Qa Faqs

Software Quality Assurance

(1) A planned and systematic pattern of all actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that an item or product conforms to established technical requirements.(2) A set of activities designed to evaluate the process by which products are developed or manufactured.

What's difference between client/server and Web Application ?

Client/server based is any application architecture where one server application and one or many client applications are involved like your mail server and MS outlook Express, it can be a web application as well, where the Web Application is a kind of client server application that is hosted on the web server and accessed over the internet or interanet. There are lots of things that differs between testing of the two type above and cann't be posted in one post but you can look into the data flow, communication and servside variable like session and security etc

Software Quality Assurance Activities

Application of Technical Methods (Employing proper methods and tools for developing software)

Conduct of Formal Technical Review (FTR) Testing of Software Enforcement of Standards (Customer imposed standards or management imposed

standards) Control of Change (Assess the need for change, document the change) Measurement (Software Metrics to measure the quality, quantifiable) Records Keeping and Recording (Documentation, reviewed, change control etc. i.e.

benefits of docs).

What's the difference between STATIC TESTING and DYNAMIC TESTING?

Answer1:Dynamic testing: Required program to be executedstatic testing: Does not involve program execution

The program is run on some test cases & results of the program’s performance are examined to check whether the program operated as expectedE.g. Compiler task such as Syntax & type checking, symbolic execution, program proving, data flow analysis, control flow analysis

Answer2:

Static Testing: Verification performed with out executing the system code Dynamic Testing: Verification and validation performed by executing the system code

Software Testing

Software testing is a critical component of the software engineering process. It is an element of software quality assurance and can be described as a process of running a program in such a manner as to uncover any errors. This process, while seen by some as tedious, tiresome and unnecessary, plays a vital role in software development.

Testing involves operation of a system or application under controlled conditions and evaluating the results (eg, 'if the user is in interface A of the application while using hardware B, and does C, then D should happen'). The controlled conditions should include both normal and abnormal conditions. Testing should intentionally attempt to make things go wrong to determine if things happen when they shouldn't or things don't happen when they should. It is oriented to 'detection'.

Organizations vary considerably in how they assign responsibility for QA and testing. Sometimes they're the combined responsibility of one group or individual. Also common are project teams that include a mix of testers and developers who work closely together, with overall QA processes monitored by project managers. It will depend on what best fits an organization's size and business structure.

What's difference between QA/testing

The quality assuranceprocess is a process for providing adequate assurance that the software products and processes in the product life cycle conform to their specific requirements and adhere to their established plans." The purpose of Software Quality Assurance is to provide management with appropriate visibility into the process being used by the software project and of the products being built

What black box testing types can you tell me about?

Black box testing is functional testing, not based on any knowledge of internal software design or code. Black box testing is based on requirements and functionality. Functional testing is also a black-box type of testing geared to functional requirements of an application. System testing is also a black box type of testing. Acceptance testing is also a black box type of testing. Functional testing is also a black box type of testing. Closed box testing is also a black box type of testing. Integration testing is also a black box type of testing.

What is software testing methodology?

One software testing methodology is the use a three step process of...1. Creating a test strategy;2. Creating a test plan/design; and3. Executing tests. This methodology can be used and molded to your organization's needs. Rob Davis believes that using this methodology is important in the development and ongoing maintenance of his clients' applications

Why Testing CANNOT Ensure Quality

Testing in itself cannot ensure the quality of software. All testing can do is give you a certain level of assurance (confidence) in the software. On its own, the only thing that testing proves is that under specific controlled conditions, the software functioned as expected by the test cases executed.

How to find all the Bugs during first round of Testing?

Answer1:I understand the problems you are facing. I was involved with a web-based HR system that was encountering the same problems. What I ended up doing was going back over a few release cycles and analyzing the types of defects found and when (in the release cycle including the various testing cycles) they were found. I started to notice a distinct trend in certain areas. For each defect type, I started looking into the possibility if it could have been caught in the prior phase (lots of things were being found in the Systems test phase that should have been caught earlier). If so, why wasn't it caught? Could it have been caught even earlier (say via a peer review)? If so, why not? This led me to start examining the various processes and found a definite problem with peer reviews (not very thorough IF they were even being done) and with the testing process (not rigorous enough). We worked with the customer and folks doing the testing to start educating them and improving the processes. The result was the number of defects found in the latter test stages (System test for example) were cut by over half! It was getting harder to find problems with the product as they were discovering them earlier in the process -- saving time & money!

Answer2:There could be several reasons for not catching a showstopper in the first or second build/rev. A found defect could either functionally or physiologically mask a second or third defect. Functionally the thread or path to the second defect could have been boken or rerouted to another path or physiologically the tester who found the first defect knows the app must go back and be rewritten so he/she procedes halfheartedly on and misses the second one. I've seen both cases. It is difficult to keep testing on a known defective app. The testers seem to lose interest knowing

that what effort they put in to test it, will have to be redone on the next iteration. This will test your metal as a lead to get them to follow through and maintain a professional attitude.

Answer3:The best way is to prevent bugs in the first place. Also testing doesn't fix or prevent bugs. It just provides information. Applying this information to your situation is the important part. The other thing that you may be encountering is that testing tends to be exploratory in nature. You have stated that these are existing bugs, but not stated whether tests already existed for these bugs. Bugs in early cycles inhibit exploration. Additionally, a tester's understanding of the application and its relationships and interactions will improve with time and thus more 'interesting' bugs tend to be found in later iterations as testers expand their exploration (ie. think of new tests). No matter how much time you have to read through the documents and inspect artefacts, seeing the actual application is going to trigger new thoughts, and thus introduce previously unthought of tests. Exposure to the application will trigger new thoughts as well, thus the longer your testing goes, the more new tests (and potential bugs) are going to be found. Iterative development is a good way to counter this, as testers get to see something physical earlier, but this issue will always exist to some degree as the passing of time, and exploration of the application allow new tests to be thought of at inconvenient moments

Is regression testing performed manually?

The answer to this question depends on the initial testing approach. If the initial testing approach was manual testing, then the regression testing is usually performed manually. Conversely, if the initial testing approach was automated testing, then the regression testing is usually performed by automated testing.

How to choose which defect to remove in 1000000 defects? (because It will take too much resources in order to remove them all.)

Answe1:Are you the programmer who has to fix them, the project manager who has to supervise the programmers, the change control team that decides which areas are too high risk to impact, the stakeholder-user whose organization pays for the damage caused by the defects or the tester? The tester does not choose which defects to fix. The tester helps ensure that the people who do choose, make a well-informed choice. Testers should provide data to indicate the *severity* of bugs, but the project manager or the development team do the prioritization. When I say "indicate the severity", I don't just mean writing S3 on a piece of paper. Test groups often do follow-up tests to assess how serious a failure is and how broad the range of failure-triggering conditions.

Priority depends on a wide range of factors, including code-change risk, difficulty/time to complete the change, which stakeholders are affected by the bug, the other commitments being handled by the person most knowledgeable about fixing a certain bug, etc. Many of these factors are not within the knowledge of most test groups.

Answe2:As a tester we don't fix the defects but we surely can prioritize them once detected. In our org we assign severity level to the defects depending upon their influence on other parts of products. If a defect doesnt allow you to go ahead and test test the product, it is critical one so it has to be fixed ASAP. We have 5 levels as1-critical2-High3-Medium4-Low5-Cosmetic

Dev can group all the critical ones and take them to fix before any other defect.

Answer3:Priority/Severity P1 P2 P3S1S2S3

Generally the defects are classified in aboveshown grid. Every organization / software has some target of fixing the bugs.Example -P1S1 -> 90% of the bugs reported should be fixed.P3S3 -> 5% of the bugs reported may be fixed. Rest are taken in letter service packs or versions.

Thus the organization should decide its target and act accordingly. Basically bugfree software is not possible.

Answer4:Ideally, the customer should assign priorities to their requirements. They tend to resist this. On a large, multi-year project I just completed, I would often (in the lack of customer guidelines) rely on my knowledge of the application and the potential downstream impacts in the modeled business process to prioritize defects. If the customer doesn't then I fell the test organization should based on risk or other, similar considerations.

What is Software “Quality”?

Quality software is reasonably bug-free, delivered on time and within budget, meets requirements and/or expectations, and is maintainable. However, quality is a subjective term. It will depend on who the ‘customer’ is and their overall influence in the scheme of things. A wide-angle view of the ‘customers’ of a software development project might include end-users, customer acceptance testers, customer contract officers, customer management, the development organisation’s management/accountants/testers/salespeople, future software maintenance engineers, stockholders, magazine reviewers, etc. Each type of ‘customer’ will have their own view on ‘quality’ - the accounting department might define quality in terms of profits while an end-user might define quality as user-friendly and bug-free.

What are the five dimensions of the Risks?

Schedule: Unrealistic schedules, exclusion of certain activities when chalking out a schedule etc. could be deterrents to project delivery on time. Unstable communication link can be considered as a probable risk if testing is carried out from a remote location. Client: Ambiguous requirements definition, clarifications on issues not being readily available, frequent changes to the requirements etc. could cause chaos during project execution. Human Resources: Non-availability of sufficient resources with the skill level expected in the project are not available; Attrition of resources - Appropriate training schedules must be planned for resources to balance the knowledge level to be at par with resources quitting. Underestimating the training effort may have an impact in the project delivery. System Resources: Non-availability of /delay in procuring all critical computer resources either hardware and software tools or licenses for software will have an adverse impact. Quality: Compound factors like lack of resources along with a tight delivery schedule and frequent changes to requirements will have an impact on the quality of the product tested.

How do you perform integration testing?

To perform integration testing, first, all unit testing has to be completed. Upon completion of unit testing, integration testing begins. Integration testing is black box testing. The purpose of integration testing is to ensure distinct components of the application still work in accordance to customer requirements. Test cases are developed with the express purpose of exercising the interfaces between the components. This activity is carried out by the test team. Integration testing is considered complete, when actual results and expected results are either in line or differences are explainable, or acceptable, based on client input.

Why back-end testing is required, if we are going to check the front-end ....?

Why we need to do unit testing, if all the features are being tested in System testing. What extra things are tested in unit testing, which can not be tested in System testing.

Answer1: Assume that you're thinking client-server or web. If you test the application on the front end only you can see if the data was stored and retrievd correctly. You can't see if the servers are in an error state or not. many server processes are monitored by another process. If they crash, they are restarted. You can't see that without looking at it. The data may not be stored correctly either but the front end may have cached data lying around and it will use that instead. The least you should be doing is verifying the data as stored in the database. It is easier to test data being transferred on the boundaries and see the results of those transactions when you can set the data in a driver.

Answer2: Back-End testing : Basically the requirement of this testing depends on ur project. like Say if ur project is .Ticket booking system,Front end u will provided with an Interface , where u can book the ticket by giving the appropriate details ( Like Place to go, and Time when u wanna go etc..). It will have a Data storage system (Database or XL sheet etc) which is a Back end for storing details entered by the user.After submitting the details ,U might have provided with a correct acknowledgement.But in back end , the details might not updated correctly in Database becoz of wrong logic development. Then that will cause a major problem. and regarding Unit level testing and System testing Unit level testing is for testing the basic checks whether the application is working fyn with the basic requirements.This will be done by developers before delivering to the QA.In System testing , In addition to the unit checks ,u will be performing all the checks ( all possible integrated checks which required) .Basically this will be carried out by tester

Answer3:Ever heard about divide and conquer tactic ? It is a same method applied in backend and frontend testing. A good back end test will help minimize the burden of frontend test. Another point is you can test the backend while develope the frontend. A true pararelism could be achived. Backend testing has another problem which must addressed before front end could use it. The problem is concurency. Building a scenario to test concurency is formidable task. A complex thing is hard to test. To create such scenarios will make you unsure which test you already done and which you haven't. What we need is an effective methods to test our application. The simplest method i know is using divide and conquer.

Answer4:A wide range of errors are hard to see if you don't see the code. For example, there are many optimizations in programs that treat special cases. If you don't see the special case, you don't test the optimization. Also, a substantial portion of most programs is error handling. Most

programmers anticipate more errors than most testers. Programmers find and fix the vast majority of their own bugs. This is cheaper, because there is no communication overhead, faster because there is no delay from tester-reporter to programmer, and more effective because the programmer is likely to fix what she finds, and she is likely to know the cause of the problems she sees. Also, the rapid feedback gives the programmer information about the weaknesses in her programming that can help her write better code. Many tests -- most boundary tests -- are done at the system level primarily because we don't trust that they were done at the unit level. They are wasteful and tedious at the system level. I'd rather see them properly done and properly automated in a suite of programmer tests.

Any recommendation for estimation how many bugs the customer will find till gold release?

Answer1:If you take the total number of bugs in the application and subtract the number of bugs you found, the difference will be the maximum number of bugs the customer can find. Seriously, I doubt you will find any sort of calculations or formula that can answer your question with much accuracy. If you could refernce a previous application release, it might give you a rough idea. The best thing to do is insure your test coverage is as good as you can make it then hope you've found the ones the customer might find. Remember Software testing is Risk Management!

Answer2:For doing estimation :1.)Find out the Coverage during testing of ur software and then estimate keeping in mind 80-20 principle. 2.)You can also look at the deepening of your test cases e.g. how much unit level testing and how much life cycle teting have you performed (Believe that most of the bugs from customer comes due to real use of lifecycle in the software) 3.)You can also refer the defect density from earlier releases of the same product line. by doing these evaluation you can find out the probability of bugs at an approximately optimum estimation.

Answer3:You can look at the customer issues mapping from previous release (If you have the same product line) to the current release ,This is the best way of finding estimation for gold release of migration of any product.Secondly, till gold release most of the issues comes from various combination of installation testing like cross-platform,i18 issues,Customization,upgradation and migration. So ,these can be taken as a parameter and then can estimation be completed.

When the build comes to the QA team, what are the parameters to be taken for consideration to reject the build upfront without committing for testing ?

Answer1:Agree with R&D a set of tests that if one fails you can reject the build. I usually have some build verification tests that just make sure the build is stable and the major functionality is working. Then if one test fails you can reject the build.

Answer2:The only way to legitimately reject a build is if the entrance criteria have not been met. That means that the entrance criteria to the test phase have been defined and agreed upon up front. This should be standard for all builds for all products. Entrance criteria could include:- Turn-over documentation is complete- All unit testing has been successfully completed and U/T cases are documented in turn-over- All expected software components have been turned-over (staged)- All walkthroughs and inspections are complete- Change requests have been updated to correct status- Configuration Management and build information is provided, and correct, in turn-overThe only way we could really reject a build without any testing, would be a failure of the turn-over procedure. There may, but shouldn't be, politics involved. The only way the test phase can proceed is for the test team to have all components required to perform successful testing. You will have to define entrance (and exit) criteria for each phase of the SDLC. This is an effort to be taken together by the whole development team. Developments entrance criteria would include signed requirements, HLD doc, etc. Having this criteria pre-established sets everyone up for success

Answer3:The primary reason to reject a build is that it is untestable, or if the testing would be considered invalid. For example, suppose someone gave you a "bad build" in which several of the wrong files had been loaded. Once you know it contains the wrong versions, most groups think there is no point continuing testing of that build. Every reason for rejecting a build beyond this is reached by agreement. For example, if you set a build verification test and the program fails it, the agreement in your company might be to reject the program from testing. Some BVTs are designed to include relatively few tests, and those of core functionality. Failure of any of these tests might reflect fundamental instability. However, several test groups include a lot of additional tests, and failure of these might not be grounds for rejecting a build. In some companies, there are firm entry criteria to testing. Many companies pay lipservice to entry criteria but start testing the code whether the entry criteria are met or not. Neither of these is right or wrong--it's the culture of the company. Be sure of your corporate culture before rejecting a build.

Answer4:Generally a company would have set some sort of minimum goals/criteria that a build needs to

satisfy - if it satisfies this - it can be accepted else it has to be rejectedFor eg.Nil - high priority bugs2 - Medium Priority bugsSanity test or Minimum acceptance and Basic acceptance should pass The reasons for the new build - say a change to a specific case - this should pass Not able to proceed - non - testability or even some more which is in relation to the new build or the product If the above criterias don't pass then the build could be rejected.

What is Benchmark?

How it is linked with SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle)?or SDLC and Benchmark are two unrelated things.?What are the compoments of Benchmark?In Software Testing where Benchmark fits in? A Benchmark is a standard to measure against. If you benchmark an application, all future application changes will be tested and compared against the benchmarked application.

Which of the following Statements about gernerating test cases is false?

Which of the following Statements about gernerating test cases is false? 1. Test cases may contain multiple valid conditions2. Test cases may contain multiple invalid conditions3. Test cases may contain both valid and invalid conditions4. Test cases may contain more than 1 step.5. test cases should contain Expected results.

Answer1:all the conditions mentioned are valid and not a single condition can be stated as false.Here i think, the condition means the input type or situation (some may call it as valid or invalid, positive or negative)Also a single test case can contain both the input types and then the final result can be verified (it obviously should not bring the required result, as one of the input condition is invalid, when the test case would be executed), this usually happens while writing secnario based test cases. For ex. Consider web based registration form, in which input data type for some fields are positive and for some fields it is negative (in a scenario based test case)Above screen can be tested by generating various scenario's and combinations. The final result can be verified against actual result and the registration should not be carried out sucessfully (as one/some input types are invalid), when this test case is executed.

The writing of test case also depends upon the no. of descriptive fields the tester has in the test case template. So more elaborative is the test case template, more is the ease of writing test cases and generating scenario's. So writing of test cases totally depends on the indepth thinking of the tester and there are no predefined or hard coded norms for writing test case.This is according to my understanding of testing and test case writing knowledge (as for many applications, i have written many positive and negative conditions in a single test case and verified different scenario's by generating such test cases)

Answer2:The answer to this question will be 3 Test cases may contain both valid and invalid conditions. Since there is no restriction for the test case to be of multiple steps or more than one valid or invalid conditions. But A test case whether it is feature ,unit level or end to end test case ,it can not contain both valid and invalid condition in a unit test case.Because if this will happen then the concept of test case for a result will be dwindled and hence has no meaning.

Which things to consider to test a mobile application through black box technique?

Answer1:Not sure how your device/server is to operate, so mold these ideas to fit your app. Some highlights are: Range testing: Ensure that you can reconnect when leaving and returning back into range. Port/IP/firewall testing - change ports and ips to ensure that you can connect and disconnect. modify the firewall to shutoff the connection. Multiple devices - make sure that a user receives his messages with other devices connected to the same ip/port. Your app should have a method to determine which device/user sent the message and only return to it. Should be in the message string sent and received. Unless you have conferencing capabilities within the application. Cycle the power of the server and watch the mobile unit reconnect automatically. Mobile unit sends a message and then power off the unit, when powering back on and reconnecting, ensure that the message is returned to the mobile unit.

Answer2:Not clearly mentioned which area of the mobile application you are testing with. Whether is it simple SMS application or WAP application, you need to specify more details.If you are working with WAP then you can download simulators from net and start testing over it.

What is the general testing process?

The general testing process is the creation of a test strategy (which sometimes includes the creation of test cases), creation of a test plan/design (which usually includes test cases and test procedures) and the execution of tests. Test data are inputs that have been devised to test the systemTest Cases are inputs and outputs specification plus a statement of the function under the test.Test data can be generated automatically (simulated) or real (live).

The stages in the testing process are as follows:1. Unit testing: (Code Oriented)Individual components are tested to ensure that they operate correctly. Each component is tested independently, without other system components.

2. Module testing: A module is a collection of dependent components such as an object class, an abstract data type or some looser collection of procedures and functions. A module encapsulates related components so it can be tested without other system modules.

3. Sub-system testing: (Integration Testing) (Design Oriented)This phase involves testing collections of modules, which have been integrated into sub-systems. Sub-systems may be independently designed and implemented. The most common problems, which arise in large software systems, are sub-systems interface mismatches. The sub-system test process should therefore concentrate on the detection of interface errors by rigorously exercising these interfaces.

4. System testing: The sub-systems are integrated to make up the entire system. The testing process is concerned with finding errors that result from unanticipated interactions between sub-systems and system components. It is also concerned with validating that the system meets its functional and non-functional requirements.

5. Acceptance testing: This is the final stage in the testing process before the system is accepted for operational use. The system is tested with data supplied by the system client rather than simulated test data. Acceptance testing may reveal errors and omissions in the systems requirements definition( user - oriented) because real data exercises the system in different ways from the test data. Acceptance testing may also reveal requirement problems where the system facilities do not really meet the users needs (functional) or the system performance (non-functional) is unacceptable.

Acceptance testing is sometimes called alpha testing. Bespoke systems are developed for a single client. The alpha testing process continues until the system developer and the client agrees that the delivered system is an acceptable implementation of the system requirements.When a system is to be marketed as a software product, a testing process called beta testing is often used.

Beta testing involves delivering a system to a number of potential customers who agree to use that system. They report problems to the system developers. This exposes the product to real use and detects errors that may not have been anticipated by the system builders. After this feedback, the system is modified and either released fur further beta testing or for general sale

What's normal practices of the QA specialists with perspective of software?

These are the normal practices of the QA specialists with perspective of software [note: these are all QC activities, not QA activities.] 1-Desgin Review Meetings with the System Analyst and If possible should be the part in Requirement gathering 2-Analysing the requirements and the desing and to trace the desing with respect to the requirements 3-Test Planning 4-Test Case Identification using different techniques (With respect to the Web Based Applciation and Desktoip Applications) 5-Test Case Writing (This part is to be assigned to the testing engineers) 6-Test Case Execution (This part is to be assigned to the testing engineers) 7-Bug Reporting (This part is to be assigned to the testing engineers) 8-Bug Review and thier Analysis so that future bus can be removed by desgining some standards

from low-level to high level (Testing in Stages)

Except for small programs, systems should not be tested as a single unit. Large systems are built out of sub-systems, which are built out of modules that are composed of procedures and functions. The testing process should therefore proceed in stages where testing is carried out incrementally in conjunction with system implementation.

The most widely used testing process consists of five stages

Component testing

Unit Testing Verification(Process Oriented)

White Box Testing Techniques(Tests that are derived from knowledge of the program's structure and implementation)

Module Testing

Integrated testing

Sub-system Testing

System Testing

User testingAcceptance Testing

Validation(Product Oriented)

Black Box Testing Techniques(Tests are derived from the program specification)

However, as defects are discovered at any one stage, they require program modifications to correct them and this may require other stages in the testing process to be repeated. Errors in program components, say may come to light at a later stage of the testing process. The process is therefore an iterative one with information being fed back from later stages to earlier parts of the process.

How to test and to get the difference between two images which is in the same window?

Answer1:How are you doing your comparison? If you are doing it manually, then you should be able to see any major differences. If you are using an automated tool, then there is usually a comparison facility in the tool to do that.

Answer2:Jasper Software is an open-source utility which can be compiled into C++ and has a imgcmp function which compares JPEG files in very good detail as long as they have the same dimentions and number of components.

Answer3:Rational has a comparison tool that may be used. I'm sure Mercury has the same tool.

Answer4:The key question is whether we need a bit-by-bit exact comparison, which the current tools are good at, or an equivalency comparison. What differences between these images are not differences? Near-match comparison has been the subject of a lot of research in printer testing, including an M.Sc. thesis at Florida Tech. It's a tough problem.

Describe methods to determine if you are testing an application too much?

Answer1: While testing, you need to keep in mind following two things always:-- Percentage of requirements coverage-- Number of Bugs present + Rate of fall of bugs-- Firstly, There may be a case where requirement is covered quite adequately but number of bugs do not fall. This indicates over testing.--- Secondly, There may be a case where those parts of application are also being tested which are not affected by a CHANGE or BUG FIXTURE. This is again a case of over testing.-- Third is the case as you have suggested, with slight modification, i.e bug has sufficiently dropped off but still testing is being at SAME levels as before.

Methods to determine if an application is being over-tested are--1. Comparison of 'Rate of Drop in number of Bugs' & 'Effort Invested in Testing' (With all Requirements been met) That is, if bug rate is falling (as it generally happens in all applications), but effort invested in man hours does not fall, this implies Over testing. 2. Comparison of 'Achievment of bug rate threshold' & 'Effort Invested in Testing' (With all Requirements been met) That is, if bug rate has already achieved the agreed-upon value with business and still the testing efforts are being invested with no/little reduction. 3. Verifying if the 'Impact Analysis' for 'Change Requests' has been done properly and being implemented correctly. That is, to check and verify that the components of AUT which have got impacted by the new change are being tested only and no other unrequired component is being tested unneccessarily. If unaffected components are being tested, this implies Over testing.

Answer2: If the bug find rate has dropped off considerably, the test group should shift its testing strategy. One of the key problems with heavy reliance on regression testing is that the bug find rate drops off even though there are plenty of bugs not yet found. To find new bugs, you have to run new tests. Every test technique is stronger for some types of bugs and weaker for others. Many test groups use only a few techniques. In our consulting, James Bach and I repeatedly worked with companies that relied on only one or two main techniques. When one technique, any one test technique, yields few bugs, shifting to new technique(s) is likely to expose new problems. At some point, you can use a measure that is only partially statistical -- if your bug find rate is low AND you can't think of any new testing approaches that look promising, THEN you are at the limit of your effectiveness and you should ship the product. That still doesn't mean that the application is overtested. It just means that YOU'RE not going to find many new bugs.

Answer3: Best way is to monitor the test defects over the period of time Refer williams perry book, where he has mentioned the concept of 'under test' and 'over test', in fact the data can be plotted to see the criteria. Yes one of the criteria is to monitor the defect rate and see if it is almost zero second method would be using test coverage when it reach 100% (or 100% requirement coverage)

Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs

(Continued from previous question...)

Procedural Software Testing Issues

Software testing in the traditional sense can miss a large number of errors if used alone. That is why processes like Software Inspections and Software Quality Assurance (SQA) have been developed. However, even testing all by itself is very time consuming and very costly. It also ties up resources that could be used otherwise. When combined with inspections and/or SQA or when formalized, it also becomes a project of its own requiring analysis, design and implementation and supportive communications infrastructure. With it interpersonal problems arise and need managing. On the other hand, when testing is conducted by the developers, it will most likely be very subjective. Another problem is that developers are trained to avoid errors. As a result they may conduct tests that prove the product is working as intended (i.e. proving there are no errors) instead of creating test cases that tend to uncover as many errors as possible.

How do I start with testing?

Think twice (or may be more) times before you choose a career. Are you interested in it or do u just want to jump on the bandwagon? PrerequisiteYou can join a software development company as a tester if you can convince the interviewer 1. You have a knack for breaking software2. You are aware of basic Quality concepts and belive in them3. You want to pursue Testing as a career and not just to try it

OO Software Testing Issues

A common way of testing OO software testing-by-poking-around (Binder, 1995). In this case the developer's goal is to show that the product can do something useful without crashing. Attempts are made to "break" the product. If and when it breaks, the errors are fixed and the product is

then deemed "tested". Testing-by-poking-around method of testing OO software is, in my opinion, as unsuccessful as random testing of procedural code or design. It leaves the finding of errors up to a chance.Another common problem in OO testing is the idea that since a superclass has been tested, any subclasses inheriting from it don't need to be.This is not true because by defining a subclass we define a new context for the inherited attributes. Because of interaction between objects, we have to design test cases to test each new context and re-test the superclass as well to ensure proper working order of those objects.Yet another misconception in OO is that if you do proper analysis and design (using the class interface or specification), you don't need to test or you can just perform black-box testing only.However, function tests only try the "normal" paths or states of the class. In order to test the other paths or states, we need code instrumentation. Also it is often difficult to exercise exception and error handling without examination of the source code.

What is the purpose of black box testing?

Answer1:The main purpose of BB Testing is to validate that the application works as the user will be operating it and in the environments of their systems. How do you do system testing and integration testing? You may lose time and money but you may also lose Quality and eventually Customers!

Answer2:"What is the purpose of black box testing?" Black-box testing checks that the user interface and user inputs and outputs all work correctly. Part of this is that error handling must work correctly. It's used in functional and system testing. "We do everything in white box testing: - we check each module's function in the unit testing" Who is "we"? Are you programmers or quality assurance testers? Usually, unit testing is done by programmers, and white-box testing would be how they'd do it. "- once unit test result is ok, means that modules work correctly (according to the requirement documemts)" Not quite. It means that on a stand-alone basis, each module is okay. White box testing only tests the internal structure of the program, the code paths. Functional testing is needed to test how the individual components work together, and this is best done from an external perspective, meaning by using the software the way an end user would, without reference to the code (which is what black-box testing is). if we doing testing again in black box will we lose time and money?" No, the opposite: You'll lose money from having to repair errors you didn't catch with the white-box testing if you don't do some black-box testing. It's far more expensive to fix errors after release than to test for them and fix them early on. But again, who is "we"? The black box testers should not be the people who did the

programming; they should be the QA team -- also some end users for the usability testing. Now that I've said that, good programmers will run some basic black-box tests before handing the application to QA for testing. This isn't a substitute for having QA do the tests, but it's a lot quicker for the programmer to find and fix an error right away than to have to go through the whole process of reporting a bug, then fixing and releasing a new build, then retesting.

How do you create a test plan/design?

Test scenarios and/or cases are prepared by reviewing functional requirements of the release and preparing logical groups of functions that can be further broken into test procedures. Test procedures define test conditions, data to be used for testing and expected results, including database updates, file outputs, report results. Generally speaking...* Test cases and scenarios are designed to represent both typical and unusual situations that may occur in the application.* Test engineers define unit test requirements and unit test cases. Test engineers also execute unit test cases.* It is the test team that, with assistance of developers and clients, develops test cases and scenarios for integration and system testing.* Test scenarios are executed through the use of test procedures or scripts.* Test procedures or scripts define a series of steps necessary to perform one or more test scenarios.* Test procedures or scripts include the specific data that will be used for testing the process or transaction.* Test procedures or scripts may cover multiple test scenarios.* Test scripts are mapped back to the requirements and traceability matrices are used to ensure each test is within scope. * Test data is captured and base lined, prior to testing. This data serves as the foundation for unit and system testing and used to exercise system functionality in a controlled environment.* Some output data is also base-lined for future comparison. Base-lined data is used to support future application maintenance via regression testing.* A pretest meeting is held to assess the readiness of the application and the environment and data to be tested. A test readiness document is created to indicate the status of the entrance criteria of the release.Inputs for this process:* Approved Test Strategy Document.* Test tools, or automated test tools, if applicable.* Previously developed scripts, if applicable.* Test documentation problems uncovered as a result of testing.* A good understanding of software complexity and module path coverage, derived from general and detailed design documents, e.g. software design document, source code, and software complexity data.

Outputs for this process:* Approved documents of test scenarios, test cases, test conditions, and test data.* Reports of software design issues, given to software developers for correction.

What is the purpose of a test plan?

Reason number 1: We create a test plan because preparing it helps us to think through the efforts needed to validate the acceptability of a software product. Reason number 2: We create a test plan because it can and will help people outside the test group to understand the why and how of product validation. Reason number 3: We create a test plan because, in regulated environments, we have to have a written test plan. Reason number 4: We create a test plan because the general testing process includes the creation of a test plan. Reason number 5: We create a test plan because we want a document that describes the objectives, scope, approach and focus of the software testing effort. Reason number 6: We create a test plan because it includes test cases, conditions, the test environment, a list of related tasks, pass/fail criteria, and risk assessment. Reason number 7: We create test plan because one of the outputs for creating a test strategy is an approved and signed off test plan document. Reason number 8: We create a test plan because the software testing methodology a three step process, and one of the steps is the creation of a test plan. Reason number 9: We create a test plan because we want an opportunity to review the test plan with the project team. Reason number 10: We create a test plan document because test plans should be documented, so that they are repeatable.

Can we prepare Test Plan without SRS?

It is not always mandatory that you should have SRS document to prepare a Test Plan. This kind of Documents Hierarchy is maintained to maintain Organizational standards and also to have clear understanding of the things. Yes you can Prepare a Test plan directly without SRS, When the Requirements are clear with your clients,and when your URD(User Requirement Document ) is supportive enough to clarify the issues.

Though we don't have SRS clients will be giving some information SRS only contains mainly Product information But we will not know the Testing effort if we don't have SRS. SRS contains How many cycles we are testing, and on the platforms we are testing , etc. Actually there won't be any harm in doing so, becoz, ultimately you will send your Test plan document to your client and after getting approval from him only you start Testing. (Note:- SRS is the document which you get in the Analysis phase of your Software Development. Test plan is the document , which contains the details of Product interms of , Tset strategy , Scope of testing, Types of tests to be conducted,Risk Managemnet , Mention of Automation Tool ,About Bug tracking Tool, etc..,)

How do test plan templates look like?

The test plan document template helps to generate test plan documents that describe the objectives, scope, approach and focus of a software testing effort. Test document templates are often in the form of documents that are divided into sections and subsections. One example of a template is a 4-section document where section 1 is the description of the "Test Objective", section 2 is the the description of "Scope of Testing", section 3 is the the description of the "Test Approach", and section 4 is the "Focus of the Testing Effort". All documents should be written to a certain standard and template. Standards and templates maintain document uniformity. They also help in learning where information is located, making it easier for a user to find what they want. With standards and templates, information will not be accidentally omitted from a document. Once Rob Davis has learned and reviewed your standards and templates, he will use them. He will also recommend improvements and/or additions. A software project test plan is a document that describes the objectives, scope, approach and focus of a software testing effort. The process of preparing a test plan is a useful way to think through the efforts needed to validate the acceptability of a software product. The completed document will help people outside the test group understand the why and how of product validation.

How to Test a desktop systems ?

You will likely have to use a programming or scripting language to interact with the service directly. You will have more control over the raw information that way. You will have to determine what the service is supposed to do and how it is supposed to interact with other applications and services. A data dictionary likely exists. It may not be called that however. What this document does is explain what commands the service will respond to and what sort of data should be sent. You will have to use this document to do your testing. Get close

to the person or people who created the document or the service and expect them to keep you in the loop when changes take place (it doesn't help anyone if you report a defect and it's really only reflecting an expected change in the operation of the service). Desktop applications are generally designed to run and quit. You have to be concerned with memory leaks and system usage.

How do you create a test strategy?

The test strategy is a formal description of how a software product will be tested. A test strategy is developed for all levels of testing, as required. The test team analyzes the requirements, writes the test strategy and reviews the plan with the project team. The test plan may include test cases, conditions, the test environment, a list of related tasks, pass/fail criteria and risk assessment.Inputs for this process:* A description of the required hardware and software components, including test tools. This information comes from the test environment, including test tool data.* A description of roles and responsibilities of the resources required for the test and schedule constraints. This information comes from man-hours and schedules.* Testing methodology. This is based on known standards.* Functional and technical requirements of the application. This information comes from requirements, change request, technical and functional design documents.* Requirements that the system can not provide, e.g. system limitations. Outputs for this process:* An approved and signed off test strategy document, test plan, including test cases.* Testing issues requiring resolution. Usually this requires additional negotiation at the project management level.

How to do Estimating Testing effort ?

Time Estimation method for Testing Process Note : folloing method is based on use case driven specification. Step 1 : count number of use cases (NUC) of system step 2 : Set Avg Time Test Cases(ATTC) as per test plan step 3 : Estimate total number of test cases (NTC) Total number of test cases = Number of usecases X Avg testcases per a use case Step 4 : Set Avg Execution Time (AET) per a test case (idelly 15 min depends on your system)

Step 5 : Calculate Total Execution Time (TET) TET = Total number of test cases * AET Step 6 : Calculate Test Case Creation Time (TCCT)useually we will take 1.5 times of TET as TCCTTCCT = 1.5 * TETStep 7 : Time for ReTest Case Execution (RTCE) this is for retestinguseually we take 0.5 times of TETRTCE = 0.5 * TETStep 8 : Set Report generation Time (RGTusually we take 0.2 times of TETRGT = 0.2 * TETStep 9 : Set Test Environment Setup Time (TEST)it also depends on test planStep 10 : Total Estimation time = TET + TCCT+ RTCE + RGT + TEST + some buffer...;)ExampleTotal No of use cases (NUC) : 227Average test cases per Use cases(AET) : 10Estimated Test cases(NTC) : 227 * 10 = 2270Time estimation execution (TET) : 2270/4 = 567.5 hrTime for creating testcases (TCCT) : 567.5*4/3 = 756.6 hrTime for retesting (RTCE) : 567.5/2 = 283.75 hrReport Generation(RGT) = 100 hrTest Environment Setup Time(TEST) = 20 hr.-------------------Total Hrs 1727.85 + buffer-------------------here 4 means Number of testcases executed per houri.e 15 min will take for execution of each test case

What does a test strategy document contain?

The test strategy document contains test cases, conditions, the test environment, a list of related tasks, pass/fail criteria and risk assessment. The test strategy document is a formal description of how a software product will be tested. What is the test strategy document developed for? It is developed for all levels of testing, as required. How is it written, and who writes it? It is the test team that analyzes the requirements, writes the test strategy, and reviews the plan with the project team

hy Q/A should not report to development?

Based on research from the Quality Assurance Institute, the percent of quality groups in each location is noted, 50% - reports to Senior IT Manager - This is the best positioning because it gives the Quality Manager immediate access to the IT Manager to discuss and promote Quality issues, when the quality manager reports elsewhere, quality issues may not be raised to the appropriate level or receive the necessary action. 25% - reports to Manager of systems/programming 15 % reports to Manger oprerations. 10 % outside IT function.

In QA team, everyone talks about process. What exactly they are taking about? Are there any different type of process?

Answer1:When you talk about "process" you are generally talking about the actions used to accomplish a task. Here's an example: How do you solve a jigsaw puzzle? You start with a box full of oddly shaped pieces. In your mind you come up with a strategy for matching two pieces together (or no strategy at all and simply grab random pieces until you find a match), and continue on until the puzzle is completed. If you were to describe the *way* that you go about solving the puzzle you would be describing the process. Some follow-up questions you might think about include things like:- How much time did it take you to solve the puzzle?- Do you know of any skills, tricks or practices that might help you solve the puzzle quicker?- What if you try to solve the puzzle with someone else? Does that help you go faster, or slower? (why or why not?) Can you have *too* many people on this one task?- To answer your second question, I'll ask *you* the question: Are there different ways that people can solve a jigsaw puzzle? There are many interesting process-related questions, ideas and theories in Quality Assurance. Generally the identification of workplace processes lead to the questions of improvement in efficiency and productivity. The motivation behind that is to try and make the processes as efficient as possible so as to incur the least amount of time and expense, while providing a general sense of repeatability, visibility and predictability in the way tasks are performed and completed.

The idea behind this is generally good, but the execution is often flawed. That is what makes QA so interesting. You see, when you work with people and processes, it is very different than working with the processes performed by machines. Some people in QA forget that distinction and often become disillusioned with the whole thing. If you always remember to approach processes in the workplace with a people-centric view, you should do fine.

Answer2:There is:* Waterfall* Spiral* Rapid prototype* Clean room* Agile (XP, Scrum, ...)

What is a requirements test matrix?

The requirements test matrix is a project management tool for tracking and managing testing efforts, based on requirements, throughout the project's life cycle. The requirements test matrix is a table, where requirement descriptions are put in the rows of the table, and the descriptions of testing efforts are put in the column headers of the same table. The requirements test matrix is similar to the requirements traceability matrix, which is a representation of user requirements aligned against system functionality. The requirements traceability matrix ensures that all user requirements are addressed by the system integration team and implemented in the system integration effort. The requirements test matrix is a representation of user requirements aligned against system testing. Similarly to the requirements traceability matrix, the requirements test matrix ensures that all user requirements are addressed by the system test team and implemented in the system testing effort.

What metrics are used for test report generation?

Metrics that can be used for test report generation include...McCabe metrics: cyclomatic complexity metric (v(G)), actual complexity metric (AC), module design complexity metric (iv(G)), essential complexity metric (ev(G)), pathological complexity metric (pv(G)), design complexity metric (S0), integration complexity metric (S1), object integration complexity metric (OS1), global data complexity metric (gdv(G)), data complexity metric (DV), tested data complexity metric (TDV), data reference metric (DR), tested data reference metric (TDR), maintenance severity metric (maint_severity), data reference severity metric (DR_severity), data complexity severity metric (DV_severity), global data severity metric

(gdv_severity).McCabe object-oriented software metrics: encapsulation percent public data (PCTPUB), access to public data (PUBDATA), polymorphism percent of unoverloaded calls (PCTCALL), number of roots (ROOTCNT), fan-in (FANIN), quality maximum v(G) (MAXV), maximum ev(G) (MAXEV), and hierarchy quality (QUAL).Other object-oriented software metrics: depth (DEPTH), lack of cohesion of methods (LOCM), number of children (NOC), response for a class (RFC), weighted methods per class (WMC), Halstead software metrics program length, program volume, program level and program difficulty, intelligent content, programming effort, error estimate, and programming time.Line count software metrics: lines of code, lines of comment, lines of mixed code and comments, and lines left blank.

What is the difference between efficient and effective?

"Efficient" means having a high ratio of output to input; which means working or producing with a minimum of waste. For example, "An efficient engine saves gas." Or, "An efficient test engineer saves time". "Effective", on the other hand, means producing or capable of producing an intended result, or having a striking effect. For example, "For rapid long-distance transportation, the jet engine is more effective than a witch's broomstick". Or, "For developing software test procedures, engineers specializing in software testing are more effective than engineers who are generalists"

How effective can we implement six sigma principles in a very large software services organization?

Answer1: Effective way of implementing sixsigma. there are quite a few things one needs 1. management buyin2. dedicated team both drivers as well as adopters3. training4. culture building - if you have a pro process culture, life is easy5. sustained effort over a period towards transforming, people, thoughts and actions Personally technical content is never a challenge, but adoption is a challenge.

Answer2: "Six sigma" is a combination of process recommendations and mathematical model. The name "six sigma" reflects the notion of reducing variation so much that errors -- events out of tolerance -- are six standard deviations from a desired mean. The mathematics are at the core of the process implementation. The problem is that software is not hardware. Software defects are designed in, not the result of manufacturing variation. The other side of six sigma is the drive for continuous improvement. You don't need the six sigma math for this and the concept has been around long before the six sigma movement. To improve anything, you need some type of indicator of its current state and a way to tell that it is improved. Plus determination to improve it. Management support helps.

Answer3: There are different methodologies adopted in sixsigma. However, it is commonly referenced from the variance based approach. If you are trying to look at sixsigma from that, for software services, fundamentally the measurement system should be reliable - industry has not reached the maturity level of manufacturing industry where it fits to a T. The differences between SW and HW/manufacturing industry is slightly difficult to address. There are some areas you can adopt sixsigma in its full statistical form(eg in-process error rate, productivity improvements etc), some areas are difficult. The narrower the problem area is, the better it gets even in software services to address adopting the statistical method. There are methodologies that have a bundle of tools,along with statistical techniques, are used on the full SDLC. A generic observation is ,SS helps if we look for proper fitment of methodology for the purpose. Else doubts creep in

Are developers smarter than tester? Any suggestion about the future prospects and technicality involvedin the testing job?

Answer1:QA & Testing are thankless jobs. In a software development company developer is a core person. As you are a fresh graduate, it would be good for you to work as a developer. From development you can always move to testing or QA or other admin/support tasks. But from Testing or QA it is little difficult to go back to development, though not impossible(as u are BE comp)Seeing the job market, it is not possible for each & every fresher to get into development. But you can keep searching for it.Some big company's have seperate Verifiction & Validation groups where only testing projects are executed. Those teams have TLs, PLs who are testing experts. They earn good salary same as development people. In technical projects the testing team does lot of technical work. You can do certifications to

improve your technical skills & market value. It all depends on your way of handling things & interpersonal, communication and leadership skills. If it is difficult for you to get a job in developement or you really like testing, just go ahead. Try to achieve excellence as a testing professional. You will never have a job problem .Also you will always get onsite opportunities too!! Yuo might have to struggle for initial few years like all other freshers.

Answer2:QA and Testing are thankless only in some companies. Testing is part of development. Rather than distinguish between testing and development,distinguish between testing and programming. Programming is also thankless in some companies. Not suggesting that anyone should or should not go into testing. It depends on your skills and interests. Some people are better at programming and worse at testing, some better at testing and worse at programming, some are not suited for either role. You should decide what you are good at and what fascinates you. What type of work would make you WANT to stay at work for 60-80 hours a week for a few years because it is so interesting? Suggesting that there are excellent testing jobs out there, but there are bad ones too (in testing and in programming, both). Have not seen any certification in software testing that improves the technical skill of anyone. Apparently, testing certification improves a tester's market value in some markets. Most companies mean testing when they say "QA". Or they mean Testing plus Metrics, where the metrics tasks are low-skill data collection and basic data analysis rather than thinking up and justifying measurement systems appropriate to the questions at hand. In terms of skill, salary, intellectual challenge and value to the company, testing+metrics is the same as testing. Some companies see QA more strategically, and hire more senior people into their groups. Here is a hint--if you can get a job in a group called QA with less than 5 years of experience, it's a testing group or something equivalent to it.

Answer3:Nothing is considered as great or a mean job. As long as you like and love to do, everything in that seems to be interesting. I started as a developer and slowly moved to Testing. I find testing to be more challenging and interesting. I have solid 6 years of testing experience alone and many sernior people are there in my team, who are professional testers.

Answer4:testing is low-skill work in many companies. Scripted testing of the kind pushed by ISEB, ISTQB, and the other certifiers is low skill, low prestige, offers little return value to the company that pays for it, and is often pushed to offsite contracting firms because it isn't worth doing in-house. In many cases, it is just a process of "going through the motions" -- pretending to do testing (and spending a lot of money in the pretense) but without really looking for any important information and without creating any artifacts that will be useful to the project team. The only reason to take a job doing this kind of work is to get paid for it. Doing it for too long is bad for your career.

There are much higher-skill ways to do testing. Some of them involve partial automation (writing or using programs to help you investigate the program more effectively), but automation tools are just tools. They are often used just as mind-numbingly and valuelessly as scripted manual testing. When you're offered this kind of position, try to find out how much judgment you will have to exercise in the analysis of the product under test and the ways that it provides value to the users and other stakeholders, in the design of tests to check that value and to check for other threats to value (security failures, performance failures, usability failures, etc.)--and how much this position will help you develop your judgment. If you will become a more skilled and more creative investigator who has a better collection of tools to investigate with, that might be interesting. If not, you will be marking time (making money but learning little) while the rest of the technical world learns new ideas and skills.

What's the difference between priority and severity?

The word "priority" is associated with scheduling, and the word "severity" is associated with standards. "Priority" means something is afforded or deserves prior attention; a precedence established by urgency or order of or importance. Severity is the state or quality of being severe; severe implies adherence to rigorous standards or high principles and often suggests harshness; severe is marked by or requires strict adherence to rigorous standards or high principles. For example, a severe code of behavior. The words priority and severity do come up in bug tracking. A variety of commercial, problem-tracking / management software tools are available. These tools, with the detailed input of software test engineers, give the team complete information so developers can understand the bug, get an idea of its severity, reproduce it and fix it. The fixes are based on project priorities and severity of bugs. The severity of a problem is defined in accordance to the end client's risk assessment, and recorded in their selected tracking tool. A buggy software can severely affect schedules, which, in turn can lead to a reassessment and renegotiation of priorities.

How to test a web based application that has recently been modified to give support for Double Byte Character Sets?

Answer1:should apply black box testing techniques (boundary analysis, equivalence partioning)

Answer2:The Japanese and other East Asian Customers are very particular of the look and feel of the UI. So please make sure, there is no truncation at any place. One Major difference between Japanese and English is that there is no concept of spaces between the words in Japanese. The line breaks in English usually happens whenever there is a Space. In Japanese this leads to a lot of problem with the wrapping on the text and if you have a table with defined column length, you might see text appearing vertical. On the functionality side:1. Check for the date format and Number format. (it should be in the native locale)2. Check that your system accepts 2-byte numerals and characters.3. If there is any fields with a boundary value of 100 characters, the field should accept, the same number of 2-byte character as well.4. The application should work on a Native (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) OS as well as on an English OS with the language pack installed.Writing a high level test plan for 2-byte support will require some knowledge of the application and its architecture.

What is the difference between software fault and software failure?

Software failure occurs when the software does not do what the user expects to see. Software fault, on the other hand, is a hidden programming error.A software fault becomes a software failure only when the exact computation conditions are met, and the faulty portion of the code is executed on the CPU. This can occur during normal usage. Or, when the software is ported to a different hardware platform. Or, when the software is ported to a different complier. Or, when the software gets extended.

before creating test cases to "break the system", a few principles have to be observed:

Testing should be based on user requirements. This is in order to uncover any defects that might cause the program or system to fail to meet the client's requirements.Testing time and resources are limited. Avoid redundant tests.It is impossible to test everything. Exhaustive tests of all possible scenarios are impossible, simple because of the many different variables affecting the system and the number of paths a program flow might take.Use effective resources to test. This represents use of the most suitable tools, procedures and individuals to conduct the tests. The test team should use tools that they are confident and familiar with. Testing procedures should be clearly defined. Testing personnel may be a technical group of people independent of the developers.Test planning should be done early. This is because test planning can begin independently of coding and as soon as the client requirements are set.Testing should begin at the module. The focus of testing should be concentrated on the smallest programming units first and then expand to other parts of the system.

We look at software testing in the traditional (procedural) sense and then describe some testing strategies and methods used in Object Oriented environment. We also introduce some issues with software testing in both environments.

Would like to know whether Black Box testing techniques like Boundary Value Analysis and Equivalence Partitioning - during which phases of testing are they used,if possible with examples ?

Answer1:Also Boundary Value Analysis and Equivalence Partitioning can be used in unit or component testing, and generally is used in system testing Example, you have a module designed to work out the tax to be paid:An employee has £4000 of salary tax free. The next £1500 is taxed at 10%The next £28000 is taxed at 22%Any further amount is taxed at 40%

You must define test cases that exercise valid and invalid equivalence classes:Any value lower than 4000 is tax freeAny value between 4000 and 5500 must paid 10%Any value between 5501 and 33500 must paid 22%Any value bigger than 33500 must paid 40%And the boundary values are: 4000, 4001, 5501, 33501

Answer2:This Boundary value analysis and Equivalence partitioning is used to prepare the positive and negative type test cases. Equivalence partitioning: If you want to validate the text box which accepts the value between 2000 to 10000 , then the test case input is partitioned as the following way 1. <=20002. >=2000 and <=100003. >10000The boundary Values analysis is checking the input values on boundaries. IN the above case it can checked with whether the input values is on the boundary or above the boundary or in low boundary.

How to use methods/techniques to test the bandwidth usage of a client/server application?

Bandwidth Utilization: Basically at the client-server model you will be most concerned about the bandwidth usage if

your application is a web based one. It surely is a part of concern when the throughput and the data transfer comes into the picture. I suggest you to use the Radview's Webload for the Load and Stress testing tool for the same. Available at the demoware.. you can record the scenarios of the normal user over the variable connection speed and then run it for hours to know about the bandwidth utilisation and the throughput and data trasfer rate, hits per sec, etc... there is a huge list of parameters which can be tested over a n no of combinations.

How to insert a check point to a image to check enable property in QTP?

Answer1:AS you are saying that the all images are as push button than you can check the property enabled or disabled. If you are not able to find that property than go to object repository for that objecct and click on add remove to add the available properties to that object. Let me know if that works. And if you take it as image than you need to check visible or invisible property tht also might help you are there are no enable or disable properties for the image object.

Answer2:The Image Checkpoint does not have any property to verify the enable/disable property. One thing you need to check is:* Find out form the Developer if he is showing different images for activating/deactiving i.e greyed out image. That is the only way a developer can show deactivate/activate if he is using an "image". Else he might be using a button having a headsup with an image.* If it is a button used to display with the headsup as an image you woudl need to use the object Properties as a checkpoint.

How do you write test cases?

When I write test cases, I concentrate on one requirement at a time. Then, based on that one requirement, I come up with several real life scenarios that are likely to occur in the use of the application by an end user. When I write test cases, I describe the inputs, action, or event, and their expected results, in order to determine if a feature of an application is working correctly. To make the test case complete, I also add particulars e.g. test case identifiers, test case names, objectives, test conditions (or

setups), input data requirements (or steps), and expected results. Additionally, if I have a choice, I like writing test cases as early as possible in the development life cycle. Why? Because, as a side benefit of writing test cases, many times I am able to find problems in the requirements or design of an application. And, because the process of developing test cases makes me completely think through the operation of the application.

Diferences Between System Testing and User Acceptance Testing?

Answer1: system testing: The process of testing an integrated system to verify that it meets specified requirements. acceptance testing: Formal testing with respect to user needs, requirements, and business processes conducted to determine whether or not a system satisfies the acceptance criteria and to enable the user, customers or other authorized entity to determine whether or not to accept the system. First, I don’t classify the incidents or defects regarding the phase the software development process or testing, I prefer classify them regarding their type, e. g. Requeriments, features and functionality, structural bugs, data, integration, etc The value of categorising faults is that it helps us to focus our testing effort where it is most important and we should have distinct test activietis that adrress the problems of poor requerimients, structure, etc. You don’t do User Acceptance Test only because the software is delivered! Take care about the concepts of testing!

Answer2: In my company we do not perform user acceptance testing, our clients do. Once our system testing is done (and other validation activities are finished) the software is ready to ship. Therefore any bug found in user acceptance testing would be issued a tracking number and taken care of in the next release. It would not be counted as a part of the system test.

Answer3: This is what i feel is user acceptance testing, i hope u find it useful. Definition:User Acceptance testing is a formal testing conducted to determine whether a software satisfies it's acceptance criteria and to enable the buyer to determine whether to accept the system. Objective:User Acceptance testing is designed to determine whether the software is fit for the user to use. And also to determine if the software fits into user's business processes and meets his/her needs. Entry Criteria:End of development process and after the software has passed all the tests to determine whether it meets all the predetermined functionality, performance and other quality criteria. Exit Criteria:After the verification that the docs delivered are adequate and consistent with the executable system. Software system meets all the requirements of the customer

Deliverables:User Acceptance Test PlanUser Acceptance TestcasesUser guides/docsUser Acceptance Testreports

Answer4: System Testing: Done by QA at developemnt end.It is done after intergration is complete and all integration P1/P2/P3 bugs are fixed. the code is freezed. No more code changes are taken. Then All the requirements are tested and all the intergration bugs are verified. UAT: Done by QA(trained like end users ). All the requiement are tested and also whole system is verified and validated.

What is the difference between a test plan and a test scenario?

Difference number 1: A test plan is a document that describes the scope, approach, resources, and schedule of intended testing activities, while a test scenario is a document that describes both typical and atypical situations that may occur in the use of an application. Difference number 2: Test plans define the scope, approach, resources, and schedule of the intended testing activities, while test procedures define test conditions, data to be used for testing, and expected results, including database updates, file outputs, and report results. Difference number 3: A test plan is a description of the scope, approach, resources, and schedule of intended testing activities, while a test scenario is a description of test cases that ensure that a business process flow, applicable to the customer, is tested from end to end.

Can you give me an example on reliability testing?

For example, our products are defibrillators. From direct contact with customers during the requirements gathering phase, our sales team learns that a large hospital wants to purchase defibrillators with the assurance that 99 out of every 100 shocks will be delivered properly. In this example, the fact that our defibrillator is able to run for 250 hours without any failure in order to demonstrate the reliability, is irrelevant to these customers. In order to test for reliability we need to translate terminology that is meaningful to the customers into equivalent delivery units, such as the number of shocks. Therefore we describe the customer needs in a quantifiable manner, using the customer’s terminology. For example, our quantified reliability testing goal becomes as follows: Our defibrillator will be considered sufficiently reliable if 10 (or fewer) failures occur from 1,000 shocks. Then, for example, we use a test / analyze / fix technique, and couple reliability testing with the removal of errors. When we identify a failed delivery of a shock, we send the software back to

the developers, for repair. The developers build a new version of the software, and then we deliver another 1,000 shocks (into dummy resistor loads). We track failure intensity (i.e. failures per 1,000 shocks) in order to guide our reliability testing, and to determine the feasibility of the software release, and to determine whether the software meets our customers' reliability requirements.

Need function to find all the positions?Ex: a string "abcd, efgh,ight" .Want break this string based on the criteria here ever found the..

Answer1:And return the delimited fields as a list of string? Sound like a perl split function. This could be built on one of your own containing:[ ] //knocked this together in a few min. I am sure there is a much more efficent way of doing things[ ] //but this is with the cobling together of several built in functions[-] LIST OF STRING Split(STRING sDelim, STRING sData)[ ] LIST OF STRING lsReturn[ ] STRING sSegment[-] while MatchStr("*{sDelim}*", sData)[ ] sSegment = GetField(sData, sDelim, 1)[ ] ListAppend(lsReturn, Trim(sSegment))[ ] //crude chunking:[ ] sSegment += ","[ ] sData = GetField(sData, sSegment, 2)[-] if Len(sData) > 0[ ] ListAppend(lsReturn, Trim(sData))[ ] return lsReturn

Answer2:You could use something like this.... hope I am understanding the problem[+] testcase T1()[ ] string sTest = "hello, there I am happy"[ ] string sTest1 = (GetField (sTest, ",", 2))[ ] Print(sTest1)[ ][ ] This Prints "there I am happy"[ ] GetField(sTest,","1)) would Print hello, etc....

Answer3:Below is the function which return all fields (list of String).[+] LIST OF STRING ConvertToList (STRING sStr, STRING sDelim)[ ] INTEGER iIndex= 1[ ] LIST OF STRING lsStr

[ ] STRING sToken = GetField (sStr, sDelim, iIndex)[ ][+] if (iIndex == 1 && sToken == "")[ ] iIndex = iIndex + 1[ ] sToken = GetField (sStr, sDelim, iIndex)[ ][+] while (sToken != "")[ ] ListAppend (lsStr, sToken)[ ] iIndex = iIndex+1[ ] sToken = GetField (sStr, sDelim, iIndex)[ ] return lsStr

What is the difference between monkey testing and smoke testing?

Difference number 1: Monkey testing is random testing, and smoke testing is a nonrandom testing. Smoke testing is nonrandom testing that deliberately exercises the entire system from end to end, with the the goal of exposing any major problems.Difference number 2: Monkey testing is performed by automated testing tools, while smoke testing is usually performed manually.Difference number 3: Monkey testing is performed by "monkeys", while smoke testing is performed by skilled testers.Difference number 4: "Smart monkeys" are valuable for load and stress testing, but not very valuable for smoke testing, because they are too expensive for smoke testing.Difference number 5: "Dumb monkeys" are inexpensive to develop, are able to do some basic testing, but, if we used them for smoke testing, they would find few bugs during smoke testing.Difference number 6: Monkey testing is not a thorough testing, but smoke testing is thorough enough that, if the build passes, one can assume that the program is stable enough to be tested more thoroughly.Difference number 7: Monkey testing either does not evolve, or evolves very slowly. Smoke testing, on the other hand, evolves as the system evolves from something simple to something more thorough. Difference number 8: Monkey testing takes "six monkeys" and a "million years" to run. Smoke testing, on the other hand, takes much less time to run, i.e. from a few seconds to a couple of hours.

It's a good thing to share test cases with customers

That's generally a good thing, but the question is why do they want to see them? Potential problems are that they may be considering changing outsourcing firms and want to use the test cases elsewhere. If that can be prevented, please do so. Another problem is that they want to micro manage your testing efforts. It's one thing to audit your work to prove to themselves that you're doing a good job, it's an entirely different matter if they intend to tell you that you don't have enough test coverage on the activity of module foo and far too much coverage on module bar, please correct it. Another issue may be that they are seeking litigation and they need proof that you were negligent in some area of testing. It's never a bad thing to have your customer wanting to be involved, unless you're a large company and this is a small (in terms of sales) customer. What are your concerns about this? Can you give more information on your situation and the customer's?

How to Read data from the Telnet session?

Declared[+] window DialogBox Putty[ ] tag "* - PuTTY"[ ][ ] // Capture the screen contents and return as a list of strings[+] LIST OF STRING getScreenContents()[ ][ ] LIST OF STRING ClipboardContents[ ][ ] // open the system menu and select copy all to clipboard menu command[ ] this.TypeKeys("<ALT-SPACE>o")[ ][ ] // get the clipboard contents[ ][ ] ClipboardContents = Clipboard.getText()[ ] return ClipboardContents

I then created a function that searches the screen contents for the required data to validate. This works fine for me. Here it is to study. Hope it may helpvoid CheckOutPut(string sErrorMessage)[ ]Putty.setActive ()[ ][ ] // Capture screen contents[ ] lsScreenContents = Putty.GetScreenContents ()[ ] Sleep(1)[ ] // Trim Screen Contents[ ] lsScreenContents = TrimScreenContents (lsScreenContents)[ ] Sleep(1)

[-] if (sBatchSuccess == "Yes")[-] if (ListFind (lsScreenContents, "BUILD FAILED"))[ ] LogError("Process should not have failed.")[-] if (ListFind (lsScreenContents, "BUILD SUCCESSFUL"))[ ] Print("Successful")[ ] break[ ] // Check to see if launcher has finished[-] else [-] if (ListFind (lsScreenContents, "BUILD FAILED") == 0)[ ] LogError("Error should have failed.")[ ] break[-] else[ ] // Check for Date Conversion Error[-] if (ListFind (lsScreenContents, sErrorMessage) == 0)[ ] LogError ("Error handle")[ ] Print("Expected - {sErrorMessage}")[ ] ListPrint(lsScreenContents)[ ] break[-] else[ ] break[ ][ ] // Raise exception if kPlatform not equal to windows or putty[+] default[ ] raise 1, "Unable to run console: - Please specify setting"[ ]

After the migration done, how to test the application (Frontend hasn't changed just the database changed)

Answer1:You can concentrate only on those testcases which involve DB transactions like insert,update,delete etc.

Answer2:Focus on the database tests, but it's important to analyze the differences between the two schemas. You can't just focus on the front end. Also, be careful to look for shortcuts that the DBAs may be taking with the schema.

Some general guidelines on what to test for web based applications.

Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs

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Some general guidelines on what to test for web based applications.

1. Navigation: Users move to and from pages, click on links, click on images (thumbnails), etc. Navigation in a WebSite shoud be quick and error free. 2. Server Response. How fast the WebSite host responds influences whether a user (i.e. someone on the browser) moves on or gives up. 3. Interaction & Feedback. For passive, content-only sites the only real quality issue is availability. For a WebSite that interacts with the user, the big factor is how fast and how reliable that interaction is. 4. Concurrent Users. Do multiple users interact on a WebSite? Can they get in each others' way? While WebSites often resemble client/server structures, with multiple users at multiple locations a WebSite can be much different, and much more complex, than complex applications 5. Browser Independent. Tests should be realistic, but not be dependent on a particular browser 6. No Buffering, Caching. Local caching and buffering -- often a way to improve apparent performance -- should be disabled so that timed experiments are a true measure of the Browser response time. 7. Fonts and Preferences. Most browsers support a wide range of fonts and presentation preferences 8. Object Mode. Edit fields, push buttons, radio buttons, check boxes, etc. All should be treatable in object mode, i.e. independent of the fonts and preferences. 9. Page Consistency. Is the entire page identical with a prior version? Are key parts of the text the same or different? 10. Table, Form Consistency. Are all of the parts of a table or form present? Correctly laid out? Can you confirm that selected texts are in the "right place". 11. Page Relationships. Are all of the links on a page the same as they were before? Are there new or missing links? Are there any broken links? 12. Performance Consistency, Response Times. Is the response time for a user action the same as it was (within a range)? 13. Image File Size. File size should be closely examined when selecting or creating images for your site. This is particularly important when your site is directed to an audience that may not enjoy the high-bandwidth and fast connection speeds available 14. Avoid the use of HTML "frames". The problems with frames-based site designs are well documented, including; the inability to bookmark subcategories of the site, difficulty in printing frame cell content, disabling the Web browser's "back" button as a navigation aid. 15. Security. Ensure data is encrypted before transferring sensitive information, wherever required. Test user authentication thoroughly. Ensure all backdoors and test logins are disabled before going live with the web application. 16. Sessions. Ensure session validity is maintained throughout a web transasction, for e.g. filling

a webform that spans over several webpages. Forms should retain information when using the 'back' button wherever required for user convenience. At the same time, forms need to be reset wherever security is an issue, like the password fields, etc. 17. Error handiling. Web navigation should be quick and error free. However, sometimes errors cannot be avoided. It would be a good idea to have a standard error page that handles all errors. This is cleaner than displaying the 404 page. After displaying the error page, users can then be automatically redirected to the home page or any other relevant page. At this same time, this error can also be logged and a message can be sent to notify the admin.

Which test cannot be automated? Acceptence test plan is prepared from? Which is the test case design methodology? Does test plan contains bug tracing procedure and reporting procedure?

Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs

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Which test cannot be automated? Acceptence test plan is prepared from? Which is the test case design methodology? Does test plan contains bug tracing procedure and reporting procedure?

1: which test cannot be automated?a. Performance testingb. Regresssssionc. user interfaced.none

2: acceptence test plan is prepared from?a. SRSb. HLDc. DDDDddd.ULD/URD

3: which is the test case design methodology?a. WBTb: Regressionc: none

4: when will u start testinga: After codingb: Requirements gathering

5:does test plan contains bug tracing procedure and reporting procedure?

6: compatability testing usesa; All S/W componentsb: all H/w componentsc; all networking componentsd; A & Be: A, B, C

7: which software model is easy and most efffffectivewhen compared to others?a. Waterfallb.interactive waterfallc. Spirald. Prototyping

8: whioch is not system level testinga. system testingb. performance testingc. instalable testingd. none

9: why do u need testers?a: they think in clients viewb: bettttter than developersc. they think in processss viewd. none

10. what is Quality Assssurance?a. processb. systemc. businessd. all

Ans : 1. Performance Testing2. SRS3. dont know4. b. after requirement gathering5. Yes Test Plan will definitely define the procedure for reporting of bugs.6. e: A, B, C7. b.interactive waterfall8. d. none9. the options given are not appropriate.10. a. process

What testing roles are standard on most testing projects? A: Depending on the organization, the following roles are more or less standard on most testing projects: Testers, Test Engineers, Test/QA Team Lead, Test/QA Manager, System Administrator, Database Administrator, Technical Analyst, Test Build Manager and Test Configuration Manager. Depending on the project, one person may wear more than one hat. For instance, Test Engineers may also wear the hat of Technical Analyst, Test Build Manager and Test Configuration Manager.

What is ACH and NACHA?

Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs

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What is ACH and NACHA?

ACH- Automatic clearing house ACH. A nationwide electronic funds transfer network which enables participating financial institutions to distribute electronic credit and debit entries to bank accounts and to settle such entries. NACHA: A membership organization that provides marketing and education assistance and establishes the rules, standards and procedures that enable Financial Institutions to exchange ACH payments on a national basis.

Is there a way to automate XML file comparison?

Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs

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Is there a way to automate XML file comparison?

Use diff called from a scripting language and output the results to a file. or

Using KDiff3 or Using BBEdit in MAC

What a Coverage Matrix is? or What is a traceability matrix?

Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs

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What a Coverage Matrix is? or What is a traceability matrix?

Answer1: It is a mapping of one baselined object to another. For testers, the most common documents to be linked in the manner are a requirements document and the written test cases for that document. In order to facilitate this, testers can add an extra column to their test cases listing the requirement being tested. The requirements matrix is usually stored in a spreadsheet. It contains the test ids down the left side and the requirements ids across the top. For each test, you place a mark in the cell under the heading for that requirement it is designed to test. The goal is to find out which requirements are under-tested and which are either over tested or which are so large that too many tests have to be written to adequately test it.

Answer2: The traceability matrix means mapping of all the work products (various design docs, testing docs) to requirements.

Ho to write Software Requirement Sepcification (SRS) document for Grade Card System?

Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs

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Ho to write Software Requirement Sepcification (SRS) document for Grade Card System?

SRS document is very important to give information what the project is going to do and what it is assuming in advance.

below is some idea about it. in SRS document following points should be included. 1. Project aim.2. Project objectives.3. Project scope4. Process to be followed.5. Project Deliverables- it includes documents to be submitted and other plans or project prototypes.6. Requirements in short.

How can I schedule the different testcases in a (.t) test script so that all the test cases it contains run one after another ? ...

Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs

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How can I schedule the different testcases in a (.t) test script so that all the test cases it contains run one after another ? ...

A small query: a numbe of (.t) script files which contains a number of test cases. Need to call a user defined method in all the (.t) script files.Problem: How to do that.Second is: if this is possible that when one test case is run successfully, can I put in the condition that if it is successfull, go to testcase 2 else go to test case 3. Third is: How can I schedule the different testcases in a (.t) test script so that all the test cases it contains run one after another.

Answer for Problem: How to do that:X Just take instance for your class and call the method thru that instance.Answer for 2nd and 3rd queries:.t file=======[-] testcase tc1() appstate none[ ] Print("This is tc1")

[-] testcase tc2() appstate none[ ] Print("This is tc2")

[-] testcase tc3() appstate none[ ] Print("This is tc3")

call your test cases under main function as below.

[-] main()[ ] [-] tc1()[-] if GetTestsPassedCount ( )!=0 // Executing testcases tc2 and tc3 when testcase tc1 is passed only.[ ] tc2()[ ] tc3()

Why are there so many software bugs?

Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs

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Why are there so many software bugs?

Generally speaking, there are bugs in software because of unclear requirements, software complexity, programming errors, changes in requirements, errors made in bug tracking, time pressure, poorly documented code and/or bugs in tools used in software development.* There are unclear software requirements because there is miscommunication as to what the software should or shouldn't do.* Software complexity. All of the followings contribute to the exponential growth in software and system complexity: Windows interfaces, client-server and distributed applications, data communications, enormous relational databases and the sheer size of applications.* Programming errors occur because programmers and software engineers, like everyone else, can make mistakes.* As to changing requirements, in some fast-changing business environments, continuously modified requirements are a fact of life. Sometimes customers do not understand the effects of changes, or understand them but request them anyway. And the changes require redesign of the software, rescheduling of resources and some of the work already completed have to be redone or discarded and hardware requirements can be effected, too. * Bug tracking can result in errors because the complexity of keeping track of changes can result in errors, too.* Time pressures can cause problems, because scheduling of software projects is not easy and it often requires a lot of guesswork and when deadlines loom and the crunch comes, mistakes will be made.* Code documentation is tough to maintain and it is also tough to modify code that is poorly

documented. The result is bugs. Sometimes there is no incentive for programmers and software engineers to document their code and write clearly documented, understandable code. Sometimes developers get kudos for quickly turning out code, or programmers and software engineers feel they cannot have job security if everyone can understand the code they write, or they believe if the code was hard to write, it should be hard to read.* Software development tools , including visual tools, class libraries, compilers, scripting tools, can introduce their own bugs. Other times the tools are poorly documented, which can create additional bugs.

What are Test Cases, Test Suites, Test Scripts, and Test Scenarios (or Scenaria)?

A test case is usually a single step, and its expected result, along with various additional pieces of information. It can occasionally be a series of steps but with one expected result or expected outcome. The optional fields are a test case ID, test step or order of execution number, related requirement(s), depth, test category, author, and check boxes for whether the test is automatable and has been automated. Larger test cases may also contain prerequisite states or steps, and descriptions. A test case should also contain a place for the actual result. These steps can be stored in a word processor document, spreadsheet, database or other common repository. In a database system, you may also be able to see past test results and who generated the results and the system configuration used to generate those results. These past results would usually be stored in a separate table. The most common term for a collection of test cases is a test suite. The test suite often also contains more detailed instructions or goals for each collection of test cases. It definitely contains a section where the tester identifies the system configuration used during testing. A group of test cases may also contain prerequisite states or steps, and descriptions of the following tests. Collections of test cases are sometimes incorrectly termed a test plan. They may also be called a test script, or even a test scenario. A test plan is the approach that will be used to test the system, not the individual tests. Most companies that use automated testing will call the code that is used their test scripts. A scenario test is a test based on a hypothetical story used to help a person think through a complex problem or system. They can be as simple as a diagram for a testing environment or they could be a description written in prose. The ideal scenario test has five key characteristics. It is (a) a story that is (b) motivating, (c) credible, (d) complex, and (e) easy to evaluate. They are usually different from test cases in that test cases are single steps and scenarios cover a number of steps. Test suites and scenarios can be used in concert for complete system tests. SeeAn Introduction to Scenario Testing

Scenario testing is similar to, but not the same as session-based testing, which is more closely related to exploratory testing, but the two concepts can be used in conjunction. Scenario testing is similar to, but not the same as session-based testing, which is more closely related to exploratory testing, but the two concepts can be used in conjunction. See Session-Based Test ManagementWhat's Exploratory Test

A Test Plan gives detailed testing information, includingScope of testingScheduleTest DeliverablesRelease CriteriaRisks and Contingencies

Give me five common problems that occur during software development.

Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs

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Give me five common problems that occur during software development.

Poorly written requirements, unrealistic schedules, inadequate testing, adding new features after development is underway and poor communication.1. Requirements are poorly written when requirements are unclear, incomplete, too general, or not testable; therefore there will be problems.2. The schedule is unrealistic if too much work is crammed in too little time.3. Software testing is inadequate if none knows whether or not the software is any good until customers complain or the system crashes.4. It's extremely common that new features are added after development is underway.5. Miscommunication either means the developers don't know what is needed, or customers have unrealistic expectations and therefore problems are guaranteed.

What is SRS and BRS . and what is the difference between them?

Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs

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What is SRS and BRS . and what is the difference between them?

Answer1:SRS - Software Requirements Specification BRS - Business Requirements Specification

Answer2:BRS - Biz Requirements CaseThis doc has to be from the client stating the need for a particular module or a project. This basically tells you why a particular request is needed. Reasons have to be given. Mostly a lay persons document. This has to aproved by te Project ManagerSRS - Sq REq SpecificationFollows the BRC after its approval etc. gives a detail func etc details about the project, requirement, use cases, refere..etc and how each module works in detalyour srs cannot start without a brc and an approval of the same

Qive some examples of Low Severity and Low Priority Bugs .....

Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs

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Qive some examples of Low Severity and Low Priority Bugs .....

Qive some examples ofLow Severity and Low Priority BugsHigh Severity and Low Priority BugsLow Severity and High Priority BugsHigh Severity and High Priority Bugs ?

Answer1:First know about severity and priority then its easy to decide Low or Medium or HighPriority-Business orientedSeverity-Effect of bug in the functionality1. For example there is cosmetic change in the clients name and you found this bug at the time of delivery, so the severity of this bug is low but the priority is high because it affects to the business. 2. If you found that there is major crash in the functionality of the application but the crash lies in the module which is not delivered in the deliverables in this case the priority is low and severity is high.

Answer2:Priority - how soon your business side needs a fix. (Tip: The engineering side never decides priority.) Severity - how bad the bug bites. (Tip: Only engineers decide severity.) For a high priority, low severity example, suppose your program has an easter egg (a secret feature) showing a compromising photo of your boss. Schedule this bug to be removed

immediately. Low priority, high severity example: A long chain of events leads to a crash that risks the main data file. Because the chain of events is longer than customers might probably reproduce, so keep an eye on this one while fixing higher priority things. Testers should report bugs, the business side should understand them and set their priorities. Then testers and engineers should capture the bugs with automated tests before killing them. This reduces the odds they come back, and generally reduces "churn", which is bug fixes causing new bugs.

Answer3:Priority is how important it is to the customer and if the customer is going to find it. Severity is how bad it is, if the customer found it. High Priority low severityI have a text editor and every 3 minutes it rings a bell (it is also noted that the editor does an auto-save every 3 minutes). This is going to drive the customer insane. They want it fixed ASAP; i.e. high priority. The impact is minimal. They can turn off the audio when using the editor. There are workarounds. Should be easy for the developer to find the code and fix it.Low Priority High severityIf I press CRTL-Q-SHIFT-T, only in that order, then eject a floppy diskette from the drive it formats my hard drive. It is a low priority because it is unlikely a customer is going to be affected by it. It is high severity because if a customer did find it the results would be horrific. High Priority High severityIf I open the Save As dialog and same the file with the same name as the Save dialog would have used it saves a zero byte file and all the data is lost. Many customers will select Save As then decide to overwrite the original document instead. They will NOT cancel the Save As and select Save instead, they will just use Save As and pick the same file name as the one they opened. So the likelihood of this happening is high; therefore high priority. It will cause the customer to lose data. This is costly. Therefore high severity. Low Priority low severityIf I hold the key combination LEFT_CTRL+LEFT_ALT+RIGHT_ALT+RIGHT_CTRL+F1+F12 for 3 minutes it will display cryptic debug information used by the programmer during development. It is highly unlikely a customer will find this so it is low priority. Even if they do find it it might result in a call to customer service asking what this information means. Telling the customer it is debug code left behind; they didn't want to remove it because it would have added risk and delayed the release of the program is safer than removing it and potentially breaking something else. Answer4:High Priority low severitySpelling the name of the company president wrongLow Priority High severityYear end processing breaks ('cause its 6 more months 'till year end)High Priority High severityApplication won't startLow Priority low severityspelling error in documentation; occasionally screen is slightlymisdrawn requiring a screen refresh

Give me five solutions to problems that occur during software development.

Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs

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Give me five solutions to problems that occur during software development.

Solid requirements, realistic schedules, adequate testing, firm requirements and good communication.1. Ensure the requirements are solid, clear, complete, detailed, cohesive, attainable and testable. All players should agree to requirements. Use prototypes to help nail down requirements.2. Have schedules that are realistic. Allow adequate time for planning, design, testing, bug fixing, re-testing, changes and documentation. Personnel should be able to complete the project without burning out.3. Do testing that is adequate. Start testing early on, re-test after fixes or changes, and plan for sufficient time for both testing and bug fixing.4. Avoid new features. Stick to initial requirements as much as possible. Be prepared to defend design against changes and additions, once development has begun and be prepared to explain consequences. If changes are necessary, ensure they're adequately reflected in related schedule changes. Use prototypes early on so customers' expectations are clarified and customers can see what to expect; this will minimize changes later on. 5. Communicate. Require walkthroughs and inspections when appropriate; make extensive use of e-mail, networked bug-tracking tools, tools of change management. Ensure documentation is available and up-to-date. Do use documentation that is electronic, not paper. Promote teamwork and cooperation.

What is risk analysis? What does it have to do with Severity and Priority?

Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs

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What is risk analysis? What does it have to do with Severity and Priority?

Risk analysis is a method to determine how much risk is involved in something. In testing, it can be used to determine when to test something or whether to test something at all. Items with higher risk values should be tested early and often. Items with lower risk value can be tested

later, or under some circumstances if time runs out, not at all. It can also be used with defects. Severity tells us how bad a defect is: "how much damage can it cause?". Priority tells us how soon it is desired to fix the defect: "should we fix this and if so, by when?". Companies usually use numeric values to calculate both values. The number of values will change from place to place. I assume a five-point scale but a three-point scale is commonly used. Using a defect as an example, Major would be Severity1 and Trivial would be Severity5. A Priority1 would imply that it needs to be fixed immediately and a Priority5 means that it can wait until everything else is done. You can add or multiply the two digits together (there is only a small difference in the outcome) and the results become the risk value. You use the event's risk value to determine how you should address the problem. The lower values must be addressed before the middle values, and the higher values can wait the longest. Defect 12345Foo displays an error message with incorrect path separators when the optional showpath switch is appliedSev5Pri5Risk value (addition method) 10

Defect 13579Module Bar causes system crash using derefenced handleSev1Pri1Risk value (addition method) 2

Defect 13579 will usually be addressed before 12345.Another method for Risk Assessment is based on a military standard, MIL-STD-882. It describes the risk of failure for military hardware. The main area of interest is section A.4.4.3 and its children where they indicate the Assessment of mishap risk. They use a four-point severity rating: Catastrophic; Critical; Marginal; Negligible. They then use a five-point probability rating: Frequent; Probable; Occasional; Remote; Improbable. Then rather than using a mathematical calculation to determine a risk level, they use a predefined chart. It is this chart that is novel as it groups risks together rather than giving them discrete values. If you want a copy of the current version, search for MIL-STD-882D using Yahoo! or Google.

It is logical to be described different expected results for one action? ....

Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs

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It is logical to be described different expected results for one action? ....

If complicated system with a lots of users' profiles having different rights. Should to write different test cases for each profile? Or Write one test case describing the expected results according to the user's rights? It is logical to be described different expected results for one action?

Answer1:You will have to write one test case describing the results of various kinds of users. You could write a tabular data form.For each action you would create a tableFirst column: user typeSecond: expected resultThis avoids the issue of writing a series of test cases where 90% of the information is the same and 10% is different. It makes maintaining teh test1s easier as well. And the best way to test your application is to use an automated tool to do it. Answer2:Think of things in terms of use cases. Treat it like a completely different system for each user role, and create your own suite of cases for each role.

What is API Testing?

An API (Application Programming Interface) is a collection of software functions and procedures, called API calls, that can be executed by other software applications. Application developers code that links to existing APIs to make use of their functionality. This link is seamless and end-users of the application are generally unaware of using a separately developed API. During testing, a test harness-an application that links the API and methodically exercises its functionality-is constructed to simulate the use of the API by end-user applications. The interesting problems for testers are: 1. Ensuring that the test harness varies parameters of the API calls in ways that verify functionality and expose failures. This includes assigning common parameter values as well as exploring boundary conditions. 2. Generating interesting parameter value combinations for calls with two or more parameters. 3. Determining the content under which an API call is made. This might include setting external environment conditions (files, peripheral devices, and so forth) and also internal stored data that affect the API. 4. Sequencing API calls to vary the order in which the functionality is exercised and to make the API produce useful results from successive calls.

What if there isn't enough time for thorough testing?

Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs

(Continued from previous question...)

What if there isn't enough time for thorough testing?

Since it's rarely possible to test every possible aspect of an application, every possible combination of events, every dependency, or everything that could go wrong, risk analysis is appropriate to most software development projects.Use risk analysis to determine where testing should be focused. This requires judgment skills, common sense and experience. The checklist should include answers to the following questions:* Which functionality is most important to the project's intended purpose?* Which functionality is most visible to the user? * Which functionality has the largest safety impact?* Which functionality has the largest financial impact on users?* Which aspects of the application are most important to the customer?* Which aspects of the application can be tested early in the development cycle?* Which parts of the code are most complex and thus most subject to errors?* Which parts of the application were developed in rush or panic mode?* Which aspects of similar/related previous projects caused problems?* Which aspects of similar/related previous projects had large maintenance expenses?* Which parts of the requirements and design are unclear or poorly thought out?* What do the developers think are the highest-risk aspects of the application?* What kinds of problems would cause the worst publicity?* What kinds of problems would cause the most customer service complaints?* What kinds of tests could easily cover multiple functionalities?* Which tests will have the best high-risk-coverage to time-required ratio?

Is the testing an art of thinking ?

Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs

(Continued from previous question...)

Is the testing an art of thinking ?

Answer1:Think like a guy who would like to break the application. like a hacker...finding the weakness in the system.

Answer2: Think like a Tester then think negative rather than positive. Because tester always try to break the application, by putting some negative values.

Answer3:How testers think is:- Testers are "negative" thinkers- Testers complain- Testers like to break things- Testers take a special thrill in delivering bad newsThe authors introduce an alternate view:- Testers don't complain, they offer evidence- Testers don't like to break things, they like to dispel the illusion that things work- Testers don't take a special thrill in delivering bad news, they enjoy freeing their clients from false belief.They go on to explain how testers should think:- Deriving inference- Technically- creatively- Critically- practically- Attempting to anwer questions- Exploring, thinking- Using logic

Answer4:Testers are destroyers for a cretive purpose.Always keep one thing in mind "CREATIVE DESTRUCTION IS WHAT WE WANT TO ACHIEVE". Add one thing to it is that the quality of testers while testing an application should be enforced only after the smooth flow of the application is assured i.e., the application passes the positive test. If the application doesnt pass even the positive testing than the testing strategy gets waivered.And aftyer all the competition is appreciated when both the sides are equally strong.So before bringing the real quality of testers into act while doing the testing one should ensure that it has passed the positive testing.

What is the role of test engineers?

We, test engineers, speed up the work of your development staff, and reduce the risk of your company's legal liability. We give your company the evidence that the software is correct and operates properly. We also improve your problem tracking and reporting. We maximize the value of your software, and the value of the devices that use it. We also assure the successful

launch of your product by discovering bugs and design flaws, before users get discouraged, before shareholders loose their cool, and before your employees get bogged down. We help the work of your software development staff, so your development team can devote its time to build up your product. We also promote continual improvement. We provide documentation required by FDA, FAA, other regulatory agencies, and your customers. We save your company money by discovering defects EARLY in the design process, before failures occur in production, or in the field. We save the reputation of your company by discovering bugs and design flaws, before bugs and design flaws damage the reputation of your company.

The system runs at Intranet environment and it has a security system.....

The system runs at Intranet environment and it has a security system. The security system's architecture designed on User and Role system. There are only one system Role and that is System Amdin Role and user can also create as many role as he needs. Role is attached with an user and a user can login to the system if he has a role. Role mainly instanciate the permissions of resources in that role. And the system has about 100 system defined resources and there may be some user-defined resources also. So, in this environment, for testing the security system. how to develop test plan and test script ?

Assume that roles are generated by combining logical options (can edit this section, can only generate reports here, can not access this). Start by witing down the different activities that each role can access. Then write down the different levels for each activity.Now create a pair-wise combination of them. I won't explain pair-wise testing as you can Google for it and get better answers there.Use pair-wise testing to create special roles that are used in testing. If you know that there are certain default roles, make sure to use them.Then generate a list of tasks that can be preformed on the system (don't concern yourself with roles at this point).Write each of these tasks down and put them into a database (If you have no other option, use MySQL and OpenOffice to create your shared database).Then create another table that contains your roles. Create a third table that takes the index values of the first table and the index values of the second table (the intersections) and there you can determine if the scenario can be tested or not using that role. (this can also be done in a spreadsheet with scenarios on the left side and rols across the top).Then run the tests that can be run.

Whats the difference between ISO vs CMM ?

Answe1:

CMM is much oriented towards S/W engg process improvements and never speaks of customer satisfaction whereas the ISO 9001:2000 speaks of process improvements generic to all organisations and also speaks of customer satisfaction.

A2:FYI. There are 3 popular ISO standards that are commonly used for SW projects. They are 12270, 15540, and 9001 (subset or 9000). I hope I got the numbers correct. For CMM, the latest version is 1.1, however, it is already considered a legacy standard which is to be replaced by CMMI, the latest version is 1.1. For further information re CMM/I, visit the following:http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmm/http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/

To build and release the build to the QA. Does any body knowing in detail about this profile?

Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs

(Continued from previous question...)

To build and release the build to the QA. Does any body knowing in detail about this profile?

Build Release engineer, The nature of the job is to retrieve the source from the confirugartion system, and creates a build in the build machine, and takes a copy of the files which you moved to buildmachine, and install into QA servers. Here the main task when you install in QA servers, you have to be carefull about connectin properties, whether all applications are extracted properly, whether is QA server should have all supported software

What's the role in CMM Level in Testing?What's the diff b/w 5 levels?which level most commonly used in testing?

Answer1:SEI = 'Software Engineering Institute' at Carnegie-Mellon University; initiated by the U.S. Defense Department to help improve software development processes. CMM = 'Capability Maturity Model', now called the CMMI ('Capability Maturity Model Integration'), developed by the SEI. It's a model of 5 levels of process 'maturity' that determine effectiveness in delivering quality software. It is geared to large organizations such as large U.S.

Defense Department contractors. However, many of the QA processes involved are appropriate to any organization, and if reasonably applied can be helpful. Organizations can receive CMMI ratings by undergoing assessments by qualified auditors.Level 1 - characterized by chaos, periodic panics, and heroic efforts required by individuals to successfully complete projects. Few if any processes in place; successes may not be repeatable.Level 2 - software project tracking, requirements management, realistic planning, and configuration management processes are in place; successful practices can be repeated.Level 3 - standard software development and maintenance processes are integrated throughout an organization; a Software Engineering Process Group is is in place to oversee software processes, and training programs are used to ensure understanding and compliance.Level 4 - metrics are used to track productivity, processes, and products. Project performance is predictable, and quality is consistently high. Level 5 - the focus is on continouous process improvement. The impact of new processes and technologies can be predicted and effectively implemented when required. Perspective on CMM ratings: During 1997-2001, 1018 organizations were assessed. Of those, 27% were rated at Level 1, 39% at 2,23% at 3, 6% at 4, and 5% at 5. (For ratings during the period 1992-96, 62% were at Level 1, 23% at 2, 13% at 3, 2% at 4, and 0.4% at 5.) The median size of organizations was 100 software engineering/maintenance personnel; 32% of organizations were U.S. federal contractors or agencies. For those rated at Level 1, the most problematical key process area was in Software Quality Assurance.

Answer2:The whole essence of CMM or CMMI is to produce quality software. It targets the whole organizational practices (or processes), which are believed to be the best across industries. For further understanding of SEI CMMI visit http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi. What is the role of CMMI Level in Testing? Please understand that Testing is just part or subset of CMMI. Testing is addressed on a particular Process Area. If my memory serves me correct, it is the VER or Verification process area and sometimes addressed also in VAL or the Validation process area. It could also be the other way around. Each Process Area has its own level to be driven to the level 5. This is true for the Continuous Representation of CMMI version 1.1. I am not sure about the Staged Representaiton of the same version. Please refer to the website above for more details. What is the difference between the levels of CMMI? This was already answered in the same thread by Priya. I would like to add that there is an additional level for the Continuous Representation which is called Level 0 (zero) --> Incomplete.

Which level is most commonly used in Testing? I would say all levels would deal with testing. But again this is true for VAL and VER Process Areas. For further readings, try searching google using CMMI+tutorials or Testing+CMMI. Most of the documents about CMMI are free and available on the Web.

Answer3:Level 1. Initial The organization is characterized by an ad hoc set of activities. The processes aren't defined and success depends on individual effort and heroics.

Level 2. Repeatable At this level, basic project management processes are established to track costs, to schedule, and to define functionality. The discipline is available to repeat earlier successes on similar projects.Level 3. Defined All processes are documented for both management and engineering activities, and standards are defined.Level 4. Managed Detailed measures of each process are defined and product quality data is routinely collected. Both process and products are quantitatively understood and controlled.Level 5. Optimizing Continuous process improvement is enabled by quantitative feedback from the process and from piloting innovative ideas and technologies. There are 3 popular ISO standards that are commonly used for SW projects. They are 12270, 15540, and 9001 (subset or 9000). I hope I got the numbers correct. For CMM, the latest version is 1.1, however, it is already considered a legacy standard which is to be replaced by CMMI, the latest version is 1.1. For further information re CMM/I,

What are Internationalization, Localization, Globalization, and Multilingualization Testing?

Internationalization and localization are a means of adapting software for non-native environments, especially other nations and cultures. Internationalization is often abbreviated as I18N (or i18n or I18n), where the number 18 refers to the number of letters omitted. "Localization" is often abbreviated l10n in the same manner. Both are sometimes collectively termed globalization (g11n). Also seen in some circles, but less commonly, are "p13n" for personalization? and "r3h" for reach, as in the reach of a website across countries and markets. L10N should support two languages or character codes simultaneously, usually English (ASCII) and another specific one. Since each programmer has his or her own mother tongue, there are numerous L10N patches and L10N programs written to satisfy his or her own need. L10N is preparing a feature or system for use in a local market, e.g., Russia, Japan, Québec. Usually a market has a distinct language, customs and regulations. At the very least, user interface elements are translated into the local language. I18N is also sometimes used interchangeably with G11N when speaking broadly of the economic and cultural effects of an increasingly interconnected world. In software terms, Usage of the term I18N has become rare; the term globalization (G11N) is preferred mostly because of corporate globalization where many companies and products find themselves in many countries worldwide. G11N is a multi-step process to prepare a feature or system for use in multiple markets, or at least so that it can easily be localized. It is most commonly taken to refer to the addition of a framework for multiple language support. This implies that the application is capable of input of and displaying non-western character sets. These activities include software localization, and technical document translation result in user interfaces, on-line help systems, and documentation that are adapted to the cultural, linguistic, and technical requirements of specific international markets. This has given rise to increasing requirements for localization (L10N) of products and services. M17N (multilingualization) model is to support many languages at the same time. For example, Mule (MULtilingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs) can handle a text file which contains

multiple languages - for example, a paper on differences between Korean and Chinese whose main text is written in Finnish. GNU Emacs 20 and XEmacs now include Mule. Note that the M17N model can only be applied in character-related instances. For example, it is nonsense to display a message like 'file not found' in many languages at the same time. Unicode and UTF-8 are technologies which can be used for this model. Viewing a website in English and same in French should not have any functionality differences ideally, and no runtime errors. Check for incorrect translations, misspelled words and wrong symbols for the particular language chosen by the user. The language conversion should be consistent throughout the application. Use of shared variables can cause serious bugs, like when users select same page or content to view but choose different languages however the page is renderd in the previous user's language.

Looking for a tool whcih can do bulk data insert to various tables in the test database and also that tool which work with DB2, SQLServer and Oracle.

Answer1:First copy the existing data to an excel file by DTS import/export wizard in SQL server 2000 Export the contents of the table to an excel file . In the Excel change the integrity constraints. for example the table had one primary key column. So using excel you just changed the values of the priamary key by using linear fill option of Excel. Then save it. Now import data from this excel sheet to the table.

Answer2:Using Perl and their DBI modules. You will also need DBD modules for the specific databases that you want to test with. In theory, you should be able to re-use the scripts and just change DBD connections or possibly create handles to all three RDBMSs simultaneously. Ruby and Python have similar facilities. You will just have to have access to the data files somewhere and then you can then read the data and insert the data into the database using the correct insert statements. There are other tools, but since they cost money to purchase I have never bothered to investigate them. Scripting is the most powerful (and cheapest) way to do it. preferred method is to use Python and its ODBC module. This way you can use the same code and just change the data source for whichever DB you're connecting to. Also, you could potentially have the script generate random data if you don't have any source data to begin with. need to have the proper ODBC client drivers installed on the box you're running the script from for the ODBC module. There's also a PyPerl distribution that will let you use the Perl DBI module with Python. It's really up to personal preference on what you're comfortable scripting in.

Need to shut down network connectivity mid tansaction. How to do this programmatically via windows interface?

From the command line, IPCONFIG /RELEASE, should do it. or do the old fashion way. remove the cable on your machine. if u r using a wireless connection, it is better to use ipconfig then

What can be done if requirements are changing continuously?

Work with management early on to understand how requirements might change, so that alternate test plans and strategies can be worked out in advance. It is helpful if the application's initial design allows for some adaptability, so that later changes do not require redoing the application from scratch. Additionally, try to...* Ensure the code is well commented and well documented; this makes changes easier for the developers.* Use rapid prototyping whenever possible; this will help customers feel sure of their requirements and minimize changes.* In the project's initial schedule, allow for some extra time to commensurate with probable changes. * Move new requirements to a 'Phase 2' version of an application and use the original requirements for the 'Phase 1' version.* Negotiate to allow only easily implemented new requirements into the project; move more difficult, new requirements into future versions of the application.* Ensure customers and management understand scheduling impacts, inherent risks and costs of significant requirements changes. Then let management or the customers decide if the changes are warranted; after all, that's their job.* Balance the effort put into setting up automated testing with the expected effort required to redo them to deal with changes.* Design some flexibility into automated test scripts;* Focus initial automated testing on application aspects that are most likely to remain unchanged;* Devote appropriate effort to risk analysis of changes, in order to minimize regression-testing needs;* Design some flexibility into test cases; this is not easily done; the best bet is to minimize the detail in the test cases, or set up only higher-level generic-type test plans;* Focus less on detailed test plans and test cases and more on ad-hoc testing with an understanding of the added risk this entails.

What if the application has functionality that wasn't in the requirements?

It may take serious effort to determine if an application has significant unexpected or hidden functionality, which it would indicate deeper problems in the software development process. If the functionality isn't necessary to the purpose of the application, it should be removed, as it may have unknown impacts or dependencies that were not taken into account by the designer or the customer.If not removed, design information will be needed to determine added testing needs or regression

testing needs. Management should be made aware of any significant added risks as a result of the unexpected functionality. If the functionality only affects areas, such as minor improvements in the user interface, it may not be a significant risk.

WHAT WILL BE TESTED ON A STATIC WEB PAGE?

1. Testing all links are working properly.There are link checker programs that can help you verify if your links are broken 2. Test GUI design.3. Test spelling and grammer for contents.4. Test page fonts are consistent.Again depending on the page, this may not be essential, but you can suggest to the designed to use a cascading style sheet to easily maintain a consistent style across pages. 5.Title bar message testing.6.Status bar message testing.7.Scroll bars presence at page.8. Browser compatibility(IE and NetScape) IE and FireFox. Ironicly, Netscape 8 has two modes now that allows you to swicth between using the gecko render engine in Firefox and the internal IE render engine that ships with every Windows OS. It's very cool and it can save you a lot of time. 9.Changing browser options of IE from Tools --> Internet Options --->10.Advanced tab?11.Changing font for browser and also font size for browser.12. Changing any privacy option from Tools --> Internet Options. 13. the images are present 14. conformance to W3C standards WRT tags". That's a pretty big topic, but I can touch on it. Every HTML document should tell the browser about the DTD that it was built using. Things like<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN"><!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">Each DTD version has different standards. Some allow frames others don't, etc. You will have to learn what the DTD is supposed to use and what it's not supposed to use. Only the best web designers have the various DTDs memorised. Fortunately the W3C has made a page that will validate your pages for you at http://validator.w3.org/After your page passes through that you will get a report that lists errors and info. While most render engines will gloss over the errors and display the page "correctly", it may cause problems further down the road when editing the page. You can discuss these things with your web designer.

How to solve this issue - When developers blame testers for reporting bugs that is not reproducible on their machine?

Avoid this differences by taking screenshots and attaching them in bug tracking tool. it seems that since the environment was not the cause then the "Steps to Reproduce" portion of the Bug report were lacking clarity. Screenshots along the way are a great way to prove a point, especially when you are dealing with something that is reproducible. Sure as a test engineer we surely understand functionality and to an extent we understand the architecture of the software. Hence, we can surly say that some bugs are related to each other and some are not. So, We can introduc a column/field in our bug reporting format (What ever it is...a tool or an excel) for related bug ID. This will actually be helpful for the development community too fix the bugs. Actually Development environment should be same as Testing environment so that this issue will not arise. Make sure that before getting a Build the environment is same . Before Testing briefly go through with the Internal Release note. While Defect reporting mention proper Test data, steps etc. so that next time you can reproduce it.

How to test a application in flash?

Manually testing flash animations is as simple as making sure that the objects do what they're supposed to do. manually mostly because flash isn't really a programming language. Most developers consider it to be a toy. So the big automation companies won't consider plug-ins for the flash objects. If the flash application is a: E learning Application: 1. Need to know the the Hardware Configuration, becauase if this animation contains some heavy images or movie files then it works slowly, and which is a error. so each and every images and movie should be of light weight, as far the quality says.2. File naming convention3. Flash detection4. Objects should do what they are supposed to do5. Etc.If the flash application is a: Web Application:1. File size, should be light weight, beacuase most of the user dont have high speed connection, load testing require2. Quality of texts, images and movie

What kind of automated software used to test a Web-based application with a .NET (ASP.NET and C#...also SQL Server) framework?

Answer1:Mercury makes some decent products. Quick Test Pro can be used for a lot of your requirements... It can be costly and mind-numbing at times though.

Answer2:

Selenium is a test tool for web applications. Selenium tests run directly in a browser, just as real users do. And they run in Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Firefox on Windows, Linux, and Macintosh. No other test tool covers such a wide array of platforms.* Browser compatability testing. Test your application to see if it works correctly on different browsers and operating systems. The same script can run on any Selenium platform.* System functional testing. Create regression tests to verify application functionality and user acceptance.

Answer3:Ruby is becoming a preferred standard for testingPerl is also used a great deal

What kind of automated testing tool should Small company use?

Automation is not designed for small test teams in companies. It does not make your testing more efficient, it just make it faster. When you hit problems (and you likely will) it will take a lot of time to fix these problems. At the only time that a good automated process can be put in place. After your company starts growing and product releases, service packs, etc start to pile up in the horizon, your team will not have the time to automate because it will come after anything else to keep revenue coming and customers happy. Automation makes you faster, a nice outcome that will become vital later. The trick is in controlling the inputs of that process to get a good bang for the buck. The standard QA tools cause a lot of trouble and more often than not end up collecting dust in the shelves. Just throwing people and money at the problem does not work and is just available to bigger companies. Reads on the topic: How do I know when to Automate? These articles will help you decide if you're even ready to automate.

What if organization is growing so fast that fixed QA processes are impossible?

This is a common problem in the software industry, especially in new technology areas. There is no easy solution in this situation, other than...* Hire good people * Ruthlessly prioritize quality issues and maintain focus on the customer;* Everyone in the organization should be clear on what quality means to the customer

Can We do performance testing manually?*

Yes you can do Performance testing manually. For this you should open many active sessions of the application and should test it out. It also depends on what type of performance test you want to do. However, in general you can judge the active sessions, number of DB connections open, number of threads running (I have taken JAVA based Web applications as eg), the amount of the

CPU time and memory being used by having a performance viewer. You can have IBM Tivoli Performance viewer. It is available for trial version also. Usually the the test is done by deploying the application on the server and accessing the application from multiple client machines and making multiple threads to run. The performance viewer should of course be installed on the server

Need a template for preparing the Test Environment.

Answer1:A test environment can be as simple or as complex as can be, but it *must* be seperate from a development environment. In an ideal world, you'd have a DEVelopment environment, a TEST environment, an ACCeptance environment and a partitioned PRODuction environment. The DEV environment no one in QA touches, the TEST environment no one in development touches, the ACCeptance environment is for acceptance testing by end-users and adminstrators, performance/stress/load testing and so on and should mirror the PRODuction environment. The PRODuction environment should be a live/'hot swap' configuration; the release is deployed to 'hot swap', tested by the administrators and final acceptance testing before being 'hot swapped' to live.

Answer2:TEST ENVIRONMENT:Setup of a test environment will require:- Hardware- Operating systems- Software that needs to be tested- Other required software like tools (And people who can use them)- Data configurations- Interfaces to other systems, communications- Documentation like user manuals/reference documents/configuration guides/installation guides

Setting up a dedicated Test Environment is expensive and the following needs to be considered:- To create an internal Test Environment or to outsource- To follow any External (IEEE, ISO etc.) or Internal company standards- The initial set-up & running costs- How long will the Test Environment be required?- How production like does it need to be? If the environment does not mirrors production then differences between the test and production systems and their impact on test validity must be determined.- Can you support the environment either technically or within the building infrastructure?- Could any exisiting setup for other projects in the company can be re-used- Could the setup be used for other projects within the company? - Day to day management

- Procedures for controlling change (Configuration management) - Data loading and security requirements

How is testing affected by object-oriented designs?

A well-engineered object-oriented design can make it easier to trace from code to internal design to functional design to requirements. While there will be little affect on black box testing (where an understanding of the internal design of the application is unnecessary), white-box testing can be oriented to the application's objects. If the application was well designed this can simplify test design.

Need some QA advice: * Improve Management Commitment to Quality Assurance , * Improve the Internalization Quality Assurance as a process

The first part of the battle is already won: product quality is suffering due to financial and business drivers outside of your control. In other words, there is awareness (or there is a means of obtaining) awareness that although products are shipping, quality is suffering and if this is allowed to continue, your product will be bogged down in patches, bad customer experience and perception. Ultimately your product will fail. This is a very powerful argument with which to convince your management that the situation cannot be allowed to continue. The expression "once you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow" is particularly true here. So step 1: recognize there is a problem and highlight the consequences. Awareness is key! Step 2: Define your role and get clarity about your objectives and understand the expectations your managers have of your department. QA is not just testing. Testing is not just QA. Are you expected to test, or are you expected to manage quality? Depending on the answer you can focus on the areas that the business places as top priority and fill the areas where you are lacking expertise. Example 1: they want you to be a Quality Assurance manager. Now we're in the realms of ISO, CMM etc. Coding standards, documentation standards, process flows, organisational structure, communication standards, release management procedures, process improvement and maintenance, change management procedures, review cycle management, requirement mangement lifecycles etc. In other words, you are responsible for the process that assure quality. How that is monitored and controlled is quality control. Example 2: they want you to test the software. Now we're talking Test methodologies, test plans, test team organisation and so on. By clarifying your role you not only get an idea of your areas of responsiblitiy, you are also empowered to bring about change, to introduce quality and turn the ship around! Make sure you have the means to carry out your job (budget, resources, a senior management sponsor to help you through the hard time). If you dont, then you will fight a losing battle. Step 3: Now that you know your role; evangelise! Let everyone know what you are going to do and what the end-results are going to be. Include everyone (yes, quality is everyones business) and be aware that change meets with resistance. Check out the paterson-connor change lifecycle model for an example and structure of your change activities and the problems you will face. Step 4: Depending on your role, implement your procedures. The business will decide what is more important. If it wants to ship product, focus on the release management/service

delivery/service management to make sure that customers get their products quickly and get the support they need. If they want quality, focus more on standards and development/qa lifecycles.

What are some of the software configuration management tools?

Software configuration management tools include Rational ClearCase, DOORS, PVCS, CVS; and there are many others. Rational ClearCase is a popular software tool for revision control of source code. Made by Rational Software. DOORS, or "Dynamic Object Oriented Requirements System", is a requirements version control software tool. CVS, or "Concurrent Version System", is another popular, open source version control tool. It keeps track of changes in documents associated with software projects. It enables several, often distant, developers to work together on the same source code. PVCS is a document version control tool, a competitor of SCCS. SCCS is an original UNIX program, based on "diff". Diff is a UNIX command that compares contents of two files.

How to write Nunit test cases

What Is NUnit?NUnit is a unit-testing framework for all .Net languages. Initially ported from JUnit, the current production release, version 2.2, is the fourth major release of this xUnit based unit testing tool for Microsoft .NET. It is written entirely in C# and has been completely redesigned to take advantage of many .NET language features, for example custom attributes and other reflection related capabilities. NUnit brings xUnit to all .NET languages.

Why was bug x or bug y caught NOT during testing?"

Why the defect was allowed to be introduced into the code? Why don't they have better code reviews? Why don't the developers understand the product better? Why are the requirements not fully understood by these people? The real issue here is that they are passing quality off to the testing team and it's not our job to make the product a quality one--it's the responsibility of everyone in the company including the receptionist. It is not the job of testing to be responsible for assuring quality and it is not the purpose of testing to find bugs.Classic Testing Mistakes

Do they rely on strange configurations: ones you could never hope to reproduce? Is it reasonable that your testers should have "caught" these defects? If it is, don't make any excuses. Alternately, if it's really the requirements, how can the developers make the right product and the testers don't understand what the developers are making? There is communication about what needs to be done, and the developers seem to be getting that communication, why can't your testers? We know the reason: the developers didn't get the communication right--that's why there

was a defect. So you can point out the communication as well. when there is a requirements document, testers have a tendency to only test the main path, or they'll only run one test case per requirement, when there clearly should be many tests to catch all boundaries and failures. Testers do need to be able to think about what they are doing, and it is very possible that the testers themselves are at fault. Don't be afraid to hold them accountable for being lazy. The main cause of the problem is not enough testing time allocated:NO time for doc reviews;Little time for test design and creation;Little time for test execution.

How do you conduct peer reviews?

The peer review, sometimes called PDR, is a formal meeting, more formalized than a walk-through, and typically consists of 3-10 people including the test lead, task lead (the author of whatever is being reviewed) and a facilitator (to make notes). The subject of the PDR is typically a code block, release, or feature, or document. The purpose of the PDR is to find problems and see what is missing, not to fix anything. The result of the meeting is documented in a written report. Attendees should prepare for PDRs by reading through documents, before the meeting starts; most problems are found during this preparation. Why is the PDR great? Because it is a cost-effective method of ensuring quality, because bug prevention is more cost effective than bug detection.

500 Internal Server Error problem while doing load testing using Microsoft Web Application Stress Tool ....

500 Internal Server Error problem while doing load testing using Microsoft Web Application Stress Tool When doing Load testing using WAS (Microsoft Web Application Stress Tool), get " 500 Internal Server Error" problem for most of the "POST" querries. The Log file it showed the following data:"GET /imse/Global/images/Default/arrow.gif 500""GET /imse/client/Template/images/Default/arrow.gif 500""GET /imse/client/Template/images/Default/Plus1.gif 500"What could be the reason for this?

The problem is because the response will have not come. The session will have timed out. This will be the application will have taken more memory. This might be because of multiple threads running with each thread taking much CPU time. Please check the Server of the system where the build is deployed for Heap Dump. The Garbage collector will have created Java Heap and Core dumps in the Application folder. Try increasing the number of DB Connections in the server. This might solve the Problem. Also increase the Final Heap size also. This might solve the problems.

How do you check the security of an application?

To check the security of an application, one can use security/penetration testing. Security/penetration testing is testing how well a system is protected against unauthorized internal, or external access, or willful damage. This type of testing usually requires sophisticated testing techniques.

How to estimate product test hours for new releases?

Answer1:Your main task is to convince your company of the- value of structured testing and the benefits it brings to the end product- the risks of not testing properly (high maintenance, lots of bugs found in production (and these generally found by your customers!), loss of market reputation ("another crap product from xyz company). Another approach might be to consider starting your test processes earlier (i am guessing from your message that you are following some kind of waterfall method) - its a sort of 'design a little, build a little, test a little, design a little ...' approach.

Answer2:Tell the folks making decisions to read user feedback. No time for testing = angry users who want their money back or worse angry clients who suddenly hire a team of lawyers. Warned all the stakeholders early on and then sent user feedback emails up the chain. Users can be brutal and they tell the truth! Comments like YOU SUCK!! It may also convince them to get more support people instead of increasing testing.

Answer3:The ratios:3/1 Developers to QA (industry)3/2 Developers to QA (Microsoft)There is also a really good article called "A Better Bug Trap" published by The Economist in 2004, which is pretty telling: according to NIST 80% of a software project belongs to testing and debugging.There is also the classic book called "Mythical Man Month". There are a couple of pertinent passages there:1) Back when the book was written, the percentage quoted by NIST was 50%, which means that software development has become less efficient over the last 20 years or so.2) There is a 30% that a change in any line of code will break something down stream.3) There is another article published by McKinsey Quarterly called "What high tech can learn from slow-growth industries".

What are the metrics to be collected as part of testing?

A metric is a measurement. While it's easy to count things that are easy to count, and to divide the counts by other things that you count, it's harder to decide what the counts and ratios mean. What are we trying to measure, and what model and what evidence lead us to believe that the counts measure the attribute we claim to be trying to measure? Without clear thinking about validity, the numbers are more of a dangerous distraction than a useful tool. Rather than blindly using a well-known metric, decide what goal you are trying to achieve and find out how best to measure to achieve that goal. Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.Questions you must ask before starting to use metrics are:* Who will use these metrics?* What behaviour are you trying to promote with these metrics?* What information is important to know across the project?* What requires increased visibility or transparency?

How to test a web application, for security testing of Web Application?

Answer1:Two most common security vulnerabilities that often times overlooked by developers are session and cookie management. Check out google for possible hacks re the two items. Develop test scenario from the kb that you find in the web. Another test would be to concentrate on the log in page and log out. In some cases the back button could be a security problem especially if the previous screen/page has sensitive data and could easily be modified if the back button is used. Lastly, test the user roles properly. Making sure that the specific role only sees what s/he is intended to see.

Answer2:Can test one more scenario for security,1. Login into the application.2. Then copy the url.3. Click Logout button4. Now paste this url in Browser's Address bar or from History access the url of the application after logging out Also do not forget to check the timeout setting for the application 1. Login into the app2. Leave the browser for sometime idle3. then checkout that user session gets expired or not.

What is GUI testing? What elements will we cover in GUI testing?

In GUI testing, need to cover the customer requirement if don't have to validate 1. Font size, colors, spellings(labels) etc2. Every application should follow Microsoft rules like2.1 Controls should be Initcap (i.e every label should start with Capital letter )Can observe that in Win applications every label starts with Caps2.2 OK or Cancel button should exist2.3 Controls should not be overlapped2.4 Controls should be alligned properly (left side alignment is mandatory but the right side is optional)2.5 Controls should be visible2.6 Short cut keys should be provided2.7 System menu should exist (i.e if u press Alt key + Space bar a menu will appear at the left most corner )2.8 Mouse pointer events Colors, Label Names, Tab Order, Alignment, graphs , Navigation of the software to test in GUI Testing.

When is a process repeatable?

A process repeatable when we use detailed and well-written processes and procedures; this way we ensure the correct steps are being executed. This also facilitates a successful completion of the task, and ensures the process is repeatable. A process is repeatable, whenever we have the necessary processes in place, in order to repeat earlier successes on projects with similar applications. A process is repeatable, if we use detailed and well-written processes and procedures. A process is repeatable, if we ensure that the correct steps are executed. When the correct steps are executed, we facilitate a successful completion of the task. Documentation is critical. A software process is repeatable, if there are requirements management, project planning, project tracking, subcontract management, QA, and configuration management. Both QA processes and practices should be documented, so that they are repeatable. Specifications, designs, business rules, inspection reports, configurations, code changes, test plans, test cases, bug reports, user manuals should all be documented, so that they are repeatable.

Document files should be well organized. There should be a system for easily finding and obtaining documents, and determining what document has a particular piece of information. We should use documentation change management, if possible.

What should test in BANKING DOMAIN application ?

You would like to test:Banking Workflows

Data Integrity issuesSecurity and access issuesRecovery testingAll the above needs to be tested in the expected banking environment (hardwares, LAN, Op Sys, domain configurations, databases)

Collaboration between dev and testing

Unit testing is entirely the responsibility of the developer. A tester is not in as knowledgable a position to write meaningful unit tests as the developer who did the feature. I would push back hard against a development team that tried to do this. A feature is not 'done' (as in 'ready for test') until- the requirements are met (be they specifications or use case)- the code has all be checked into revision control- it has been verified that the newly checked in code does not break the compile/existing tests- a comprehensive suite of feature specific unit tests has been created and integrated into the build process- there are no TODO's (or similar watermarks) left in the new code- all FIXME's (or similar watermarks) have bug numbers assigned to them in the new code

Is there any common testing framework or testing best practices for distributed system? For example, for distrbuted database management system?

A distributed database management based on mysql. It has three components.1. A jdbc driver providing services for user's applications, including distributed transaction management, load balancing, query processor, table id management, etc.2. A master process, which manages global dirstributed transaction id, load balancing, load balancing strategy, etc.3. An agent running on the same box with mysql, which get mysql server's balance statistic info. AN OPERATIONAL ENVIRONMENT FOR TESTING DISTRIBUTED SOFTWAREDistributed applications have traditionally been designed as systems whose data and processing capabilities reside on multiple platforms, each performing an assigned function within a known and controlled framework contained in the enterprise. Even if the testing tools were capable of debugging all types of software components, most do not provide a single monitoring view that can span multiple platforms. Therefore, developers must jump between several testing/monitoring sessions across the distributed platforms and interpret the cross–platform gap as best they can. That is, of course, assuming that comparable monitoring tools exist for all the required platforms in the first place. This is particularly difficult when one server platform is the mainframe as generally the more sophisticated mainframe testing tools do not have comparable PC– or Unix–based counterparts. Therefore, testing distributed applications is exponentially more difficult than testing standalone applications.To overcome this problem, we present an operational environment for testing distributed

applications based on the Java Development Kit (JDK) as shown in Figure 1, allowing testers to track the flow of messages and data across and within the disparate platforms.The primary goal of this operational environment is an attempt to provide a coherent, seamless environment that can serve as a single platform for testing distributed applications. The hardware platform of the testbed at the lowest level in Figure 1, is a network of SUN workstations running the Solaris 2.x operating system which often plays a part in distributed and client–server system. The widespread use of PCs has also prompted an ongoing effort to port the environment to the PC/Windows platform. On the top of the hardware platform is Java Development Kit. It consists of the Java programming language core functionality, the Java Application Programming Interface (API) with multiple package sets and the essential tools such as Remote Method Invocations (RMI), Java DataBase Conncetivity (JDBC) and Beans for creating Java applications. On top of this platform is the SITE which secures automated support for the testing process, including modeling, specification, statistical analysis, test data generation, test results inspection and test path tracing. At the top of this environment are the distributed applications. These can use or bypass any of the facilities and services in this operational environment. This environment receives commands from the users (testers) and produces the test reports back.

Why is that my company requires a PDR?

Your company requires a PDR, because your company wants to be the owner of the very best possible design and documentation. Your company requires a PDR, because when you organize a PDR, you invite, assemble and encourage the company's best experts to voice their concerns as to what should or should not go into your design and documentation, and why. Please don't be negative. Please do not assume your company is finding fault with your work, or distrusting you in any way. Remember, PDRs are not about you, but about design and documentation. There is a 90+ per cent probability your company wants you, likes you and trust you because you're a specialist, and because your company hired you after a long and careful selection process. Your company requires a PDR, because PDRs are useful and constructive. Just about everyone - even corporate chief executive officers (CEOs) - attend PDRs from time to time. When a corporate CEO attends a PDR, he has to listen for "feedback" from shareholders. When a CEO attends a PDR, the meeting is called the "annual shareholders' meeting".

A list of ten good things about PDRs!

Number 1: PDRs are easy, because all your meeting attendees are your co-workers and friends. Number 2: PDRs do produce results. With the help of your meeting attendees, PDRs help you produce better designs and better documents than the ones you could come up with, without the help of your meeting attendees. Number 3: Preparation for PDRs helps a lot, but, in the worst case, if you had no time to read every page of every document, it's still OK for you to show up at the PDR. Number 4: It's technical expertise that counts the most, but many times you can influence your

group just as much, or even more so, if you're dominant or have good acting skills. Number 5: PDRs are easy, because, even at the best and biggest companies, you can dominate the meeting by being either very negative, or very bright and wise. Number 6: It is easy to deliver gentle suggestions and constructive criticism. The brightest and wisest meeting attendees are usually gentle on you; they deliver gentle suggestions that are constructive, not destructive. Number 7: You get many-many chances to express your ideas, every time a meeting attendee asks you to justify why you wrote what you wrote. Number 8: PDRs are effective, because there is no need to wait for anything or anyone; because the attendees make decisions quickly (as to what errors are in your document). There is no confusion either, because all the group's recommendations are clearly written down for you by the PDR's facilitator. Number 9: Your work goes faster, because the group itself is an independent decision making authority. Your work gets done faster, because the group's decisions are subject to neither oversight nor supervision. Number 10: At PDRs, your meeting attendees are the very best experts anyone can find, and they work for you, for FREE!

What is the best way to simulate the real behavior of a web based system?

It may seem obvious, but the best way to simulate real behavior of a web based system is to simulate user actual behavior, and the way to do this is from an actual browser with test functionality built inside. The key to achieving the kind of test accuracy that eValid provides is to understand that it's the eValid browser that is doing the the actual navigating and processing. And, it is the eValid browser that is taking the actual performance timing measurements. eValid employs IE-equivalent multi-threaded HTTP/S processing and uses IE-equivalent page rendering. While there is some overhead with injecting actions into the browser, it is very, very low. eValid's timers resolve to 1.0 msec and this precision is usually enough to produce very meaningful performance testing results.

How can I shift my focus and area of work from QC to QA?

Number one: Focus on your strengths, skills, and abilities! Realize that there are MANY similarities between Quality Control and Quality Assurance! Realize you have MANY transferable skills! Number two: Make a plan! Develop a belief that getting a job in QA is easy! HR professionals cannot tell the difference between quality control and quality assurance! HR professionals tend to respond to keywords (i.e. QC and QA), without knowing the exact meaning of those keywords! Number three: Make it a reality! Invest your time! Get some hands-on experience! Do some QA work! Do any QA work, even if, for a few months, you get paid a little less than usual! Your

goals, beliefs, enthusiasm, and action will make a huge difference in your life! Number four: Read all you can, and that includes reading product pamphlets, manuals, books, information on the Internet, and whatever information you can lay your hands on!

How to use loadrunner for testing web-based application?

Exactly the data which a user of your site will enter as soon as it will be in an e-commerce website. Check your concept by implementing a simple test case, e.g.logon - some info - logoffstress your site with this simple script and n parallel virtual users(n = 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000)create some more complex tests and repeat.

Any server setup that is not needed in order to use Loadrunner for an e-commerce website. From the server point of view, it is just if many real users would stress your site.

What techniques and tools can enable me to migrate from QC to QA?

Technique number one: Mental preparation. Understand and believe what you want is not unusual at all! Develop a belief in yourself! Start believing what you want is attainable! You can change your career! Every year, millions of men and women change their careers successfully! Number two: Make a plan! Develop a belief that getting a job in QA is easy! HR professionals cannot tell the difference between quality control and quality assurance! HR professionals tend to respond to keywords (i.e. QC and QA), without knowing the exact meaning of those keywords! Number three: Make it a reality! Invest your time! Get some hands-on experience! Do some QA work! Do any QA work, even if, for a few months, you get paid a little less than usual! Your goals, beliefs, enthusiasm, and action will make a huge difference in your life! Number four: Read all you can, and that includes reading product pamphlets, manuals, books, information on the Internet, and whatever information you can lay your hands on!

What is the BEST WAY to write test cases?

Answer1:1) List down usecases (taken from business cases) from function specs. For each use case write a test case and categorize them into sanity tests, functionality, GUI, performance etc. Then for each test case, write its workflow. 2) For a GUI application - make a list of all GUI controls. For each control start writing test

cases for testing of the control UI, functionality (impact on the whole application), negative testing (for incorrect inputs), performance etc.

Answer2:1. Generate Sunny day scenarios based on use cases and/or requirements. 2. Generate Rainy Day (negative, boundary, etc.) tests that correspond to the previously defined Sunny Day scenarios. 3. Based on past experience and a knowledge of the product, generate tests for anything that might have been missed in steps one and two above. These tests need not correspond to any documented requirements or use cases. It's generally not possible to test every facet of the design, but with a little work and forethought you can test the high risk areas or high impact features

How to test the memory leakeage mannually?

Answer1:Here are tools to check this. Compuware DevPartner can help you test your application for Memory leaks if the application is complex. Also depending upon the OS on which you need to check for memory leaks you need to select the tool.

Answer2:Tools are more effective to do so. the tools watch to see when memory is allocated and not freeed. You can use various tools manually to see if the same happens. You just won't be able to find the exact points where this happens. In windows you would use task manager or process explorer (freeware from Sysinternals) and switch to process view and watch memory used. Record the baseline memory usage (BL) . Run an action once and record the memory usage (BLU). Perform the same actions repeatedlty and then if the memory usage has not returned to at least BLU, you have a memory leak. The trick is to wait for the computer to clean up after the transactions have finished. This should take a few seconds.

What is the difference between static and dynamic testing?

Difference number 1: Static testing is about prevention, dynamic testing is about cure. Difference number 2: The static tools offer greater marginal benefits. Difference number 3: Static testing is many times more cost-effective than dynamic testing. Difference number 4: Static testing beats dynamic testing by a wide margin. Difference number 5: Static testing is more effective! Difference number 6: Static testing gives you comprehensive diagnostics for your code. Difference number 7: Static testing achieves 100% statement coverage in a relatively short time, while dynamic testing often often achieves less than 50% statement coverage, because dynamic

testing finds bugs only in parts of the code that are actually executed. Difference number 8: Dynamic testing usually takes longer than static testing. Dynamic testing may involve running several test cases, each of which may take longer than compilation. Difference number 9: Dynamic testing finds fewer bugs than static testing. Difference number 10: Static testing can be done before compilation, while dynamic testing can take place only after compilation and linking. Difference number 11: Static testing can find all of the followings that dynamic testing cannot find: syntax errors, code that is hard to maintain, code that is hard to test, code that does not conform to coding standards, and ANSI violations.

Why should I use static testing techniques?

There are several reasons why one should use static testing techniques. Reason number 1: One should use static testing techniques because static testing is a bargain, compared to dynamic testing. Reason number 2: Static testing is up to 100 times more effective. Even in selective testing, static testing may be up to 10 times more effective. The most pessimistic estimates suggest a factor of 4. Reason number 3: Since static testing is faster and achieves 100% coverage, the unit cost of detecting these bugs by static testing is many times lower than detecting bugs by dynamic testing. Reason number 4: About half of the bugs, detectable by dynamic testing, can be detected earlier by static testing. Reason number 5: If one uses neither static nor dynamic test tools, the static tools offer greater marginal benefits. Reason number 6: If an urgent deadline looms on the horizon, the use of dynamic testing tools can be omitted, but tool-supported static testing should never be omitted.

What is the future of software QA/testing?

In software QA/testing, employers increasingly want us to have a combination of technical, business, and personal skills. By technical skills they mean skills in IT, quantitative analysis, data modeling, and technical writing. By business skills they mean skills in strategy and business writing. By personal skills they mean personal communication, leadership, teamwork, and problem-solving skills. We, employees, on the other hand, want increasingly more autonomy, better lifestyle, increasingly more employee oriented company culture, and better geographic location. We continue to enjoy relatively good job security and, depending on the business cycle, many job opportunities. We realize our skills are important, and have strong incentives to upgrade our skills, although sometimes lack the information on how to do so. Educational institutions increasingly ensure that we are exposed to real-life situations and problems, but high turnover rates and a rapid pace of change in the IT industry often act as strong disincentives for employers to invest in our skills, especially non-company specific skills. Employers continue to establish closer links with educational institutions, both through in-house education programs and human resources. The share of IT workers with IT degrees keeps increasing. Certification

continues to keep helping employers to quickly identify us with the latest skills. During boom times, smaller and younger companies continue to be the most attractive to us, especially those that offer stock options and performance bonuses in order to retain and attract those of us who are the most skilled. High turnover rates continue to be the norm, especially during economic boom. Software QA/testing continues to be outsourced to offshore locations. Software QA/testing continues to be performed by mostly men, but the share of women keeps increasing.

How can I be effective and efficient, when I'm testing e-commerce web sites?

When you're doing black box testing of an e-commerce web site, you're most efficient and effective when you're testing the site's visual appeal, content, and home page. When you want to be effective and efficient, you need to verify that the site is well planned; verify that the site is customer-friendly; verify that the choices of colors are attractive; verify that the choices of fonts are attractive; verify that the site's audio is customer friendly; verify that the site's video is attractive; verify that the choice of graphics is attractive; verify that every page of the site is displayed properly on all the popular browsers; verify the authenticity of facts; ensure the site provides reliable and consistent information; test the site for appearance; test the site for grammatical and spelling errors; test the site for visual appeal, choice of browsers, consistency of font size, download time, broken links, missing links, incorrect links, and browser compatibility; test each toolbar, each menu item, every window, every field prompt, every pop-up text, and every error message; test every page of the site for left and right justifications, every shortcut key, each control, each push button, every radio button, and each item on every drop-down menu; test each list box, and each help menu item. Also check, if the command buttons are grayed out when they're not in use.

Give me one test case that catches all the bugs!

On the negative side, if there was a "magic bullet", i.e. the one test case that was able to catch ALL the bugs, or at least the most important bugs, it'd be a challenge to find it, because test cases depend on requirements; requirements depend on what customers need; and customers have great many different needs that keep changing. As software systems are changing and getting increasingly complex, it is increasingly more challenging to write test cases. On the positive side, there are ways to create "minimal test cases" which can greatly simplify the test steps to be executed. But, writing such test cases is time consuming, and project deadlines often prevent us from going that route. Often the lack of enough time for testing is the reason for bugs to occur in the field. However, even with ample time to catch the "most important bugs", bugs still surface with amazing spontaneity. The fundamental challenge is, developers do not seem to know how to avoid providing the many opportunities for bugs to hide, and testers do not seem to know where the bugs are hiding.

What testing approaches can you tell me about?

Each of the followings represents a different testing approach: black box testing, white box testing, unit testing, incremental testing, integration testing, functional testing, system testing, end-to-end testing, sanity testing, regression testing, acceptance testing, load testing, performance testing, usability testing, install/uninstall testing, recovery testing, security testing, compatibility testing, exploratory testing, ad-hoc testing, user acceptance testing, comparison testing, alpha testing, beta testing, and mutation testing

How can software QA processes be implemented without stifling productivity?

When you implement software QA processes without stifling productivity, you want to implement yhem slowly over time. You want to use consensus to reach agreement on processes, and adjust, and experiment, as an organization grows and matures. Productivity will be improved instead of stifled. Problem prevention will lessen the need for problem detection. Panics and burnout will decrease, and there will be improved focus, and less wasted effort. At the same time, attempts should be made to keep processes simple and efficient, minimize paperwork, promote computer-based processes and automated tracking and reporting, minimize time required in meetings and promote training as part of the QA process. However, no one, especially not the talented technical types like bureaucracy, and in the short run things may slow down a bit. A typical scenario would be that more days of planning and development will be needed, but less time will be required for late-night bug fixing and calming of irate customers.

Test Specifications

The test case specifications should be developed from the test plan and are the second phase of the test development life cycle. The test specification should explain "how" to implement the test cases described in the test plan. Test Specification Items Each test specification should contain the following items: Case No.: The test case number should be a three digit identifer of the following form: c.s.t, where: c- is the chapter number, s- is the section number, and t- is the test case number. Title: is the title of the test. ProgName: is the program name containing the test. Author: is the person who wrote the test specification. Date: is the date of the last revision to the test case. Background: (Objectives, Assumptions, References, Success Criteria): Describes in words how to conduct the test. Expected Error(s): Describes any errors expected Reference(s): Lists reference documententation used to design the specification.

Data: (Tx Data, Predicted Rx Data): Describes the data flows between the Implementation Under Test (IUT) and the test engine. Script: (Pseudo Code for Coding Tests): Pseudo code (or real code) used to conduct the test. Example Test Specification Test Specification Case No. 7.6.3 Title: Invalid Sequence Number (TC)ProgName: UTEP221 Author: B.C.G. Date: 07/06/2000Background: (Objectives, Assumptions, References, Success Criteria)

Validate that the IUT will reject a normal flow PIU with a transmissionheader that has an invalid sequence number. Expected Sense Code: $2001, Sequence Number Error Reference - SNA Format and Protocols Appendix G/p. 380 Data: (Tx Data, Predicted Rx Data)IUT<-------- DATA FIS, OIC, DR1 SNF=20<-------- DATA LIS, SNF=20--------> -RSP $2001

Script: (Pseudo Code for Coding Tests)SEND_PIU FIS, OIC, DR1, DRI SNF=20SEND_PIU LIS, SNF=20R_RSP $2001

Formal Technical Review: Reviews that include walkthroughs, inspection, ....

Formal Technical Review Reviews that include walkthroughs, inspection, round-robin reviews and other small group technical assessment of software. It is a planned and control meeting attended by the analyst, programmers and people involve in the software development.

Uncover errors in logic, function or implementation for any representation of software To verify that the software under review meets the requirements To ensure that the software has been represented according to predefined standards To achieve software that is developed in a uniform manner. To make project more manageable. Early discovery of software defects, so that in the development and maintenance phase

the errors are substantially reduced. " Serves as a training ground, enabling junior members to observe the different approaches in the software development phases (gives them helicopter view of what other are doing when developing the software).

Allows for continuity and backup of the project. This is because a number of people are become familiar with parts of the software that they might not have otherwise seen,

Greater cohesion between different developers.

Constraints of Software Quality Assurance

Difficult to institute in small organizations where available resources to perform the necessary activities are not present. A smaller organization tends not to have the required resources like manpower, capital etc to assist in the process of SQA.

Cost not budgetedIn addition, SQA requires the expenditure of dollars that are not otherwise explicitly budgeted to software engineering and software quality. The implementation of SQA involves immediate upfront costs, and the benefits of SQA tend to be more long-term than short-term. Hence, some organizations may be less willing to include the cost of implementing SQA into their budget.

SOFTWARE TESTING METRICS

In general testers must rely on metrics collected in analysis, design and coding stages of the development in order to design, develop and conduct the tests necessary. These generally serve as indicators of overall testing effort needed. High-level design metrics can also help predict the complexities associated with integration testing and the need for specialized testing software (e.g. stubs and drivers). Cyclomatic complexity may yield modules that will require extensive testing as those with high cyclomatic complexity are more likely to be error prone.Metrics collected from testing, on the other hand, usually comprise of the number and type of errors, failures, bugs and defects found. These can then serve as measures used to calculate further testing effort required. They can also be used as a management tool to determine the extensity of the project's success or failure and the correctness of the design. In any case these should be collected, examined and stored for future needs.

OBJECT ORIENTED TESTING METRICS

Testing metrics can be grouped into two categories: encapsulation and inheritance. EncapsulationLack of cohesion in methods (LCOM) - The higher the value of LCOM, the more states have to be tested.Percent public and protected (PAP) - This number indicates the percentage of class attributes that are public and thus the likelihood of side effects among classes.Public access to data members (PAD) - This metric shows the number of classes that access other class's attributes and thus violation of encapsulationInheritanceNumber of root classes (NOR) - A count of distinct class hierarchies.Fan in (FIN) - FIN > 1 is an indication of multiple inheritance and should be avoided.Number of children (NOC) and depth of the inheritance tree (DIT) - For each subclass, its superclass has to be re-tested. The above metrics (and others) are different than those used in traditional software testing, however, metrics collected from testing should be the same (i.e. number and type of errors, performancde metrics, etc.).