance Tests
Adam's Big Continuous Delivery Summary commentary on DevOps
Selenium 2 RefCard from DZone
Selenium RefCard (covers Selenium 1 and TestMaker)

Source: Cohen Blog

TestMaker Object Designer

2011-07-10T13:30:00.002+05:30

TestMaker Object Designer is for fast and easy data-driven test authoring for Ajax and Flex Applications. Designer is free open source test (OST) tool published under the GPL license.

Designer for Ajax, Flex, Flash Record/Playback

TestMaker 6 simplifies test creation and maintenance. TestMaker comes with everything you need to build tests, operate tests, and present the results graphically and with minimal training:

Functional Test Record/Playback Tool
The Open Source Alternative to HP QuickTest Pro (QTP)
The Alternative To Selenium IDE for Selenium test development
Record tests in Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera
Record and playback functional tests of Flash and Flex (SWF) applications
Data-enable tests using simple drag-and-drop features
Add assertions and check-points to tests visually
If-then, looping, and conditional test execution without scripting
Object Repository for sharing Web page objects between team members
Instant and context senstivie help and reference documentation
Support for Ajax and Javascript asynchronous events without additional test scripting
Selenium, Sahi, and Flex test type support in one tool.
Outputs to Selenium unit tests, Selenium IDE Selenese table format, Sahi, and Flex test formats.

Source: Opensource Testing

Trends in Software Testing

2011-07-10T13:17:00.003+05:30

As the complexity of software applications increases, testing becomes more crucial. And in the process, more time consuming. Here is a list of emerging testing practices.

Software is everywhere today and is becoming increasingly mission critical, whether in satellites and planes, or e-commerce websites. Software complexity is also on the rise - thanks to distributed, multi-tier applications targeting multiple devices (mobile, thin/thick clients, clouds, etc). Added to that are development methodologies like extreme programming and agile development. No wonder software testing professionals are finding it hard to keep up with the change.

As a result, many projects fail while the rest are completed significantly late, and provide only a subset of the originally planned functionality. Poorly tested software and buggy code cost corporations billions of dollars annually, and most defects are found by end users in production environments.

Given the magnitude of the problem, software-testing professionals are finding innovative means of keeping up - both in terms of tools and methodologies. This article covers some of the recent trends in software testing - and why they're making the headlines. Test driven development (TDD)

TDD is a software development technique that ensures your source code is thoroughly unit-tested as compared to traditional testing methodologies, where unit testing is recommended but not enforced. It combines test-first development (where you write a test before you write just enough code to fulfil that test), and refactoring (where, if the existing design isn't the best possible to enable you to implement a particular functionality, you improve it to enable the new feature).

TDD is not a new technique-but it is suddenly centre stage, thanks to the continued popularity of software development methodologies such as agile development and extreme programming.

Optimisations to TDD include the use of tools (such as PEX/peer exchange for Visual studio - http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/pex/ ) to improve code coverage, by creating parameterised unit tests that look for boundary conditions, exceptions, and assertion failures.

TDD is gaining popularity as it allows for incremental software development - where bugs are detected and fixed as soon as the code is written, rather than at the end of an iteration or a milestone.

For more details on TDD, use the following links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development
http://www.agiledata.org/essays/tdd.html

Virtualisation testing:-

Testing is becoming increasingly complex - the test environment set-up, getting people access to the environment, and loading it with the right bits from development, all take up about 30-50 per cent of the total testing time in a typical organisation. What is worse is that when testers find bugs, it is hard to re-create the same environment for developers to investigate and fix bugs. Test organisations are increasingly gravitating towards virtualisation technologies to cut down test set-up times significantly. These technologies include:

accelerate set-up/tear down and restoration of complex virtual environments to a clean state, improving machine utilisation

eliminate no repro bugs by allowing developers to recreate complex environments easily

improve quality by automating virtual machine provisioning, building deployment, and building verification testing in an integrated manner (details later)

As an offshoot, virtualisation ensures that test labs reduce their energy footprint, resulting in a positive environmental impact, as well as significant savings.

Some of the companies that have virtual test lab management solutions are VMware, VMLogix, and Surgient. Microsoft has recently announced a Lab Management (http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/VisualStudio/Lab-Management-coming-to-Visual-Studio-Team-System-2010/) product as part of its Visual Studio Team System 2010 release. Lab Management supports multiple environment management, snapshots to easily restore to a previous state, virtual network isolation to allow multiple test environments to run concurrently, and a workflow to allow developers to have easy access to environments to reproduce and fix defects.

Theresa Lanowitz, founder of Voke, a firm involved with analysis of trends in the IT world, expects virtualisation to become ‘the defining technology of the 21st century', with organisations of every size set to benefit from virtualisation as a part of its core infrastructure.

Continuous integration:-

CI is a trend that is rapidly being adopted in testing, where the team members integrate their work with the rest of the development team on a frequent basis by committing all changes to a central versioning system. Beyond maintaining a common code repository, other characteristics of a CI environment include build automation, auto-deployment of the build into a production-like environment, and ensuring a self-test mechanism such that at the very least, a minimal set of tests are run to confirm that the code behaves as expected.

Leveraging virtualised test environments, tools such as Microsoft's Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) can create sophisticated CI workflows. As soon as code is checked in, a build workflow kicks in that compiles the code - deploys it on to a virtualised test environment, triggers a set of unit and functional tests on the test environment, and reports on the results.

VSTS takes the build workflow one step further, and performs the build before the check-in is finalised, allowing the check-in to be aborted if it would cause a break, or if it fails the tests. And given historical code coverage data from test runs, the tool can identify which one of the several thousand test cases needs to be run when a new build comes out - significantly reducing the build validation time.

One obvious benefit of continuous integration is transparency. Failed builds and tests are found quickly rather than having to wait for the next build. The developer who checked in the offending code is probably still nearby and can quickly fix or roll back the change.

For a complete set of tools that help enable CI, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_Integration

Crowd testing:-

Crowd testing is a new and emerging trend in which, rather than relying on a dedicated team of testers (in-house or out sourced), companies rely on virtual test teams (created on demand) to get complete test coverage and reduce the time to market for their applications.

The company defines its test requirements in terms of scenarios, environments, and the type of testing (functional, performance, etc). A crowd test vendor (such as uTest - www.utest.com) identifies a pool of testers that meet the requirements, creates a project, and assigns work. Testers check the application, report bugs, and communicate with the company via an online portal. Crowd testing vendors also provide other tools, such as powerful reporting engines and test optimisation utilities. Some of the crowd testing vendors are domain specific - such as Mob4hire (www.mob4hire.com), which focuses on mobile application testing. Testers will bid on various projects specific to their handsets. Developers will choose the testers that they require, and will deploy test plans for the mobile application they are developing. On completion of the test, the mobile tester will get paid for the work.

One obvious advantage is in terms of reducing the test cycle time. But crowd testing is being used in various other scenarios as well - for example, to do usability studies on new user interfaces. The cost savings can be substantial.

Tools driven developer testing:-

Traditionally, developer testing was primarily limited to unit testing and some code coverage metrics. However, as organisations realised that the cost of defects found in development was exponentially lower than that found in test or production, they have begun to invest in tooling to enable developers to find bugs early on.

IDE-integrated tools have made the self-testing practice acceptable to developers, and the unit-testing and coverage analysis process automated for them. These tools also make it easy to analyse performance and compare it with a baseline by extending the unit test infrastructure.

Development teams are also expected to perform a level of security testing (threat modelling, buffer overflow, sequel injection, etc). For teams developing on native languages such as C/C++, developers are also required to use run-time analysis tools to check for memory leaks, memory corruptions and thread deadlocks. Developers are also using static analysis tools to find accessibility, localisation and globalisation issues -- and in some cases more sophisticated errors related to memory management and performance simulation -- by using data flow analysis and other techniques.

As a result of using these innovative methods, testers can now spend a lot more of their time on integration testing, stress, platform coverage, and end-to-end scenario testing. This will help them detect higher-level defects that would have otherwise trickled down to production.

Source: IT Magazine

Twill - Web Automation Tool in Python

2011-03-04T20:03:00.000+05:30

Twill is a simple language that allows users to browse the Web from a command-line interface. With twill, you can navigate through Web sites that use forms, cookies, and most standard Web features. Twill supports automated Web testing and has a simple Python interface. Twill is open source and written in Python. Unlike many test automation tools for web application testing, Twill does not launch or need browser. Twill works from the command line (or from your Python script) and allows you to perform standard operations like navigating to specific pages, use forms, cookies and so on. As mentioned earlier, Twill does not launch real browser and hence its usage as test automation tool is limited. Twill can not be used to test rendering of pages, functionality related to Java scripts and so on. Tools like Selenium are better suited for that purpose. Twill is better suited for validating functionality which can be exercised using http request / response and analyzing page source.

Download link: http://darcs.idyll.org/~t/projects/twill-0.9.tar.gz

You can also use Python's easy_install to install or upgrade twill. It works with Python 2.3 or later.

To start using twill, install it and then type twill-sh. At the prompt type:

go http://www.slashdot.org/
show
showforms
showhistory

Source: Testing Site

Selenium IDE - Introduction

2011-03-03T21:41:00.000+05:30

Selenium is an open source tool for web application testing. This tool is primarily developed in Java Script and browser technologies and hence supports all the major browsers on all the platforms. For example, you can have your automation scripts written for Firefox on Windows and run them on Firefox in Mac. Most of the time, you will not need to change your scripts for them to work on Mac. In terms of coverage for platform and browser, Selenium is probably one of the best tool available in the market for web applications. There are three variants of Selenium, which can be used in isolation or in combination to create complete automation suite for your web applications.

Selenium IDE
Selenium Core
Selenium Remote Control

In this article, we will discuss Selenium IDE. Subsequent articles in the series will cover Selenium Remote Control and Selenium Core as well.

Selenium IDE

Selenium IDE is the easiest way to use Selenium and most of the time it also serves as a starting point for your automation. Selenium IDE comes as an extension to the Firefox web browser. This can be installed from either openqa or mozilla distribution site. Selenium extension will be downloaded as XPI file. If you open this file using File -> open in Mozilla, it should get installed.

Biggest drawback of Selenium IDE is its limitation in terms of browser support. Though Selenium scripts can be used for most of the browser and operating system, Scripts written using Selenium IDE can be used for only Firefox browser if it is not used with Selenium RC or Selenium Core.

Selenium IDE is the only flavor of Selenium which allows you to record user action on browser window. It can also record user actions in most of the popular languages like Java, C#, Perl, Ruby etc. This eliminates the need of learning new vendor scripting language.

For executing scripts created in these languages, you will need to use Selenium Remote Control. If you do not want to use Remote Control than you will need to create your test scripts in HTML format.

So if you are excited about the tool, Lets start playing with Selenium IDE now. If installed properly, Selenium can be accessed from tool --> Selenium IDE in your browser toolbar.

As compared to most of the test automation tools it is very simple and lightweight. The small red button on the right hand side gives you an indication on whether Selenium is in recording mode or not. Also, Selenium IDE will not record any operation that you do on your computer apart from the events on Firefox browser window. So go ahead read your mail, open a word doc or do anything else, Selenium will record only your actions on browser.

If you are curious to know about other options present on the Selenium IDE, there are not much :) . Other options present on the Selenium IDE toolbar are related to test execution. Run will execute the tests with the maximum possible speed, Walk will execute them with relatively slow speed and in step mode you will need to tell Selenium to take small steps.

Final button present on the Selenium IDE toolbar is the Selenium TestRunner. Test Runner gives you nice browser interface to execute your tests and also gives summary of how many tests were executed, how many passed and failed. It also gives similar information on commands which were passed or failed. TestRunner is also available to tests developed in HTML Only.

If you open the option window by going to Option , you will see there are some self explanatory options available. For example, encoding of test files, timeout etc. You can also specify Selenium Core and Selenium IDE extensions on this page. Selenium extensions can be used to enhance the functionality provided by Selenium. Selenium extensions are not covered in this article, there will be a separate article for specifying and developing extensions for Selenium...

Test Automation [Key Factors]

2011-03-01T08:36:00.000+05:30

Based on the test automation experience the followings are the key factors contributed to a successful test automation project:

1] Dedication to automation (Instead of treating it as a spare-time activity)

2] Commitment by the entire team (rather than just one or two testers)

3] Commitment to automation from the start (rather than trying to automate a manual process later)

4] Making use of correct tools/frameworks/technology

5] Allocating sufficient time and resources

Source: SoftwareQA Blogspot

QA Outsourcing [Reduce Testing Cost]

2011-03-01T08:31:00.001+05:30

There are all manner of outsourcing firms who can provide you with impressive powerpoint presentations showing how you can cut your QA costs by 30% or more by outsourcing the work. I would caution you to consider the source however.

Of course Outsourcing firms will produce evidence showing why their service is a valuable cost savings, they will even have little problem letting the managers and executives who decided to use them generate the metrics that show how much of a cost savings it was to outsource. In the case of the Outsourcing firm, it is little more than marketing speak trying to generate new business, expecting them to say any different would be like expecting a Cigarette company executive to go on Television and say "Of course Cigarettes kill people but as long as they are willing to buy them we'll be happy to take their money". As far as their Customers, well admitting that a decision to outsource was a failure would effectively end most executive's or manager's careers so they have little incentive to look too critically at the numbers.

So how much is the cost savings?

That depends on a LOT of factors. First, how much do your inhouse testers cost? Not just their salaries but their total cost.

In the US and UK the total cost of an employee is considered to be around double their salary (that varies some based on the level of benefits offered, location, and other similar factors) and QA testers earn between $45,000 and $90,000 a year depending on experience level, industry, and location. This would mean that on average a Tester in the US should have an employment cost somewhere around $60 - $75 per hour. Only you would have any clue what your costs would be, I'm just including that as a reference point.

The Bill Rates for Outsourced testers ranges from $25 - $40 per hour in places like India and China up to as much as $60 an hour for outsourced testers in industrialized countries (and it can be MUCH higher than that in some locations of if you require specialized knowledge, I've personally seen them as high as $150 per hour).

On top of that bill rate from the outsourcing firm there are additional costs that would work out to an extra $5 - $10 per hour to cover the legal expenses of negotiating the contract with them, the necessary network infrastructure work to allow the outsourcing vendor's network interface with yours securely and so on.

So, a reasonable projection is that in most cases Outsourcing IT work will cost around Half of what it cost to do the work in house on a per hour basis (at least for companies based in the US).

We're not at the end of the caluclation yet though. See that is a Per Hour cost. It assumes that the Outsourced testers are able to work exactly as efficiently as your inhouse testers and with the same skill. While the question of tester skills is highly random from company to company the question of efficiency is actually fairly static. Simply moving your testers into a different building within the same complex creates enough inefficiency to make testing projects take 25 to 50% longer than they would have if they sat next to the developers. Adding in different corporate cultures or even worse national cultures, language barriers, time zone differientals, etc. and the man hour increase is closer to an additional 100% to as much as 200%.

So a 50% reduction in cost per man hour but it takes you 2 to 3 times as many man hours says that Outsourcing is anything from a break even to a money loosing proposition until you factor in variability in skill levels between your existing test staff and the staff at whoever you outsource to. If you have very weak testers and are unable to recruit better ones the it may be that outsourcing will produce a small cost savings of maybe 10 to 20% of your testing costs.

I have yet to encounter an Outsourced testing situation where it actually saved money. Many VP's, Director's, and Manager's claimed it did on the basis of reduced per hour labor costs but never one that was a net positive to the company once all of the outsourcing costs were factored in.

Source: SoftwareQA Blogspot

Product Testing

2011-03-01T08:22:00.001+05:30

Product would be developed as a project first and would undergo all the tests that a project normally undergoes, namely, unit, integration, and system testing. System testing is carried out more rigorously and on multiple systems. In addition, it needs some more

rigorous tests. These are:

1. Load Testing – in web applications and multi-user applications, large numbers of users are logged in and try to use the software in a random manner. The

objective is to see if the software is managing multiple requests and serving up accurate results or mixing them up. . This unearths the issues connected with the bandwidth, database, sufficiency of RAM, hard disk etc

2. Volume Testing – subject the software to a high volume of data and see the performance, whether it degrades.

3. Functional Testing – test that all functions expected of the software are functioning correctly.

4. End-to-End Testing – in this type of testing, one entity is tracked from birth to death in the application. For example, in a payroll application, an employee joins the system; then is promoted; then is demoted; salary increases are effected, salary decreases are effected; kept in abeyance; transferred, then retired, dismissed, terminated and so on to ensure that the state transitions designed in the applications happen as desired

5. Parallel Testing – a number of users using the same function and are either inputting or requesting same data. This brings out the system’s ability to handle requests at the same time and preserving the data integrity.

6. Concurrent Testing – Concurrent testing is carried out to unearth issues when two or more users use the same functionality and update or modify same data

with different values at the same time – normally using a testing tool. For example, take ticket reservation scenario, there is only one seat and it is shown

as available to two people. When both confirm purchase, the system should give to only one and reject the other request. It should not happen that money is

collected from both credit cards and reserve for only one – the credit card transaction must be reversed for the rejected party. Scenarios like this will be

tested.

7. Stress Testing – cause stress to the software by making expected resources unavailable or causing deadlock like scenarios or not releasing resources and so on to ensure that the software has routines built in to handle such stress. This will bring out software responses for events like machine-rest, Internet disconnection, server timeouts etc.

8. Positive Testing – test the software as specified and not trying any negative acts – to ensure that all defined functions are performing. Used mostly for

customer / end user acceptance testing.

9. Negative Testing – using the software in a manner that is not expected to be used – this will bring out all hidden defects in the software. This is to ensure even malicious usage would not affect the software or data integrity.

10. User Manual Testing – use the software conforming to the user manual to ensure that they both are in synch with each other

11. Deployment Testing – Simulate the target environment and deploy the software and ensure that deployment specified is appropriate.

12. Sanity Testing – this cursory testing to ensure that the components, of software package, are complete and are of appropriate versions, carried out before delivery or before making a software-build.

13. Regression Testing – testing carried out after unearthed defects are fixed

14. Security Testing – testing to determine that an information system protects data and maintains functionality as intended.

15. Performance Testing – testing to ensure that the response times are in acceptable range

16. Usability Testing – testing the software for different types of usage to ensure that it satisfactorily fulfills the requirements of specified functional areas

17. Install / uninstall Testing – test the software on all target platforms to ensure that install and uninstall operations are satisfactorily performed

18. Comparison Testing – testing the product with competing products to contrast the differences for determining the relative position of the product

19. Intuitive Testing – testing without reference to user manuals to see if the product can be used without much reference to user guides

Source: SQA Forum

Test Effort Estimation

2011-03-01T08:08:00.002+05:30

Effort estimation can be done, based on different techniques available like Function Point Analysis, COCOMO, Use Case Point Analysis, Test Case Point Analysis, Metrics based.

Effort estimation is basically done any of the above techniques for different test activities like Test Case Preparation, Automation Script Creation and Test Execution.

Metrics based and very commonly used effort estimation procedure in doing effort estimation for Yahoo Mail application.

Identify the requirements (Login Page, Inbox, Compose, Address)

Classify the requirements in different complexity (Simple, Average, High)

Based on the past experience, metrics will be collected on how much time it took to write test case for simple, average and high functionality. Similarly it is collected for other testing activities.

Now multiply your complexity with the time factor which you derived from metrics to calculate the effort.

Don't report the total has your total effort, always use buffer time, it various based on the domain, tool and other factors. Example we use 20% on the previous total. This buffer will save you on risk and other deadline factors

Now add the buffer time and the effort calculated from metrics, and this is the Total effort for the activity.

Test Case Point Analysis: You can use this effort estimation technique for Test Automation and Test Execution.

1. Identify the total number of test cases to be automated or executed.

2. Classify the steps into High, Medium and Low complexity based on the business process it performs.

3. Based on the previous experience (metrics based) on how much time it would take to execute High complexity steps. You can have the average time.

4. Multiply this average time with total number of steps and get the total

5. Add the buffer time with the total to get Final estimation time. This buffer time will vary based on the application, domain and other factors.

Most of these effort estimation techniques use Metrics Based, which you are going to calculate the actual time for all effort and then take the average.

Source: SoftwareQA Blogspot

TestLink 1.9.1 - Released

2011-02-23T21:08:00.000+05:30

TestLink 1.9.1:

New features

- Requirement revisioning

- Requirement history with log messages

- New requirement and test case comparison method

- Expand/Collapse Buttons for trees

- PHPMAILER update (allows SSL or TLS) - googlemail can be used

- Mechanisms implemented to prevent data loss on editing when sessions times out or the user tries to navigate away without saving latest changes

Important Bugfixes (~70 in total)

- better MSSQL support

- Query metrics: start and end date input fields are respected

- minor usability improvements

- event viewer fixed for IE8

Source: opensourcetesting

Requirements and Test Management Repository [RTMR]

2011-02-23T20:55:00.003+05:30

What RTMR?

RTMR stands for Requirements and Test Management Repository translated Repository requirements management and testing .

This is a test tool open source software that allows:

manage software requirements throughout its life cycle

describe the scenarios and test cases to ensure the validation of these requirements

run test campaigns targeted

follow all the anomalies encountered during testing:

via the internal fault handler

via an external fault handler (bugzilla, mantis)

The solution includes a system for version management by project, by requirement, by scenario and test cases that keeps track of software changes and can easily cover all regression tests.

Why would a software testing tool?

The test objective is to validate the proper functioning of software to the needs and requirements gathered from users.

It ensures a sufficient level of quality during the development cycle and software life.

The test phase allows to identify such malfunctions, abnormalities or regression that prevent full or partial coverage requirements formluées initially and as functional changes.

The software testing tool comes at this time to structure, organize and target testing (risks, priorities ... etc.).

RTMR Why?

Although fundamental, the profession of software testing will become widespread only recently in the computational structures of small and medium sizes.

Although the panel of test tools grows, existing solutions are often architecturally binding (proprietary software) and require substantial financial investment (initial cost of licensing, training, maintenance) for the structures that need it.

Through RTMR, materializes the idea of an alternative open source solutions based on open (GNU / Linux, PostgreSQL, Qt), a robust architecture (3 others), while providing a rich client interface available on different platforms ( Linux , MacOS X and Windows ).

Source: opensourcetesting

Paper Based Storage overrides CDs and DVDs

2007-08-28T12:52:00.000+05:30

Can you believe that now you can store your valuable data, music, videos in a paper ? With the Revolution in Technology there are new inventions day by day which changes our lifestyle completely and that’s how Sainul Abideen of MES Engineering College have. His Rainbow Technology, a structure and technique for data that can be stored on normal paper.

What is Rainbow Technology ?

Rainbow technology is a method or technique by which data can be stored in an ordinary paper and retrieved later with the help of a scanner. Sainul calls the storage medium as Rainbow Versatile Disc (RVD) which believed to be store upto 450GB of data.

Cost and Performance:

Wonder how much a CD / DVD cost nowadays ? Basically a DVD cost around Rs.20 and a CD for rs.10 but this RVD will cost not more than Rs.2, The cost is absolutely very low when compared to other storage medium. Also the storage capacity is 130 times more.

Behind the Technology:

Sainul has completely changed the Zero’s and One’s Computing instead he uses a geometric shapes combining various colours. His new format is called ‘Rainbow Format’

Advantages and Highlights:

* Nature of this storage medium is Biodegradable and Eco-Friendly
* Magazines like Digit, Chip etc can attach Data in a tearable sheet
* Rainbow Cards that is equal to sim card size can store 5 GB of data that cost 50 paise.

The Future:

Mr.Sainul is working with a project called Databank that reduces the server demand which costs upto Rs.25,000 crores to just Rs.35 lakh. He promises that his DataBank will meet the 123.60 Peta Byte (PB) capacity Demand.

Thanks for the Information 'Sankar Anand'

Sony Vaio TZ90

2007-06-12T12:27:00.000+05:30

Sony parties down on the original Vaio 505's 10th anniversary by unveiling the extremely sleek Vaio TZ90 ($2,300-$3,000). This ultra-thin (10.9 x 7.8 x 0.88 inches), super-light (2.26 pounds) mobile is made of Carbon Fiber and has a 11.1-inch widescreen WXGA TFT screen. You get several casing colors to choose from, all powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo U7600 CPU running at 1.2GHz. Storage options include a 160GB hard drive or 32GB solid-state drive.

Source: Uncrate

Microsoft Surface

2007-06-12T12:24:00.001+05:30

Imagine being able to actually touch your digital photos and drag them around by hand, or use your finger as a Photoshop paint brush. You can do that and much more with Microsoft's first surface computing product, imaginatively named Microsoft Surface ($10,000; Q4 2007). The Minority Report-style computing environment allows you to directly interact with a touch-sensitive 30-inch tabletop setup using nothing but your fingers. Its multi-touch interface gives you hands-on control of content such as photos, music and maps. Microsoft Surface can also sense objects that you place on the tabletop. Sit down a Wi-Fi enabled digital camera, for example, and all of your recently captured photos magically flow out of the device onto the computer screen, ready for quick emailing or saving. The technology won't be available for home use right away, however. Hotels, retail stores, and restaurants will get them first.

Source: Uncrate

Mac OS X Leopard

2007-06-12T10:21:00.000+05:30

After a slight delay, Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard has been fully revealed. Having used every version of Mac OS X ever released, we're counting down the days until Leopard ($129; Oct. 2007). The ultra-advanced operating system includes over 300 new features, including a new Desktop and Dock with Stacks, an awesome new way to organize files; an updated, iTunes-like Finder with Cover Flow view; Quick Look, a new way to preview files without opening an application; Time Machine, a new system that automatically backs up and restores lost files; enhanced iChat and Mail applications; and full native 64-bit support for blazing fast performance.

Source: Uncrate

Safari 3

2007-06-12T10:17:00.000+05:30

Being devout Mac users, we've enjoyed the benefits of Safari, Apple's super fast web browser, since 2003. Windows users haven't had it so good. Sure, Firefox is better than Microsoft's Internet Explorer, but it's no Safari. Today, you Windows users can join us in basking in some Safari goodness — Apple has released a beta version of Safari 3 (free) for both Mac and Windows. In addition to full support of open Internet standards, Safari 3 sports a streamlined interface, easy-to-manage bookmarks, integrated Google search, pop-up blocker, advanced security, tabbed browsing, and a built-in RSS reader. Oh, and did we mention it was fast? Safari 3 is up to twice as fast as IE 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2.

Source: Uncrate

Nokia N95

2007-06-12T10:11:00.000+05:30

Don’t call the new Nokia N95 a phone — it’s “an all-in-one multimedia computer,” according to the company. And the N95 ($880) has the specs to back up that description. The headset features the S60 software on Symbian OS with web browser and email client, a 2.6″ QVGA display, integrated GPS functionality, and a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, giving you the ability to capture print quality photos and DVD-like video clips. Designed for HSDPA networks (with support for WLAN, EDGE and WCDMA networks), the N95 also offers built-in stereo speakers, a standard 3.5mm audio jack, and a slick 2-way slide concept — a numeric keypad slides out from one end while dedicated media keys slide out from the other, converting the display into full screen landscape mode.

Source : Uncrate

8-Core Mac Pro

2007-06-12T10:08:00.001+05:30

If a measly four cores isn’t enough for you, take a gander at the new 8-core Mac Pro ($4000 and up). It boasts two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors, up to 3TB of internal storage, up to 16GB of fully buffered ECC RAM, and graphics options including the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500. Of course, it also includes the latest version of Mac OS X along with the complete iLife software suite. That said, the machine can get expensive: a fully tricked out 8-core Mac Pro with maximum drive capacity and RAM, a Quadro FX 4500 graphics card, two SuperDrives, and both Bluetooth and Airport Extreme will run you $12,178.

Source : Uncrate

US$50milsubmarine cable system to link Asia, America

2007-06-12T10:06:00.000+05:30

PUTRAJAYA: Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) is leading a consortium of 17 international telcos to set up the US$500mil Asia-America Gateway (AAG), the first submarine cable system linking South-East Asia directly with the US.The consortium members include US-based AT&T Inc, Bharti AirTel (India), Brunei Government, British Telecom Global Network Services, CAT Telekom (Thailand), Eastern Telecommunications Philippines Inc (Philippines), Indosat (Indonesia) and Pacific Communications Pte Ltd (Cambodia). TM group chief executive officer Datuk Abdul Wahid Omar said the 20,000km cable system would provide a capacity of up to 1.92 terabits per second of data bandwidth.

Upon its completion in 2008, the system would initially have a capacity of 480 gigabits per second (Gbps) to meet present and future requirements for telecommunication services, he said.

“Cable construction will begin immediately and, when completed, the cable system will connect 10 locations in eight countries across the Asia-Pacific region, namely Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Guam and Hawaii with the US West Coast,” he said at the agreement signing to establish AAG yesterday.

Alcatel Submarine Network and NEC Corp have been awarded the contract to jointly construct the submarine cable.

TM, which holds 9% equity in the project, would be investing US$50mil, Wahid said.

“While we are present in 13 countries in the region and involved in seven existing major submarine cable consortiums, this initiative is still one of the biggest we have undertaken. It will provide TM with additional 60Gbps of capacity, which will help reduce any future potential congestion we may face,” he said.

Source : TheStar

Software Testing Information Resource Center

2007-05-02T15:35:00.000+05:30

Software Quality Assurance & Software Testing Resource Center:

URL: http://www.softwaretestingadvice.com/

Open Source Testing Tools

2007-04-27T15:41:00.000+05:30

List of Open Source Testing Tools:

Go through the following URL: www.opensourcetesting.org

Tester Tool Box

2007-04-27T10:15:00.000+05:30

Here are some tools you may want in your Tester Tool Box:

AllPairs - AllPairs is a free tool - written by James Bach - which is useful for generating test pairs for testing combinations of software features, two at a time.

BareTail-Free real-time log file monitoring and highlighting tool.

Bugzilla-The famous, free, open-source defect tracking system.

Daphne-Daphne is a free system tray application for killing, controlling and debugging Windows processes.

DbVisualizer-Free cross-platform database independent visual browsing and editing tool.

Ethereal-Tool for capturing and analyzing network traffic.

InstallWatch-Records modifications made to your PC during the installation of software, hardware, or configuration changes.

IrfanView-A small freeware graphic viewer for Windows.

Jenny-Jenny is tool for generating pairwise regression tests.

JR Screen Ruler-Free virtual ruler for your computer screen.

Log-Watch-Tool - written by Janes Bach - to watch a log file and play a sound when the desired text appears.

MyIVO-Free remote PC access tool.

OpenSTA-OpenSTA is an open source tool used for HTTP and HTTPS load and performance testing.

PerlClip-PerlClip is a free tool - written by James Bach - used to create strings of test data.

Qlock-Qlock is a free World Clock for both your browser and your desktop.

Screen Rip 32-A freeware screen capture utility that let's you capture areas of the screen with a variety of methods.

SmartReplace-Free tool to search and replace text and file names at once in one simple action.

SysInternals Utilities-A collection of useful and powerful utilities for Windows.

TimeSnapper Classic-Automatic screenshot journal tool.

Xenu LinkSleuth-Site spidering tool used to check for broken links.

WebMon-Freeware web page update monitoring program by Colin Markwell.

WinMerge-Open Source visual text file differencing and merging tool for Win32 platforms.

WinTask-A terrific general-purpose Windows and browser automation tool.

SQL Injection [Login Page]

2007-04-19T16:34:00.000+05:30

Following links will help you to start doing SQL Injection on the "Login" page:

http://www.securitydocs.com/library/2656

http://www.imperva.com/application_defense_center/glossary/sql_injection.html

http://www.securiteam.com/securityreviews/5DP0N1P76E.html

Courtesy: Internet

Test Efficiency

2007-04-17T16:39:00.000+05:30

What is Test Execution Efficiency?

It is generally very difficult to measure the efficiency of the testing process or the testing team for a project. Test Efficiency helps to calculate the efficiency of testing i.e. how many defects were leaked to the customer as compared to number of defects reported by the testing team. Generally almost 10-15 % of defects will be leaked and is considered acceptable. In the recent years, Companies have stared spending huge amount of money for developing quality. Due to this defect leakage percentage has come down to less than 10%.

How to Measure?

The Excel Sheet Attached helps us to calculate the efficiency of a testing process based on the number of defects reported by Customer and to the number of defects identified by the Testing Team.

Steps:

1) Provide Ranking to each severity.

In the excel sheet the severity rankings have been assigned as

a) Critical--4

b) Serious – 3

c) Moderate –2

d) Minor –1

2) Collect the list of defects reported by the Testing and Customer based on Severity.

For example:

The customer has Reported 1 Critical, 1 Serious, 2 Moderate and 5 Minor Defects. The Testing Team should have identified these defects.

The Testing Team has Reported 10 Critical, 5 Serious, 10 Moderate and 10 Minor Defects.

The Test Efficiency is calculated as follows: (T/T+C) * 100

T=4*10+5*3+10*2+10*1=85

C= 1*4+1*3+2*2+5*1=16

So Test Efficiency is (85/85+16) * 100=84.16%

Suppose if the Customer had not identified any defects in above example then the Test Efficiency will be 100%.

Consider a small project in which the testing team and customer did not find any defects (Assume you had a good programmer who did unit testing properly) then also the Test Efficiency will be 100%.If the Testing Team Failed to find any Defects and the Customer were finding them then the efficiency of the testing will be 0%. The formula used required fine-tuning in this case.

Find Defects Otherwise the Customer Will!

What Is Requirements Traceability?

2007-04-17T13:58:00.000+05:30

In the broadest terms the RTM is simply a matrix of requirements showing each requirement’s relation to something. It could be the source for the requirement or the design component that describes the implementation of the requirement. Or it could be the test case(s) that covers the requirement. Just think of a spreadsheet with a list of requirements, a unique ID for each requirement, and the corresponding relationship.

Advantages of Using the RTM

The tool itself is very straight forward - it’s the proper use of the tool that provides benefit to your project. The RTM is not something that is used solely by the analysts or testers - it is something that the entire team utilizes.

Ensure Complete Test Coverage

How do you approach defining your test cases? More importantly, how do you know when you’re done? If you use a RTM, you always know the answer to this. As you plan out each test case, decide which requirements each test case will cover - then map those in the RTM. When all requirements are matched against a test case, you’re done (though you’ll probably still want to look at special cases, alternative tests, etc…).

Help Focus Testing

Along with knowing when your test coverage is complete, a RTM can help reduce unnecessary focus on the same set of requirements. You can quickly see in the matrix when a requirement is covered and avoid continuing to assign more test cases to it.

Validation of Requirements Consistency

I’m not suggesting that testers are responsible for validating requirements - we’re not. This should be done during requirements reviews and walkthroughs, and if problems are not caught there, they should certainly be found during technical design. But the reality of life is that these things are often not done as well as they should be, and requirements sometimes conflict with each other. You may have one requirement state that all numeric input fields are integer, and then another one that states that input field #5 on screen #2 is a numeric field with precision to 2 decimals. Using a RTM can help find these kind of problems.

Permit Prioritization

Another question for you - you’ve just been given the system by the development team and have been asked by management to do a quick assessment of quality. How would you approach this? There are probably numerous ways to attack this, but one way is to look at the RTM and see which set of test cases would cover the largest set of requirements and do those first.

Provide Proof of Testing

Your sponsor asks you “How do you know you’re done with testing? Did you test everything?” With a RTM it’s easy to provide the proof.

Help With Future Projects

Finally, if you have a system to collect the right kind of data, you can provide valuable insight to management for future work. Which requirements resulted in the most defects? Which requirements had the most Change Requests performed? Data like this allows management to assess high risk areas of the application and plan against those risks in the future.

Courtesy: Internet