Tracking platform usage and making decisions based on that

Even in today's data based world, if you are an analytics expert, you can't expect to be totally popular, or that people will welcome you with hands outstretched. There are many aspects of a product development cycle that would benefit from integration with a data analytics cycle - generating the questions, collecting the data, and the extremely important task of generating the output information and conclusions (and a wrong conclusion at this point can have negative implications for the product - putting in effort in wrong or unimportant areas). However, consider the case where there is support for using analytics and there are resources dedicated for ensuring that requisite changes to the product can be made (based on the analytics output).
One major area where the team needs to gather information is on the area of platform support. Platform could mean the Operating System (MacOS, Windows, others), Versions (Windows XP, Windows 7/8, etc) as well as browsers support (versions of Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, etc). These can make a lot of different in terms of the amount of effort required for product development. For example, on different versions of Windows, the versions of systems files are different and it is a pain to support these different versions. There can be small changes to the functionality of the system based on these files, and in many cases, the product installer would actually detect the Windows version and install the required versions of these systems files. If you could find out that the number of people using these different versions, and find out that one of these versions is being used by a small number of consumers, then the decision to drop that particular operating system may be taken.
So, this is one of the areas in which analytics can work. The simplest way to do that is to make it part of the functionality of the product, where the product, on the user's computer, dials home and provides information such as the platform on which the product has been installed. Once this kind of data has been collected and a proper analysis is done, then the product team can look at this information and factor that into the feature list for the next version of the product. The team will need to decide on the time period for which the data would be captured, and also some of the benchmarks which will decide whether data from the analytics effort needed to be used for making decision (for example, the data seems to be such that people feel that the data is widely different from public perception).
However, this is also dependent on how much the team can depend on this data and the analysis; after all, even a small variation during the analysis can result in information that has levels of inaccuracies in it. But, it is necessary that the team spends effort in the analytics effort, since the payoff from using accurate data analysis and interpretation is very high.

What is Portability Testing?

- Portability Testing is the testing of a software/component/application to determine the ease with which it can be moved from one machine platform to another. 

- In other words, it’s a process to verify the extent to which that software implementation will be processed the same way by different processors as the one it was developed on.  

- It can also be understood as amount of work done or efforts made in order to move software from one environment to another without making any changes or modifications to the source code but in real world this is seldom possible.

- For example, moving a computer application from Windows XP environment to Windows 7 environment, thereby measuring the efforts and time required to make the move and hence determining whether it is re usable with ease or not.

- Portability testing is also considered to be one of the sub parts of System testing as this covers the complete testing of software and also it’s re-usability over different computer environments that include different Operating systems, web browsers.

What needs to be done before Portability testing is performed (pre requisites/pre conditions)? 

1.   Keep in mind portability requirements before designing and coding of software.

2.   Unit and Integration Testing must have been performed.

3.   Test environment has been set up.

Objectives of Portability Testing

1. To validate the system partially i.e. to determine if the system under consideration fulfills the portability requirements and can be ported to environments with different :-

a). RAM and disk space

b). Processor and Processor speed

c). Screen resolution

d). Operating system and its version in use.

e). Browser and its version in use.

To ensure that the look and feel of the web pages is similar and functional in the various browser types and their versions.

2.   To identify the causes of failures regarding the portability requirements, this in turn helps in identifying the flaws that were not found during unit and integration testing.

3.   The failures must be reported to the development teams so that the associated flaws can be fixed.

4.   To determine the potential or extent to which the software is ready for launch.

5.   Help in providing project status metrics (e.g., percentage of use case paths that were successfully tested).

6.   To provide input to the defect trend analysis effort.

What is Testing Anywhere software product? What are its uses?

Testing anywhere software product was developed by the Automation Anywhere Inc. based in San Jose. This is another software in the category of test automation tools. This software has proven to be a boon for the software testers and developers who have to test the web sites, applications, GUI front-ends, objects and controls. The product has got many uses from recording to the execution of the test cases. It is used for the following major purposes:

1. Recording of the tests
2. Debugging them
3. Scheduling their execution
4. Executing the tests

The above mentioned operations can be carried out for a number of application types such as:

1. Java
2. Silverlight
3. Mainframe
4. C++
5. .NET and so on.

Testing anywhere product provides option for automating the test case creation. Testing anywhere offers you 5 different methods for creating the test cases namely:

1. Web recording
2. Object recording
3. Image recognition
4. Smart recording and
5. Editor

- The test cases thus created using any of the above methods can be later recorded, edited, saved and can also be enhanced. 

- The editor is used for editing the test cases. 

- People who don’t have programming skills can use the wizard for creating and editing the test cases. 

- Testing anywhere software lets you create files with .exe extension i.e., the executable files which later can be deployed by the software testers on remote machines. 

- The creation of a high level IT and business processes is the responsibility of the workflow manager. 

- Further, workflow manager only takes care of the ability by virtue of which these processes are managed. 

- It supports a number of platforms:

1. Microsoft windows 7 (both 32 and 64 bit)
2. Microsoft windows vista (both 32 and 64 bit)
3. Microsoft windows XP (both 32 and 64 bit and along with service pack 2)
4. Microsoft windows server 2008 R2
5. Microsoft windows server 2003

- Testing anywhere supports the following kinds of testing:

1. Integration testing
2. Compatibility testing
3. Performance testing
4. GUI testing
5. System testing
6. Java application testing
7. Automated flex testing
8. Silverlight application testing
9. Mainframe application testing
10. WPF testing
11. Third party .NET supported testing
12. Automated software testing
13. Automated web testing
14. Regression testing
15. Distributed testing
16. Functional testing
17. Black box testing
18. Acceptance testing
19. Unit testing
20. Keyword driven testing
21. Data driven testing
22. Smoke testing

- The product has been named because of the facility that it provides for running the tests on any remote machine present in the network. 

- Further, it reduces the testing cost by a huge margin since it cut down the money being spend up on the software licenses, resources, and training and time of course.

- Testing anywhere provides you a SMART recorder for creating new tests.

Explain Robot Framework?

The Robot Framework was developed as generic test automation framework for two major tasks namely:

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

- It makes use of the keyword driven testing approach for achieving the above mentioned two tasks. 

- It has got a very simple and unique tabular test data syntax that is quite easy to follow and this is what that makes robot framework so easy to be used. 

- All this makes the robot framework popular among the testers.

- Test libraries that can be implemented through either java or python can be used for extending the capabilities of the frame work. 

- The users have the choice of creating new keywords from the existing ones. 

- This can be done using the same syntax that is available for the creation of the test cases. 

- Robot framework is actually an open source software. 

- The license it possesses is the Apache license 2.0.

- The Nokia Siemens Networks supports the development of this framework and also owns its copyrights. 

Features of Robot Framework

The robot test automation framework is abundant of features. Its features are:

1. Its tabular syntax is easy to use and can be used for the creation of the test cases in a way that is uniform.
2. Robot framework can work up on three approaches namely:

- Keyword driven testing approach

- Behavior driven development approach or BDD

- Data driven testing approach or DDT.

3. It provides the facility for the creation of higher level keywords that are reusable for the already existing keywords.
4. The reports and logs it generates are quite easy to follow and are based up on HTML.
5. This test automation framework does not depend up on any platform or application.
6. The architecture of the frame work is quite modular in nature that helps in supporting the creation of the tests for even the software systems and applications that possess a number of interfaces all different from one another.
7. It comes with a library API that is quite simple and can be further used for the creation of other test libraries that can be customized.
8. The XML based outputs that the framework provides allow for integrating itself in to the build infrastructure that already exists. These are called continuous integration systems.
9. It also provides a command line interface for the same purpose as that of the XML based outputs.
10. It supports selenium tool for the following things:

Ø  Web testing

Ø  Java GUI testing

Ø  telnet

Ø  running processes

Ø  SSH and so on.

11. The framework comes with a remote library interface, thus enabling the implementation of the test libraries in any desired programming language and distributed testing.
12. The tagging feature provides helps in categorizing the tests and selecting them accordingly for the execution.
13. For variables, it comes with a special built – in support for regulating testing in different environments.

- Test cases can be written either in HTML or in plain text.

- Also, any editor can be used for editing the test cases. 

- The robot test automation framework comes with a graphical development tool called the RIDE or robot IDE. 

- The tool has got a number of features specific to the framework such as syntax highlighting, code completion and so on. 

- Selenium library is an extension to the robot test automation frame work and similarly there are a number of others. 

- However, there are some other languages that can be used for implementing the libraries such as perl, PHP, java script and so on. 

- However, these languages can be used only through a remote library interface.

Explain Watir - Web Application Testing in Ruby?

Watir stands for web application testing in Ruby and was developed as an open source that would provide Ruby libraries by Paul Rogers and Bret Pettichord. The software is licensed under BSD and contains all ruby libraries that would be required for the automation of the web browsers. The software is known to drive a number of web browsers namely:

1. Internet explorer
2. Mozilla firefox
3. Chrome
4. Opera
5. Safari

The software has been made available especially for ruby as the ruby gems. Watir is comprised of several smaller projects which define its functionality:

1.Watir – Classic: Ruby has got built – in OLE capabilities that can be used by watir classic for driving the IE pro grammatically. The way of operation of watir classic is different than that of the other HTTP based testing tools.

2.Watirspec: This one is watir’s executable specification.

3.Watir–web driver: The reference implementation of the web-driver specification is the selenium 2.0. the roots of the watir web driver can be traced to the HTML specification.

This automated test tool uses Ruby as the scripting language for driving the above mentioned web browsers. You can call it a tool kit for developing effective automated tests and run them against the browsers. Watir can be used for driving the web applications which can be looked up as HTML pages while browsing. 

However, Watir is not known to work with the following:

1. Active X plug – in components
2. Java applets
3. Macromedia flash and other plug – in applications.

Before you use Watir for your application you need to determine whether it will work for it or not. To do so just right click on the object and check for the view source menu. If the HTML source for the object is available it can be well automated using watir otherwise not. There are certain prerequisites for using Watir which are that you need to have knowledge about the following:

1. HTML
2. Programming basics including simple control structures.
3. Ruby: this is required if you put watir to a really good use.

Watir works well for all the windows platforms including Windows 2000, server 2003, XP and vista and it can be run on versions 6 and 7 of internet explorer. Using ruby 1.8.5 – 24 or 1.8.6 – 26 is recommended. For installing ruby and watir you need to log on as the administrator. 

There are two ways for installing Watir:

1. From behind a proxy and
2. From behind a firewall

The tests written using Watir are quite easy to read as well as maintain and exhibit simplicity and flexibility. The way Watir drives the web browsers is the same as done by people. It performs clicking operations such as clicking on links and buttons, forms filling operations and so on. Results are also checked by Watir. 

Ruby, like other programming languages provides your application with the ability to do the following:

1. To connect to data bases
2. To read from spreadsheets and data files
3. To export the XML files
4. To restructure your code so that it can be converted in to a reusable library.

Watir is free open source tool and therefore no money expenditure in using it. Ruby is a full featured modern programming language which lets Watir support all the web applications no matter by what technology it has been developed. Watir provides support to a number of browsers on different platforms. Though the tool is quite powerful it is extremely simple and easy to use. For using Watir it is recommended that you install the IE developer tool bar. 

Explain Eggplant (GUI testing tool)? What is the approach behind Eggplant?

- Eggplant is an automation testing tool developed exclusively for carrying out black box approach based GUI testing. 

- This test automation tool came in to market in the year of 2002 and the developer was the Redstone Software. 

- Later, in the year of 2008, TestPlant – a UK based company took Redstone software in it’s under. 

- Basic technology used here is the image matching technology. 

- This is seen as quite contrary to examining the application under test (AUT) at the object level. 

- This helps in automation of the whole system under test (SUT) rather than focusing up on the application – specific solution.

- This implies another thing which is that the system on which the AUT runs and the technology used for developing the AUT do not matter at all. 

- The eggplant operates up on two computer systems. 

- The purpose of these two systems can be defined as follows:

1. Controller machine: The purpose of this computer system is to author the scripts and execute them accordingly
2. SUT or system under test: The purpose of this computer system is to run the VNC server.

- A connection is established between the eggplant and the VNC server through a built in viewer that operates on the internet protocol suite. 

- Any system that has a dedicated VNC server can be used as the System under test. 

- Earlier, the controller environment IDE was available only for Mac but now it is available for various platforms including linux and windows.

- The controller machine authors the scripts via sense talk that is a proprietary scripting language. 

- This language is quite similar to English and therefore too easy to use. 

- This proprietary language is used along with the guided record mode. 

- By guided record mode, we mean that the navigation through the system and the verification of the test steps is taught to the eggplant by the script-er.

-  In the year of 2011, an announcement to launch a more advanced version of the then successful eggplant was made by the TestPlant. 

- This new version saw the integration of the optical character recognition (OCR) with the eggplant and was supported by ABBY. 

- It could be run in compatibility with the linux, windows and Mac versions of the eggplant. - In the same another eggplant product was launched that sought to improve test environments provided by the eggplant and was called the eggplant manager. 

- The characteristic features of the eggplant that make it so distinct from the other GUI test automation tools:

1. Guided record mode
2. Debugging
3. Code completion
4. Can be integrated with the other quality management software
5. Execution only mode

- Technology behind the eggplant is image recognition algorithms.

- These algorithms let view the screen of the system under test. 

- The US patent was secured by the eggplant to be ability to monitor the GUI on a second computer screen from the previous computer screen. 

- This made it possible to run the tool without requiring any manual intervention. 

- With this, the product came in to the eyes of the UK trade and investment, especially the DSA (defense and security arm).

- Any operating system, browser or technology is fit for running the eggplant.

What are features of QF – Test?

Qf – test is abundant with features. The QF–test was made available in the market in the year of 2001 and since then it has gained over 600 customers worldwide in around 50 countries.  

Features of QF–test

- It is has been counted as the most professional tool for carrying out regression and functional testing on the web applications. 

- The foundation of the tool is also well established and it has got a high efficiency rating by the users. 

- The tool has been a breakthrough in the field of automated testing of the java based web applications that have a GUI or graphical user interface.

- The reusable tests and the modular tests are combined with the user– friendly handling as well as a price that is competitive enough which in turn yields a high ROI or return of investment. 

- Also, there have been no doubts regarding its power in automated testing  and cross platform testing. 

- In addition to these, it is quite robust in nature which makes it suitable for the cross – browser testing. 

- Without much hard work one can easily create automated load tests and regression tests. 

- The documentation of the tests and their reports can be configured very easily. 

- QF – test has made the recognition of the complex dynamic objects very reliable and quick.

- It supports all the unix systems as well as the windows platforms. 

- Swing, Internet explorer, Mozilla firefox and SWT are also supported. 

- The interface of the QF – test is quite user friendly and the documentation is quite comprehensive. 

- The tool is perfectly supported by the authors directly and quickly.

- The tool comes with an user interface that is quite intuitive in nature and the capture and playback feature is excellent. 

- The documentation of QF–test is quite extensive and has got both manual and tutorial. 

- The evaluation for the reports is done free of cost.

Currently 3 GUI technologies are supported by the qf – test namely:

1. Swing
2. SWT and
3. Web

- These three technologies can be combined in various combinations. 

- Certain features why most of the people prefer QF–test are:

1. Clear concept used.
2. Logical
3. Comprehensiveness
4. Ease of use
5. Good price
6. Good customer care
7. A product of Germany

- QF–test has proved to be a great tool for the creation and maintenance of the swing tests. 

- The QF–test has provided timely support to the IT industry.

- The testing time is greatly reduced such as to 3 hours from 21 hours. 

- It supports a number of technologies for testing:

1. Swing: webstart, applets, captain casa, ULC
2. SWT
3. Eclipse’s standard widget tool kit inclusive of the rich client platforms or RCP and plug – ins.
4. Web GUIs: AJAX (ExtGWT, RAP, Richfaces, Qooxdoo, GWT and so on.), web 2.0 and so on.

- The java version required for the qf – test is version 1.5 or higher than that. Platforms supported are:

1. Windows: windows 7, XP, vista, 2000, server 2008 and 2003.
2. Linux platforms
3. Solaris
4. AIX
5. HP – UX
6. Mac OS – X

- Browsers supported are:

1. 32 and 64 bits JDKs: IBM, excelsior JET etc.
2. SWT version 3.3 and plus

Explain QF-Test?

The QFtestJUI has been succeeded by the QF – test and was made available in the year of 2001. 

About QF-Test

- QF test was developed by the QFS or quality first software.

- It is actually a software tool for cross platform testing and automation of the GUI tests. 

- QF – test is limited to the following:

1. Java
2. Swing
3. SWT
4. Eclipse plug – in
5. RCP applications
6. Java applets
7. Java web start
8. ULC
9. Cross browser test automation

- All of the above are applications for dynamic as well as static web based applications such as HTML, GWT, Qooxdoo, Vaadin, rich faces and so on. 

- QF – test also provides assistance with the load testing and regression testing of the web applications and supports all the UNIX systems and windows platforms.

- The first commercial use was in the field of quality assurance and is extensively used by the software testers. 

- QF–test is one of the most popular among the capture and playback tools and scripting tools. 

- It has been developed so that the testers and QA people find it very easy to use. 

- The product is quite reliable and robust and also has the ability to support system testing. 

- The QF–test is estimated to have around 600 customers all over the world. 

- It is the professional java and web applications testing tool and has a great efficiency in coping with the automated testing. 

- Modular as well as reusable tests are supported well by the QF–test in various combinations. 

- The product offers a high ROI i.e., return of investment because of its user – friendly GUI and affordable price. 

- Cross browser testing is supported by QF–test for Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer and both on the Unix and Windows platforms. 

- The dynamic UI components that have very high complexity can also be reliably recognized by the QF–test. 

- The tests developed with QF–test have the ability to tolerate any GUI changes and so they do not require any high maintenance. 

- QF–test has various in–built modularization and sequential control mechanisms that allow the testers to create sophisticated tests. 

- The test documentation and the reports produced by the QF–test are highly configurable. 

- The tool has been comprehensively documented and provides the perfect support. 

- Because of its intuitive user interface, both the testers and the software developers find it very easy to use it.

- The documentation of the tool is so extensive and consists of various things such as:

1. Manual
2. Tutorial
3. Mailing list
4. Archive and so on.

- One can obtain training regarding the QF–test on the OFS web site as webinar. 

- The modularization mechanism of the QF–test enables the testers to create large test suites in an arrangement that is concise. 

- There are some users who require a more advanced control over the application.

- The tool provides access to internal structures of the program for them via scripting languages such as java and jython and not to forget groovy. 

- Another feature called the batch mode allows a tester to run a group of tests unattended and generating reports in a number of formats such as HTML, XML and JUnit. 

- This lets the tool to be integrated in to various frame works such as maven, Jenkins and so on. 

What are benefits of LabVIEW(Laboratory virtual instrumentation engineering workbench)?

Laboratory virtual instrumentation engineering workbench (or labview as it is commonly known) is a platform developed for designing systems and presents a development environment.

Benefits of LabView

1. Interfacing

- The extensive support that labview provides for access to instrumentation hardware is one of the key benefits of it. 

- In addition to the drivers, a number of abstraction layers are available for inclusion for a variety of buses as well as instruments. 

- These drivers and abstraction layers are presented as the graphical nodes. 

- A standard interface is provided by the abstraction layers so that communication with the other hardware devices could be established. 

- A lot of program development time is saved by the driver interfaces that are provided. 

- That is why people having limited coding experience of writing the programs can even develop programs and easily deploy the test solutions in a time less than what it might take with the conventional programming systems. 

- DAQmxBase is a brand new driver topology.

- It comprises mostly of the G – coded components having a few register calls via national instrument measurement hardware driver development kit (DDR) functions.

- It is known to provide hardware access that is independent of the platform. 

- This access is to instrumentation devices and a number of other data acquisition devices. 

- This new driver is available for the following platforms:

a)    Windows

b)    Mac os x

c)    Linux

- An interface for .net frame work applications is also provided by the labview using    which one can use XML files and data bases in one’s automation projects.

2. Code Compilation

- When it comes to performance, labview is at its best as it provides you even a compiler that can produce a native code for platform level of CPU. 

- Firstly, the graphical code is converted in to machine executable code by passing it through an interpreter and compiler.

- The syntax of the labview is to enforced during the code editing process only and then it is compiled in to machine level code whenever execution command is given. 

- The executable code is executed by the run time engine of labview which already has some pre-compiled code that can be used to perform usual tasks that have been already defined by the G – language. 

- Also, the compile time is reduced by the run time engine. 

- In addition to this it also offers you a consistent interface that can be used for a number of following:

a)    Operating systems

b)    Graphic systems

c)    Hardware components and so on.

- The code is made portable across the platform because of the run – time environment. 

- Labview code compiles slower than the equivalent code in C and this difference gets larger with the program optimization.

3. Large Libraries

- A large number of libraries with a large number of functions such as those mentioned below are provided with the labview package:

a)    Functions for data acquisition

b)    Signal generation

c)    Mathematics

d)    Statistics

e)    Signal analysis

f)     Signal conditioning and so on.

- The package also has a number of graphical interface elements. 

- The package has numerous advanced mathematics blocks which can carry out functions such as filters, integration and so on.

- Many other specialized capabilities that are associated with the data that has been captured with the help of hardware sensors. 

- In addition to all this, labview comes with mathscript which is nothing but a text based programming component having some additional functionality such as for mathematics, analysis, signal processing and so on. 

- This component and graphical programming can be integrated together via the script nodes and using a syntax compatible enough with MATLAB.

4. Code re use

5. Parallel programming

6. Ecosystem

7. User community