November 2005
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In this issue:
Time Magazine is rumored to be considering Hurricane Katrina as its Person of the Year. While it is strange that a hurricane is being considered for this award, we geeks have not forgotten the triumphant victory of the computer winning Man of the Year in 1983.
Hurricane Katrina had a big impact on lives and businesses and, like many companies, we tried to do our part to help those affected. One activity that was successful for us was a company-match fundraiser. As we got down to the wire, one of our development managers issued a contribution challenge that ultimately cost him his hair. It was great to see the company rally around the cause and raise money for the relief effort. The hair may grow back too.
Many companies displaced during the disaster had to rapidly cope with a dispersed workforce. This month's Seapine View includes a story about how one company found the ideal solution in TestTrack Pro and Surround SCM. We also have articles on managing Agile Development using Seapine's tools and improving quality by adding chaos to the testing process. Enjoy the View.
Rick Riccetti
President
Seapine Software, Inc.
rick@seapine.com
Tooling Up For Agile Development
By Allan McNaughton, Principal
Technical Insight, LLC
Many in the software industry see agile development methodologies as the antidote to the process-heavy development practices that are so commonplace today. Success in agile development is measured by the working code produced, not the number of specifications written, models designed, or meetings attended.
While agile practices are a breath of fresh air to developers bogged down in process, agile development does not mean throwing out processes and tools. On the contrary, the methodology requires delicately balancing the need for process and structure with the basic desire for solid results.
Click here to read the complete white paper.
Testing Software? Bring the Chaos!
by Derek Wu, Director of Software Quality
Oceanwide Inc.
When I was a kid, I watched a movie named "War Games". The premise of this movie was based on a super computer that had developed artificial intelligence and had taken over the United State's military computers that controlled the launch of nuclear weapons. Towards the end of the film, a command was sent to the computer to play itself at tic-tac-toe until a winner was declared. Being a supercomputer, every game ended in a tie. Having no apparent winner, each time it played itself it got confused and eventually shut down from an overload of excessive processing power.
The state of any vertical service application is constantly changing with functionality that continually evolves. As the system advances, the state changes and specific methods are required to verify the dynamics of the software. Software verification engineers and quality analysts need methods to force the system into a state of submission, where confusion leads to its eventual breakdown.
Every software organization develops software differently, even though the practices and developmental processes are similar. The main difference is the people who write the requirements, design the code, and verify the software. Most defects that are found in an application are primarily due to a combination of requirements that lack or misrepresent specific information and the code that is written to convey those requirements. As quality analysts, how do we build test cases to quickly uncover these defects no matter where they occur in the software development lifecycle?
One of the seven methods I use to test software quality is the chaos method. This method is like black box testing but, instead of not being able to see the code behind the feature, test cases use unfamiliar data. Most quality analysts create test data with some bias, which results in tests that are less likely to fail. The same data is also used over and over again, making it easy to overlook issues that are not expected from a component. When a component is tested with different data, the likelihood of finding software defects increases because we are forced to face unexpected outcomes. When an error is found, we are also more likely to reverse-engineer the data to see why it caused a bug. This leads to greater test coverage and also helps in discovering additional defects.
Software developers will no doubt conform to your testing habits and design their code so that your testing will be defenseless against it. When you continually change the input that the components are expecting, you have a higher probability of confusing the code. Keep them guessing and you will be more likely to force the software into a situation where it defeats itself.
If you have allergies such as hay fever, you may notice that the medication that once worked so effectively no longer works over time. Software and testing work the same way. Over time, developers learn how to build code that is immune to your test cases. Business analysts also learn how to write requirements that are better suited to the way developers design their code. As time goes on it becomes much more difficult to break the application using the same data models. So let's bring the chaos.
Derek Wu holds a degree in Electrical Engineering with a strong Internet telecommunications focus from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Prior to joining Oceanwide Inc., he worked in software verification at Nortel Networks and IDT. His previous positions at Oceanwide have included Program Team Leader and Software Analyst for the Genoa cargo insurance application. Derek has been with Oceanwide for four years.
jProg Gets Back Online Following Hurricane Katrina
jProg, a New Orleans-based developer of applications for the public health industry, was faced with the seemingly insurmountable task of continuing operations following the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina.
"Hurricane Katrina not only wiped out our corporate headquarters, but it also scattered our development team," said Jeff Murray, president and chief programmer at jProg. "To make matters worse, our existing version control software did not support versioning over the Internet. Our future depended upon deploying a new version control system. That's when we found Surround SCM."
jProg develops applications that allow health care administrators to manage user-level data access, provider data sharing, quality assurance, service contracts, and more. Surround SCM, Seapine's scalable, cross-platform source code management solution helped jProg facilitate remote development by providing a central repository for source files. "We were able to restore pre-Katrina backups into Surround SCM and piece together our current project relatively easily," said Murray. jProg believes that check in and check out is actually faster over the Internet than their previous on-site, source control solution. The company also anticipates greater development efficiency through Surround SCM's more powerful branching.
Shortly after implementing Surround SCM to manage their source code, jProg selected TestTrack Pro, Seapine's cross-platform issue management solution, to manage their bugs and keep the team informed and on schedule. jProg reports that TestTrack Pro has given them improved routing and easier access to the bug database than their former bulletin board-based system.
jProg has realized numerous benefits from choosing Seapine's solutions. "Looking back, Surround SCM and TestTrack Pro would have made sense for us when we were in a single location. Hurricane Katrina pushed us into the enterprise world, and Seapine had the best features for the price," added Murray.
If you're attending the Australian Game Developers Conference (AGDC) in Melbourne, Australia next month, don't forget to stop by Seapine's Expo booth (#3). Our product experts will be available to answer all of your questions and demonstrate our latest releases. You'll also be eligible to receive one free named license of TestTrack Pro and a single named license of Surround SCM—just for stopping by.
QAW 4.0 will be going to beta in late November and Surround SCM 4.1 will be going to beta in December. Mark your calendar to visit www.seapine.com to sign up for one, or both, of the beta programs.
Does Internet Explorer or another application automatically open when you start recording a QA Wizard script? If you want to select a different application to record against, hold down the Shift key while clicking the Record button. The Choose Application dialog box will open, allowing you to select an application.
Seapine's knowledgebase is a great place to find answers to technical support questions and learn new ways to extend your use of our products.
Creating Patches Using Surround SCM
Changing the TestTrack Pro Font on Unix Platforms
Datetime Values Corrupted in SQL Server Database
Starting the TestTrack Pro Server on Mac OS X Returns a Socket Create Error
Configuring a TestTrack Pro SQL Server 2005 Connection
Upgrading Oracle TestTrack Pro Projects on Unix Servers
Opening Multiple TestTrack Pro Instances on Mac OS X
TestTrack Pro SQL Server Project Upgrade Fails
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Seapine Software, Inc. is a market-leading provider of adaptable application lifecycle management (AALM) solutions for enterprise-level software development. Each tool in the Seapine product line is built on innovative technology and is designed to help customers streamline complex business and development processes.
Seapine Software, Inc.
5412 Courseview Drive, Suite 200
Mason, Ohio 45040
(513) 754-1655
sales@seapine.com
www.seapine.com
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