Tech Notes

Build Tools Build automation involves scripting or automating the process of compiling computer source code into binary code.   These tools are particularly useful for continuous integration (CI) builds where frequent calls to the compile process are required and incremental build processing is needed. Core activities involved in build automation: Compiling source code into binary code Packaging of binary code Running of tests Deployment of binary code to test environments / production environment Creation of documents or release notes Advantages: Accelerate compile and link processing Eliminate redundant tasks Have history of build and releases in order to investigate issues Features of build tools that need to be considered before picking it: Frequent / Scheduled Builds Support for Source Code Management system Incremental Build Processing Reporting on build’s status Generation of release notes and other documentations Some Popular Ope

CI is one of the modern software development practices for applying quality controls in small pieces.  CI involves automatically building and testing an application at frequent intervals on a dedicated integration server.  Developers regularly commit small updates and are notified rapidly if their changes cause the build to fail. Core activities involved in CI: Maintaining a code repository Committing the code to the baseline everyday Automating the build process Deploying the build to test environment Making the build self-testing Reporting the build status to the team Advantages: Reduces the risk of integration issues appearing late in the project Improve communication between team members Reduce the time needed to prepare a release Most fundamental feature of CI tool is the automatic build cycle.  The CI tool, either at a scheduled time or whenever any changes are detected in the source code repository, fetches the source code latest version

Mobility Application Testing §          Over the last few years, the volume of smartphone usages has increased considerably.  There are plethora of mobile handsets which run million of applications embedded in it.  Some of the application today are using power of cloud to communicate with the ERP system Testing as a Service (TaaS) §          This model involves the on-demand test execution of well-defined suites of test material, generally on outsourced basis.  The execution can be performed either on client site or remotely from the outsourced providers test lab / facilities. Analytics / BI (Business Intelligence) Testing §          Identifying issues related to data inconsistency, data quality, data security, failures in the extract, transform and load (ETL) process, performance related issues, accuracy of business flows and fitness for use from an end user perspective. Developers Converting As Testers §          Tester needs to be strong in both technical skills as well as indus

A processor bottleneck occurs when one or more processes consume the majority of the processor time.  This forces threads that are ready to be executed to wait in a queue for processor time. We identify if processor is bottleneck by investigating the processor utilization (Processor \ % Processor Time or System \ % Processor Time) and threads waiting in queue (System \ Processor Queue Length).  Please see here for more information. Once we have found that there is a bottleneck in terms of processor, we need to proceed ahead with further analysis.  Following are few of the questions in general without in context of some specific application, which I think we need to find answers for them and act accordingly. 1.        Is processor bottleneck due to lack of physical memory in the system? A memory bottleneck can sometimes look like a processor or disk bottleneck.  If the system does not have enough physical memory to store the code and data that are needed, the processor spends subs

See complete QA books list  here Software Testing with Visual Studio 2010  (Jeff Levinson) Automated Database Applications Testing: Specification Representation for Automated Reasoning  (Rana Rarid Mikhail, Donald Berndt and Abraham Kandel) Automated Software Testing: Automation in Telecommunication  (Randall Mathura) Design Driven Testing: Test Smarter, Not Harder  (Matt Stephens and Doug Rosenberg) Mastering Software Quality Assurance: Best Practices, Tools and Techniques for Software Developers  (Murali Chemuturi) Selenium 1.0 Testing Tools: Beginner's Guide  (David Burns) Software Testing Automation Framework (Lambert M. Surhone, Mariam T. Tennoe, Susan F. Henssonow) Software Testing and QTP Automation  (Rajamanickam Antonimuthu) Software Testing using Visual Studio 2010  (Subashni S. Satheesh Kumar N.) Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests  (Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce) Implementing Automated Software Testing: How to Save Time and Lower Costs While Rai

We identify if physical memory is bottleneck by investigating the rate of hard page faults (Memory \ Page Reads / sec) occurring in the system.  Please see here for more information. Once we have found that there is a bottleneck in terms of physical memory, we need to proceed ahead with further analysis.  Following are few of the questions in general without in context of some specific application, which I think we need to find answers for them and act accordingly. 1.        Is memory bottleneck due to memory consumed by OS / device drivers? A section of system memory, known as pool memory , is reserved for use by the operating system.  Pool memory is either paged or non-paged .  Monitor ‘Memory \ Pool Paged Bytes’, ‘Memory \ Pool Non-paged Bytes’ and ‘Memory \ Available Memory’ with respect to ‘Elapsed Time’.  Find out if ‘Available Memory’ is getting affected due to Pool Bytes (paged as well non-paged). Memory \ Available Bytes: The amount of physical memory (in bytes) availabl

Following are few of the open ended questions in context of software testing for senior software testing professionals especially test managers.  Senior professionals should be having at least minimum awareness in context of these questions.  The experts in their areas should be able to answer related questions with greater length though. Requirements & Specifications How to develop requirements with ‘Use Cases’? How to create a good test specification? How to spot and fix requirement errors early? How to distinguish business requirements from system requirements? How to assess that the requirements are complete? How many tests do you suggest per requirement? What is the importance of testing based on business, as well as system, requirements? What is your opinion on developer’s inclusion in requirements-based unit tests? How to develop test cases when requirements are not available or documented only at very high level? How do yo