Tech Notes

Memory Utilization & Garbage Collection Analysis The goal should be to optimize garbage collection (GC) in such way that its impact on application response time or CPU usage is minimized. Monitor the utilization of different memory pools (young, survivor and old). Memory shortage is the number-one reason for the increased GC activity The young generation should be big enough to ensure that all temporary objects die there If overall memory utilization is growing continuously despite garbage collection, it is an indication of memory leak and requires heap analysis Monitor the churn rate (number of object allocation per interval) at the younger generation. The high number of young collection can cause high response time. It can cause unnecessarily copying of objects from young generation to old generation Free tools that can be used for GC analysis are: JConsole, jStat, Java VisualVM, JRockit Mission Control, verbose:gc flag of the JVM A high GC activity generally h

Checklist for Designing Better Performance Test Scripts Make sure the script doesn’t contain incorrect or extraneous URLs. The urls specified should be in correct sequence. It might be possible while recording, script writer would have gone to his / her popular website. It can be validated by using test tool’s “playback” feature to confirm what the script actually does. Identify all dynamic data (as the response from server) present in a script and correlate it. Usually it can be found by recording scripts two times and making comparisons between them. Parameterize scripts to support dynamic data set. In presence of dynamic data, every simulated user exercises the exact same path but avoids responses from the cache and exercises database interactions properly. Use proper checkpoint(s) / assertion(s) for all steps involved in the transaction. Absence of checkpoint might result in better response time when a page is not getting downloaded completely / correctl

DW Testing - Test Ideas Data Completeness Is all expected data being loaded? Is your DW handling updates over time? Is delta pull being tested other than full? What happens when error occurs during the ETL process? Is application able to recover after error? Does the ETL have the ability to resume from the point of failure? Are all data source being considered for testing? Is row count from source to target as per the requirements? Is there any extra data present in the target system? Is unique values of key fields between source data and target data same? Is data truncating before putting into datawarehouse? For example - Source Column width might be having 30 characters, whereas destination might have only 20. Is boundaries of each field been tested? For example, for a decimal(3) field include values of -99 and 999, and for date fields include the entire range of dates expected. Data Transformation Is all data being transformed correctly accordingly to business

Quality Progress Metrics Start tracking before Test Execution User Stories, Features or Requirements Coverage Progress Are test cases being authored for all required stories, features or requirements? Are test cases for important features or requirements being targetted first? Are number of test cases (for stories, features or requirements) proportional to effort required for their development? Are there any features, stories or requirements being left over? Is team on target in covering all required features, stories or requirements? Test Case Readiness Progress When will all the test cases be ready to run? Will all the test cases be ready to run by the end of the iteration? How many test cases must the team still write and review? How many test cases are ready to run? Test Automation Progress How many test cases has been automated? How many test cases being automated on regular basis? Is the team on track in automating the test cases? Start tracking during Te

Manual Testing Core Activities What are the core activities of testing especially for manual testers? How should we plan testing efforts? Most of the time, I have seen effort of review activities and retesting of defects are being ignored heavily and schedule get hit because of that. Following are the core test activities should be considered while planning - Test Ideas (Not Reviewed): Test idea is a test case with only summary and no details Test Ideas (Reviewed L1): Test ideas reviewed by peer team member Test Ideas (Reviewed L2): Test ideas reviewed by Test Lead / Test Manager Test Ideas (Signed-off): Test ideas reviewed by client and signed-off Test Cases (Not Reviewed): Test case is extension of test idea, putting more details around test idea (descriptive, detailed, Clear steps for execution, Test Data information etc.) Test Cases (Reviewed L1): Test cases reviewed by peer team member Test Cases (Reviewed L2): Test cases reviewed by test lead / test manager. Review

Metrics & Management You are conducting testing for a product and in middle of testing, Product Owner (PO) would like to know the quality of the product. What to answer? How to measure the quality of the product? If number of open defects are huge, especially the high severity defects, than it is easy to answer this question - "At a moment product sucks". But how about if number of open defects are very less in number, especially if no high severity defect exists? Is the quality of the product good? It depends on how long high severity defects are not being found and other important aspect is to check the coverage of testing. What percentage of requirements tested? What percentage of code has been covered during the testing? If coverage is less than quality of product can't be measured rather only quality of features can be explained. If number of high severity defects are less in number and not being raised for a longer time and coverage is also almost m

Integration of Testing Process in Sprint 1. Understanding the stories context from testability perspective Phase: Sprint Planning Stories should be understood from end users perspective It should be clear for testers, what are the changes and the reasons behind those changes Missing test requirements (e.g. login / password, contest id, test environment accessibility, access to new features etc.) What should be done to overcome the requirements? Track missing requirements and make it available as soon as possible Features or requirements or part of requirements is not testable (e.g. not permissible to login to Salesforce etc.) 2. Create a running document, containing clarifications and its resolution Phase: Sprint Planning A document that contain history of all questions or concerns being raised A reference document for tester, when in doubt Document for product owner to know how well equipped his / her testers are 3. Add notes to testers, testing ideas or