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November 2002
In This Issue:
Welcome
Announcing TestTrack Pro 5.0
Surround SCM 1.1 Now Shipping
QA Wizard 1.6 - Automated Testing for E-Business Applications
Migrating from Visual SourceSafe to Surround SCM
The Importance of Branching Models in SCM - Sept 2002 IEEE
TestTrack Pro is a Game Developer Magazine Frontline Finalist
Welcome International Partners
Spotlight: Accessing Surround SCM from Delphi and C++ Builder
- EPocalipse Software
New Knowledgebase Articles
Contact Us

Welcome
Welcome to the November 2002 Seapine Software newsletter.
As this issue sails over the Internet, we are putting the finishing touches
on TestTrack Pro 5.0 (with an entirely new reporting engine, automatic
defect routing, and more), Surround SCM 1.1 was just released with even
more power and higher performance, and the development of QA Wizard 2.0
for Web, Windows, and Java apps is progressing.
A lot is happening at Seapine, including new partnerships,
award nominations, additional product integrations, and new products and
services. Read on to learn more and please keep in touch. Your feedback
is always appreciated.
Sincerely,
Rick Riccetti
President
Email: riccettir@seapine.com
Now on to the good stuff...
Announcing Testtrack Pro 5.0
We are pleased to announce that TestTrack Pro 5.0 will
be available on November 20. TestTrack Pro 5.0 includes the following
significant new features:
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An
XSL-based reporting engine with the ability to produce charts and
graphs for trend and distribution reports, customizable report layouts
(including adding company logos), additional report templates, many
more data and sorting options, and additional export options.
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A powerful new feature, called auto-assignment rules, lets you define
defect routing rules based on changes to a defect’s status and
other criteria. For example, when a defect is created and the “Project”
field contains “XYZ Account,” assign the defect to “Bob
Thomas,” the project leader on the XYZ account.
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New date/time and check box custom field types.
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User-configurable quick link buttons in the Web interface list windows
let you click on an icon to edit a defect, produce a detailed report,
etc.
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The ability to find information by customer, including
searching for customer records using customer-specific criteria, and
the ability to filter defect records based on customer record criteria
(company, beta site).
Other
features include administrative control over user display settings, calendar
controls in the Web interface, and many other small enhancements and bug
fixes.
TestTrack Pro 5.0 is a free upgrade if you have an active
Premium Support subscription or if you have purchased in the 30 days preceding
its release. Please contact your sales
representative to purchase Premium Support.
Surround SCM 1.1 - Now Shipping
Surround
SCM 1.1 is now shipping. The newest version offers a number of enhancements
including file sharing, history reports, and a preview window that provides
greater control when promoting or rebasing files and repositories. Other
Surround SCM 1.1 enhancements include the ability to promote and rebase
individual files, the ability to search for files based on the current
check out status, speed enhancements, third-party IDE support for Visual
Studio .NET and Borland’s Delphi and JBuilder, and a Macintosh GUI
client compatible with Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2).
Like before, Surround SCM includes the following major
features:
- A complete change management solution with native
graphical and command line interfaces for Windows, Solaris, Linux, and
Mac OS X.
- Reliable, scalable, and secure server support on
Windows, Solaris, Linux, and Mac OS X.
- Advanced branching and merging capabilities.
- Seamless integration with TestTrack Pro ensures software
changes are kept in sync with change requests.
- SCC compliant. Integrates with Microsoft's IDEs,
replacing Visual SourceSafe with a faster, more reliable, feature-rich
solution.
Full information about Surround SCM is available at
http://www.seapine.com/surroundscm.html.
QA Wizard 1.6 - reducing
Valuable Testing Time and Costs
If
you develop e-business applications, you need QA
Wizard 1.6 for Web applications. No other automated testing solution
saves you as much time creating and managing test scripts. And, QA Wizard
is backed by a powerful a defect management solution--TestTrack Pro.
Here is what a customer recently shared with us about
his team's QA Wizard experience:
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"We successfully use QA Wizard across four
different product lines to very good effect in cases where we need
to perform repetitive testing actions and to create test data for
other non-gui applications that we deploy. Our products, like most
web applications, are constantly being revised and we need the ability
to write new scripts and to update existing ones on a constant basis;
QA Wizard allows us the flexibility we need in QA, in the turnaround
times which are expected from management. Additionally, the product
has been so intuitive to use that junior engineers can quickly be
up to speed in minutes, designing entire test cases and fully automating
most of the functionality in our simpler products in just a few hours.
I wouldn't trade QA Wizard for any other available product that I'm
aware of at this time." -- Sean Whitcomb, Lead QA Engineer, PCNalert |
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QA Wizard 2.0 for Windows, Java, and Web is well along
in development. The new versions bring the power and ease of use of the
popular Web version to Windows and Java developers. We are on track to
begin testing in December, with widespread availability in January.
Migrating from Visual SourceSafe
to Surround SCM
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Migrating
from SourceSafe to Surround SCM - Surround SCM provides significant
advantages over Visual SourceSafe including flexible branching models,
fast remote access, support for multiple operating systems, a reliable
client/server architecture, and much more. This document explains
the differences between the two products and describes how easy it
is to migrate your data from SourceSafe to Surround SCM. |
The Importance of Branching
Models in SCM
"If you want to improve software quality, you must
first understand your software. What are its pieces? How are they organized
and related to one another? If you do not understand your code base, your
odds of updating it without breaking something are poor." - IEEE
Computer, September 2002
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Surround SCM's advanced design supports many branching
models. This September 2002 IEEE Computer article reprint describes
how the branch-by-purpose model offers better support for parallel
development efforts. Click here to download the article: The
Importance of Branching Models in SCM |
TestTrack Pro is a Game Developer
Magazine Frontline Finalist
The
fifth annual Front Line Awards continue Game Developer's tradition of
honoring excellence and innovation in tools for game development and recognizing
companies like Seapine Software, which are advancing the state of the
art. As games have become more and more sophisticated over the years,
so have the development tools used to make them. The Front Line Awards
recognize those software and hardware companies whose tools enable faster
and more efficient game creation. Every year, the best of the game industry's
development tools mirrors the evolution of the game industry itself. TestTrack
Pro is a finalist for Game Developer Magazine's annual Frontline award.
The winners will be announced in the January 2003 issue of Game Developer
Magazine.
Read
more about how Seapine is helping the game industry deliver high-quality
games
Welcome New International
Partners
Seapine is pleased to announce we have new partners
in the United Kingdom, France, India, Italy, Norway, and Sweden to better
serve our customers in those countries. The partners will be contacting
our customers in their respective countries to introduce themselves and
their services. Feeling left out? Additional partnerships will be announced
shortly in other countries.
Spotlight: Accessing Surround
SCM from Delphi and C++ Builder - EPocalipse Software
Are
you developing software using Borland's Delphi or C++ Builder? EPocalipse
Software (http://www.epocalipse.com/)
specializes in tools and add-ins for Borland's development IDEs.
EPocalipse SourceConneXion provides IDE integration between Surround SCM
and Borland Delphi and C++ Builder. Not currently using Surround SCM?
SourceConneXion also works with SourceOffSite, StarTeam, PVCS, Perforce,
CVS, ClearCase, MKS, QVCS, and CS-RCS, which coincidently are all supported
by TestTrack Pro.
New Knowledgebase Articles
Seapine's knowledgebase is a great place to begin your
search for answers to technical support questions for our products. It
is also a great place to get ideas on how to extend your use of our products
(using ODBC to query TestTrack Pro for example.) The following articles
were added recently:
| Q00107 |
Optimizing
TestTrack Pro Performance in Large-scale Environments
Problem: TestTrack Pro customers with
enterprise environments need to enhance TestTrack Pro's performance
due to the large number of users accessing the databases. |
| Q00106 |
Customizing
TestTrack Pro Web Field Labels
Problem: You customized the word defect, or its variations (Defect/defect,
Defects/defects, Defect(s)/defect(s), but the changes do not appear
in the TestTrack Pro Web interface... |
| Q00105 |
Integrating
CVS with TestTrack Pro
TestTrack Pro integrates with CVS by executing commands to the CVS.exe
program. The CVS.exe program must be run globally because TestTrack
Pro cannot determine where the program is located. To run CVS.exe
globally, either set up a path to CVS.exe in your autoexec file or
copy CVS.exe into your SYSTEM32 directory... |
Contact us
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please send it via email to feedback@seapine.com.
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