What are advantages and limitations of Wi-Fi?

The Wi-Fi has its own set of advantages and limitations. 

Advantages of WiFi

- WiFi makes the deployment of local Area Networks or LANs quite cheap.  

- There are some areas where the cables cannot be installed such as in historical buildings and outdoor areas. 

- But these spaces do not have any problem in hosting a wireless LAN.  

- Wireless Network adapters are being built into almost all the laptops by the manufacturers.

- A basic level of service is provided at which different brands concerning and client network interfaces access points that are competing with each other can inter-operate. 

- The products that have been certified by Wi-Fi alliance show back word compatibility. 

- A standard device for WiFi will work at any place in the whole world unlike our phones. 

- The WPA2 or the WiFi protected access encryption is secure provided a condition that the pass phrase used is quite strong.  

- The new protocols use for WMM i.e., Quality of service increase the suitability of the Wi-Fi regarding its use in latency - sensitive applications. 

- WMM is a power saving mechanism that is used for extending the life of the battery. 

Limitations of WiFi

- Inconsistency of the operation and spectrum assignments poses a problem worldwide.  

- The range all the WiFi networks is limited. 

- A wireless access point typically uses a stock antenna having a range of 100 m outdoors and 25m indoors.

- The frequency band is a major factor for producing variations in the range.  

- The range of Wi-Fi with a 2.4 ghz frequency block is better when compared with the 5.0 ghz frequency block Wi-Fi. 

- Some wireless routers come with detachable antennas. 

- These antennas can be removed for improving the range. 

- In their place upgraded antennas can be fitted. 

- The benefit of these antennas is that they have high directional gain at the remote devices. 

- The local regulations limit the maximum amount of power that can be transmitted by a Wi-Fi. 

- The power consumption of Wi-Fi is quite higher than the other standards.  

- This is so because of the reach requirements of the wireless LAN applications.

- There are technologies available that provide a propagation range that is much shorter. 

- One such technology is Bluetooth and has very low power consumption.  

- Other technologies such as zigbee have low power consumption, a long range but provides low data rate. 

- The most commonly used wireless encryption standard is WEP or wired equivalent privacy. 

- Even this standard has been proven to be breakable even if correct configuration is used. 

- This problem was addressed by WPA or Wi-Fi protected access standard to some extent. 

- By default the wireless access points use the encryption free mode. 

- The wireless security is disabled because of which the LAN can be openly accessed. 

Explain the single and two level directory structures

About Directory Structure

- Directory structure is referred to the way that the operating system follows for displaying the files and file system to the user in the field of computing. 

- A hierarchical tree structure is used for displaying the files in a typical way. 

- The special kind of string the file name uses or the unique identification of a particular file that is stored in the computer’s file system. 

- Before the 32 bit operating systems actually came in to the scenario; short names of about 6 to 14 characters in size were used for the file names. 

- However, the modern operating systems give permission for file names of longer length i.e., of 250 character and that too per path name element. 

- The drive:\ is the root directory in the operating systems such as the OS/2, windows and DOS for example, “C:\”. 

- The “\” is the directory separator but the forward slash “/” is also internally recognized by the operating system.

- A drive letter is use for naming the drives either physically or virtually. 

- This also implies there does not exist a root directory that is formal. 

- Rather, we have root directories in each drive that are independent of each other. 

- However, one virtual drive letter can be formed by combining in to one. 

- This is done by keeping a RAID setting of 0 for the hard drive. 

- The file system hierarchy standard is used by the operating systems such as the UNIX and other UNIX like systems. 

- This is the most common form for the directory structures used by the UNIX operating systems. 

- It is under the root directory “/” that all the files and the directories are stored even if they are actually present on a number of different physical devices.

About Single – level Directory

- This is the simplest of the directory structures. 

- All files are stored in the same directory itself because it is quite easy to understand as well as support. 

- The first computer of the world i.e., the CDC 6600 also operated on just one directory and it could be used by a number of users at the same time. 

- There are significant limitations of the single-level directory. 

- These limitations come in to play when there are more than one users using the system or when the system has to deal with a large number of files. 

- All the files have to be assigned unique names since they are all stored under the same directory. 

- No two files can have the same file name. 

- It may become difficult to keep the names of the files in mind if they are large in number.

About Two–level Directory

- The limitations of the single level directory structure can be overcome by creating an individual directory for every user. 

- This is the most standard solution for the problems of the single level directories. 

- In this two-level directory structure, a UFD or user file directory is made for every user. 

- The structure of all the user file directories is almost the same, but the difference is that only the files of the individual user are stored in one.

- When a user tries to log in or when he starts a task, the system searches for the MFD or master file directory. 

- The name of the user or his/ her account number is used for indexing the MFDs in the operating system. 

- Each of those entries points to the UFD belonging to that user. 

- When a reference is made to some file, the system only searches for the user file directory for example, when a file has to be deleted or created. 

What are the main features of TOSCA? What are its benefits and limitations?

About TOSCA

- TOSCA test suite was developed as a tool for automated execution for regression and functional testing by TRICENTIS technology and consulting GmbH.

- TOSCA is a wise combination of an application programming interface, a graphical user interface, integrated test management and a command line interface. 

- In the year of 2011, TOSCA became the second most widely used software test automation tool. 

- Since then, it has received a number of awards for its web and customer support.  

- The architecture of TOSCA comprises the following components:

Ø  TOSCA commander

Ø  TOSCA wizard

Ø  TOSCA executor

Ø  TOSCA exchange portal

Ø  TOSCA test repository

- This test automation tool follows a model driven approach so that the whole test can be made dynamic in nature. 
- The modules can be dragged and dropped for creating new tests.  
- This in turn makes it possible for having a business – based description of the test cases.
- With such a description it becomes for the non – technical users to design and automate the test cases.

Features of TOSCA

- Main features of TOSCA include:

Ø  Generation of dynamic test data

Ø  Generation of synthetic test data

Ø  Business dynamic steering of test case generation that is highly automated

Ø  Unified handling as well as execution of the automated and manual test cases.

Ø  Unified handling and execution of the non – GUI and GUI test cases.

- In addition to all these above mentioned features, another feature of TOSCA is that it weighs the test cases as per their importance in proper execution of the business processes. 
- This also enables the TOSCA to provide detailed reports about the impact that the existing technical weakness have on the fulfillment of the requirements.
- A software called Fecher uses TOSCA for the development of data base and application migration projects.

Limitations of TOSCA

TOSCA has two major limitations when compared with the other software test automation tools:

Ø  Using it one cannot perform any load testing and stress testing.

Ø  It hasn’t got any active X components.

Below mentioned extensions are provided with TOSCA:

Ø  Requirements: This extension lets the requirements to be imported, edited, exported and administrated the risk associated with the requirements can be weighted. These requirements are then linked to the tests after they have been designed.

Ø  Test case – design workbench: This extension defines the tests cases that are required for providing coverage to specific test objects on the basis of the requirements. The test cases are then generated by employing all the combinations in the following ways:

1.    Pairwise

2.    Orthogonal array

3.    Linear expansion

Ø  Reporting: This extension lets you collect, analyze and present the test results. Either crystal reports can be used for creating the test reports or they can be exported as an XML or PDF file.

Ø  TOSCA easy entrance: This extension lets you create the entities that can be reused via drag and drop feature.

Ø  User management: This extension lets you integrate the multiple user concept with check in and out mechanisms as well as versioning.

Ø  Web Access: This extension works for providing remote access.

Ø  SAP solution manager ready: This extension lets you integrate TOSCA with SAP.

Because of its various features TOSCA is so famous among the testers.  A total of 300 customers have been recorded worldwide. The software is being used in numerous tasks such as:

1. Banks
2. Insurance
3. Telecommunication
4. Industrial companies and so on.

It makes use of third generation model that uses plain English for the creation of tests.  

List out the advantages and limitations of Silk Test?

Silk test over the years has always been successful in delivering the test automation and that too in an agile development. 

It is considered by most of us that the quality management is just a discrete discipline when it comes to the agile projects, which is wrong. The fact is that the quality management forms an integral part of the code production process in agile projects. 

The rate of flexibility and change associated with the development of agile projects is increasing day by day and thus it is required that the testing should be made automated as and when and as much as possible. 

The traditional tools for test automation and management have very less capability for accommodating the required changes that are made to skills, processes, responsibility, and attitude and so on. 

Therefore, the whole software world is now shifting to the agile management practices. 

- Agile development goals at delivering the code at the end of the sprints which is ready for the production process. 

- There is no other go for the agile development projects except to undergo a rigorous testing routine in each and every sprint and to automate the testing. 

- If it is not done, the agile projects are sure to fall short of quality. 

- With every iteration a customer value is delivered by the agile project. 

- More testing is permitted in test automation process. 

- This also aids in cutting down the costs of the software since the time lag between the introduction and identification of the defect is slashed. 

- There is a need to regularly check about the changes which lead to development of frequent builds involving the test automation runs. 

- The earlier the test automation runs are run the sooner the defects are identified. 

- Another advantage of silk test is that it supports continuous test automation. 

- Test automation results are what is demanded by the agile teams and that too on a per build basis. 

- Silk test makes sure about this and delivers the UI automation at the fastest play back speed possible. 

- The play back speed offered by the silk test is the fastest that is available in the current market. 

- This in turn has another advantage which is that it reduces the duration of testing which helps in submitting timely test results as required by the agile teams. 

- The saved time thus can be utilized for further testing activities. 

- Agile teams exhibit a strong and flexible collaboration among the testers and developers and thus the test-ability of the applications can be further improved up on. 

- Here, we should not miss out mentioning that the tool which provides the strongest support for custom UI properties in the industry is none other than the silk test automation tool. 

- Stable and reliable identifiers are required for the UI controls and this is also catered by the silk test automation tool. 

- Silk test is quite different from the other tools in the sense that it does not rely on a small subset of properties for identifying the objects. 

- Silk test provides very detailed test results thus minimizing the efforts that you will have to spend on the analyzation of the test failures. 

- The test failures related to the issues of test script synchronization are minimized by the reliable test execution of the silk test.

Limitations of SilkTest

1. Recognition of some objects in some page is not possible due to some technical reasons.
2. Some window frames may not be recognized.
3. Frequent change in tag value is observed.
4. Difficulty in activating some window is experienced.
5. In some of the web applications and web pages the links are taken as simple text. 

What are advantages of WinRunner over other market tools silk, robot etc.?

Winrunner has got many competitors in market these days. Every day some new software testing tool is being introduced that is giving competition to the winrunner in one or the other way. 

The below mentioned are two such software testing tools:

     1.   Silk test automation tool

     2.   Robot testing frame work

In this article we shall discuss about all these three software testing tools i.e., the winrunner, silk and robot and discuss what advantages winrunner has got over these other two emerging software testing tools in the market.

About Silk Test Automation Tool

First, we shall discuss about the silk test automation tool. 

- The silk testing tool is promising a bright future as the software testing industry is moving towards a hi - tech end. 

- Till now silk test automation tool has proved to be good with many platforms and test management tools and there is an insight that it may become much more powerful in the coming days. 

- The silk test tool facilitates the automated regression testing and functional testing for the enterprise applications. 

- The original developer of the silk test tool was the Segue software which was later taken under the micro focus international in the year of 2009.

- Silk test automation tool has got many clients to offer unlike the winrunner which can support a few platforms only. 

- The silk test tool has got two very important features as mentioned below:

1. Silk test host: responsible for the storing all the source script files
2. Silk test agent: responsible for the translation of the script commands in to the commands of GUI or we can say user actions.

About Robot Framework

Now let us see what robot frame work is. 

- This testing frame work is quite a generic one and has proved to be quite useful in the test automation process. 

- The robot frame work provides a very useful and efficient testing frame work for the following:

1. Acceptance testing
2. Acceptance test driven development or ATDD

- It is very easy to use tabular test data syntax and this is what makes it quite popular among the testers. 

- This frame work is known to make use of the key word driven testing approach. 

- Its capabilities are extendible i.e., they can be extended using the test libraries which were implemented either with java or with python. 

- It also provides the users with the facility of creating new key words of their convenience with the help of the same syntax that is used in the creation of the test cases. 

- It has following features:

1. Creation of test cases in a uniform way through the easy to use syntax.
2. Data driven approach
3. Behaviour driven approach
4. Key word driven approach
5. Reads HTML format
6. Modular architecture
7. Has a simple library API
8. XML based outputs and command line interface
9. Remote library interface
10. Built in support for variables
11. Tagging facility

Advantages of WinRunner over Silk Test and Robot

Though both of these software testing tools are quite advanced, there are certain places where they lag behind when compared with winrunner. 

- The winrunner takes less time as compared to the silk test tool and robot frame work. 

- The tediousness is reduced in the winrunner but not in silk test tool.

- The winrunner requires less investment in human resources contrary to the case of the silk test tool and robot test frame work.

- Silk test tool and robot frame work actually help in creating, organizing, managing and executing the test cases but they offer less help when it comes to rooting out serious bugs whereas the winrunner lays down a considerable focus in this regard. 

What are all the Limitations & Advantages of WinRunner?

Winrunner is one of the most famous load testing tools available today which operate at the level of graphical user interface. Recording and playing back the user actions has become such an easy task with the help of this winrunner software package.

Advantages of WinRunner

The Winrunner was initially a creation of the mercury interactive but later was taken under the supervision of HP (Hewett Packard). 

- With winrunner, the quick creation of the sophisticated automated tests has been made possible. 

- With the aid of winrunner you have the provision of automating the whole software testing process right from the test development to the execution part. - The tests that we develop or create using the winrunner are not only automated but they are also by far adaptable as well as reusable.

- The test scripts that they consist prove to be quite challenging to the software system or application which is under testing. 

- The winrunner also provides you with the convenience of running all the tests you created in an overnight just before the release date of your software product. 

- Such an overnight test run helps you to detect any last moment defects and also ensures that your software product is of superior quality. 

- Testing with winrunner reduces the following problems dramatically:

1. Reduces time consumption and tediousness.
2. Reduces the amount of investment in human resources.
3. Roots out most of the serious bugs.

- Winrunner is a functional testing tool that was designed with the aim of solving quite a large number of problems and it does assists the process of software testing in quite a realistic manner.

- With winrunner you get an opportunity for testing your software systems and applications on quite a large scale or we can say company wide scale. 

- The user functions are verified as well as recorded in an automated way which makes sure the proper and cooperative working of the business processes. 

- Another thing is that in winrunner no programming is required to increase the flexibility and power of the tests. 

- The spund functionality in winrunner is assured with the help of multiple verification types. 

- The integrity of the back end data base is also verified. 

- All the attributes if the application objects are stored and verified. 

- Winrunner is a single application that can test multiple environments. 

- With winrunner, the automatic identification of the discrepancies present in the data is possible.

Limitations of WinRunner

- Winrunner because of its limitations has now been superseded by the HP quick test pro. 

- The winrunner makes use of the source of the program to create test cases and moreover the coding of the test cases is done in test script language (TSL) which is a proprietary language.

- One of the disadvantages of the TSL is that very few resources are available for TSL programming.

- The testers need immense training to be able to implement winrunner properly. 

- Another disadvantage is the GUI map, which can be many a time quite difficult to understand as well as implement. 

The winrunner does not extends support for the following applications:

1. Few web based applications
2. NET applications as well.
3. XML
4. Multimedia applications
5. Sap apps
6. Oracle apps

However many of the above discussed limitations are present only in the older versions of the winrunner and can be eliminated by going for the latest version of the winrunner (8.0+) which does supports all the web applications and .NET add- in is also available in  that. 

However, the QTP proves to be more convenient when it comes to writing the scripts and object values.

Where you find that you can't use WinRunner for automation?

Winrunner through the time and tide has proved to be quite a useful functional testing tool. This tool developed by HP has proved to be outstanding when it comes to testing of the automated functional graphical user interfaces. 

With the aid of this wonderful testing tool the user interactions that took place on the graphical user interfaces of the software systems or applications can be successfully recorded and playedback. 

Winrunner is a complete functional test suite and can even be extended to work with the QTP (quick test pro). Through the years this functional test suite has been continuously providing its support to the enterprises for quality assurance. 

Out of all its functions three are considered to be the most important ones and have been mentioned below:

1. Captures the user interactions taking place on the GUI of the application software.

2.  Verifies the captured user interactions.

3.  Automatically replays all the recorded user interactions.

   All the above three functions ensure that the defects are identified and it is ensured that all the business processes are being carried out well. The Winrunner introduced the use of TSL in parameterization and customization of the input supplied by the user. 

    

    Even though there are many benefits of the winrunner, it does suffer from some limitations. One of those limitations is that the winrunner cannot be used everywhere for automation. This is the topic of discussion of this article that where and all the winrunner can’t be used for automation. 

   1.Testers have figured out a number of uses for the winrunner, however, its primary role will always be to act as a testing tool for functional testing of the software systems and applications.

    2. In many conditions the winrunner is often used for load testing by some of the developers. 

   3. What makes the winrunner so powerful is its realization of the real world user. 

   4. Using winrunner in cooperation with the loadrunner achieves even better result. All these reasons have made the winrunner quite important software in the market.

  Winrunner can’t be used for automation in three situations as mentioned below:

     1.The size of the project is quite small i.e., it is a small scale project.

    2.The project calls for the need of manual intervention and cannot do without  it.

     3.The project is quite complex and exhibits a different behavior every time.

    There are certain instances when it has been observed that the winrunner does not even take the protocol layer in to consideration.

    But however, in such instances it has recorded the user interactions and played them. The winrunner program has been coded in such a way that it appears as if the various commands are being carried out by a real human user. 

   

   For the winrunner to function properly, it is needed that it gains full control over the computer system. Once it gains control over the system, it is ready to record and play back the user events. This is the reason why a load test cannot be initiated whenever the generation of load is required. 

  

    For the winrunner to simulate n number of users you need to have n number of computers and install winrunner software on all of them. 

   For the winrunner to record the response time of the user it is necessary that it is implemented within a load test since it has to deal with the processing that will take place in the hardware components of the computer system.

What are all the different platforms where WinRunner can be used?

Winrunner and winquick are two of the most powerful functional testing tools ever developed. These two software packages actually are a complete functional test suite.

Winrunner is the older testing tool and had been quite popular among the software testers. Winquick is a new addition to the family of such tools. 

It was because of some of the cons of the winrunner that the HP introduced another such functional testing tool that would overcome the limitations of the winrunner and thus winquick came in to the scenario. 

This limitation was that the winrunner was not compatible with every platform that we have today. 

In this article we shall discuss more about this and what all are the platforms that are supported by the winrunner. Intially people invest too much of time, money and infrastructure in their winrunner code and eventually what happens is that towards the end they find that they have to migrate to some much better tool because the platform on which they are building their software system or application is un supported by the winrunner.

The following are the platforms on which the winrunner did not function well:

1. .NET
2. XML
3. Multimedia
4. Mozilla fire fox

Rest on all the platforms the winrunner seems to be working well.

Its successive counterpart the QTP seems to have a cutting edge over all these limitations of the winrunner. It comes with many advance features like:

1. Active screen technology
2. Smart identification
3. Uniform parameterization and so on.
   
   

For the organizations which are building applications upon the above mentioned platforms find Quick test pro (QTP) quite helpful then winrunner. 

- For the organizations that already made a huge substantial investment in the winrunner platform, the introduction of the QTP came as a dilemma. 

- It is a tough thing for them to maintain and manage the code and resources in both the platforms. 

- This shows that even with the years of investment in developing a much better winrunner do not hold good in QTP.

- One of the ways that are being sought for overcoming this problem is the migration of the existing winrunner suite in to QTP and at the same time consolidating the base code. 

- But this way also has got a problem which is that the manual migration proves to be quite cumbersome. 

- This problem arises because of the technical and architectural difference between the QTP and winrunner. 

- Moreover, the time consumption in manual migration is more and generates quite a large number of errors.

- Such errors can make the whole migration quite cumbersome and this will cause disruption in the regular business. 

- There is a solution for this problem also and is known as winQuick. 

- Winquick provides an automated migration solution. 

- For platforms like linux and unix a separate version of winrunner was created called the Xrunner.

- But now we guess the use of this Xrunner is not known.

The below mentioned platforms are supported by the version 7.0 of the winrunner:

1. Windows 95
2. Windows 98
3. Windows NT
4. Windows 2000

The automated testing of the graphical user interfaces is looking up to a new scenario where a majority of the software systems and applications are being based up on web and the complex and sophisticated graphical user interfaces have become their point of operation. 

The winrunner has proved to be a pioneering tool that has been widely accepted by many for GUI testing. Contrary to the winrunner, the QTP follows the modern conventions of the object oriented programming. However the winrunner system has been declared retired since 2011.

What are limitations and advantages of installation testing?

Imagine you have developed your software system or application properly and very carefully and it addresses all the requirements of your client. But what if your client tries to install your software product and it fails terribly? 

It means the installer of your software system or application was developed properly and was not tested also. Now imaging what effect will it have on your reputation in the eyes of your client? You will loose his confidence! Won’t you? 

The only way to escape such a horrible situation is that you carry out installation testing on the installer of your software product and see that it works with all the systems and with different configurations. Therefore the installation testing becomes very important since installation is the first thing with which the user interacts in a software application.

Limitations of Installation Testing

- The biggest limitation of the installation is the time factor since installation testing consumes a lot of time.

- To overcome this limitation one needs to automate the whole installation testing process.  

- Even a single test case of the installation testing takes at the minimum up to 2 hours.

Now you can imagine how much time it will take if you will have to test the installer of a big software system or application. 

- However, the time consumed for each test case also depends on whether the application is subjected to one of the following options:

1. Upgrading of installation and un- installation process.
2. Partial installation and un- installation process.
3. Full installation and un- installation process.

- The installation testing requires that both the software testing engineer and the configuration manager work in collaboration with each other.

- During installation, the software system or application is placed in to a pre- production environment or testing environment which may corrupt the code in some of the cases.

- From the testing environment there are 2 certainties as mentioned below:

1. The code may progress in to production process or
2. The code may not progress in to the production process.

- Since the code may get corrupted from other past as well as future releases, all these process need to be performed outside the software development environment which further aggravates the difficulty of the installation testing.

- There is just one simple approach to installation testing which involves running the install program commonly known as “package software”. 

- This package software makes use of a set up program which in some cases act as a multi- configuration wrapper and in other cases it does not! 

- Therefore, in the cases in which the set up program does not act as multi configuration wrapper, the software simultaneously cannot be installed on a variety of systems and configurations which again presents a headache. 

- Furthermore installation testing is limited to certain aspects regarding installation:

1. Dependency of the software to be installed on other software and patches.
2. Over installing of a new version over the older one.

Advantages of Installation Testing

- As for the advantages of the installation testing are concerned, the importance of the installation testing is the biggest advantage.
- Installation process is the first thing with which the user interacts and therefore it needs to be proper and efficient. 
- The installation testing keeps a check on this aspect whether it can be installed on a number of different systems and in different environments.