62
Testing Circus Your Monthly Magazine on Software Testing www.TestingCircus.com Test Automation Trends in 2014 Rethinking Software Testing Experts Testing Book Review Fake Tester’s Diary Security Testing Tips Volume 5 - Edition 1 - January 2014 with Michael Bolton Tester’s Astrology 2014

Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Embed Size (px)

DESCRIPTION

Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Citation preview

Page 1: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Testing Circus

Your Monthly Magazineon

Software Testing

www.TestingCircus.com

●Test Automation Trends in 2014●Rethinking Software Testing Experts●Testing Book Review●Fake Tester’s Diary●Security Testing Tips

Volume 5 - Edition 1 - January 2014

with Michael Bolton

Tester’sAstrology

2014

Page 2: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Article submission guidelines –● Subject of article can be based on any area of Software Testing. If you want to publish your article on

theme based subject please read our announcement of monthly theme published in our site. Articlecan be submitted without any theme based subject.

● There is no minimum and maximum length of article. If you feel the article is lengthy, please dividethe article into logically separated parts so that we can print them in a monthly series.

● Give a meaningful title to the article. If you want a sub-title as well , then add that in a different line.● Add images/pictures if necessary. If you are using any image/picture which is not yours own work,

please include the source. Take care of copyrighted materials. Images need to sent separately with thearticle.

● Send us the article in MS word (doc/docx) format only. Pdf files are not accepted.● Write a short write up on the author(s). Usually 7/8 liners in 3rd person descriptive language.● Include photograph of author(s). Preferred in high resolution .jpeg/.png format. Ideal size would be

50mmX 50mm.● You can send your article any time. Since we publish every month, your article can be included in any

month. There is no such thing called as a dead line.● Send in your article to [email protected] with a subject line “Article for Testing Circus –

Author Name – Title of the article”● If you think you can write a column in Testing Circus for at least 6 months, please submit 3 articles in

advance. We are open to any idea that may improve the user experience of Testing Circus.● (*New) By submitting article to Testing Circus, you also agree to publish the article in our article sec-

tion and/or in our blog section in the website.

ArticleSubmissionGuidelines

Do you have something to share with thetesting world? We can make your voice

heard to testers.

http://www.testingcircus.com/article-submission-guidelines

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 02 -

Page 3: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Letters

to th

e Edito

rHello Editor,

Liked the December Edition of Testing Circus.It is nice to read the resolutions shared by all the testers including

your 5 resolutions. Thank you.There were certain key points that I'd include to my everyday goal from the interview

of Keith Klain by Jay Philips.1) I really believe that the power of local folks getting together and forming connectionswith each other is the key to changing things in the testing industry.2) If I could get rid of anything in the software testing industry, it would be all thoseterrible metrics scorecards and then all the roles who manage them.3) In my experience the best testers are honest with themselves and others, can speak instories that tie things together, approach life with humility and their passion inspires thosearound them. That’s all built with a healthy dose of self-refection, admitting you mademistakes, sharing information, apologizing when you’re wrong. In addition to that, I lookfor people who study more than the testing industry to broaden their skills andknowledge, especially when it comes to objectivity.Liked reading Greg's article 'Top 5 Software Blunders of 2013'Testers know the drill, but too many times do their friends and colleagues question what itis they actually do.The fact of the matter is, if you don’t take software testing seriously, you are either doingthe world a disservice or you shouldn't be developing software.Overall a great edition. Thank you.I have shared the learning and this e-magazine with my testing team here at Tesco.Hopefully we have some response or contributions. Kudos to you and the team of TestingCircus.Thank you.Jyothi Rangaiah

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 03 -

Write to us at [email protected]

Write to us at [email protected]

YourFeedback isImportant to

us

Page 4: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Volume 5 - Edition 1 - January 2014Testing Circus

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 04 -

Topic Author Page #

Interview with Michael Bolton Jay Philips 6

Tester’s Astrology Rrajesh Barde 10

Rethinking Software Testing Experts Jari Laakso 13

Reach Out Beyond the Software Testing Community Stephen Janaway 15

Improving Cooperation using Specification by Example Ulf Eriksson 17

Test Automation Trends in 2014 Joe Colantonio 22

Book Review - Domain Testing Workbook WoBo 35

A Fake Tester’s Diary, Part - 37 Fake Software Tester 37

Testers to Follow 40

Crack The Code Blindu Eusebiu 42

Security Testing Tips (Part 13) Santhosh Tuppad 44

Learn Sahi Step by Step, Part 11 Narayan Raman 46

5 Testing Trends Observed In 2013 And The Way Forward ToolsJournal.com 52

Functional & Performance Testing Services Worth Watching ToolsJournal.com 54

useMango: An Innovative Test Automation Tool ToolsJournal.com 56

Testing Events Around the World TestEvents.com 58

QTP Code Corner Jaijeet Pandey 61

Testing Circus TeamFounder & Editor – Ajoy Kumar SinghaTeam -� Srinivas Kadiyala� Jaijeet Pandey� Pankaj Sharma� Bharati Singha� Chanderkant Saini� Dhakshna Moorty P

Editorial Enquiries: [email protected] and Promotions: [email protected]

Testing Circus IndiaChaturbhuj Niwas, 1st Floor,Sector 17C, Shukrali,Gurgaon - 122001India.

© Copyright 2010-2014. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Anyunauthorized reprint or use of articles from this magazineis prohibited. No part of this magazine may be reproducedor transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic ormechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by anyinformation storage and retrieval system without expresswritten permission from the author / publisher.

Edition Number : 40 (since September 2010)

*On the Cover Page - Michael Bolton

What i

s wher

e?

Page 5: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Write to us at [email protected]

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 05 -

It is almost a month into the new year. So how is your new year resolution shapinginto? In Hindi there is a saying “Karne se hota hai” - meaning “(It) happens whenyou do.” Few months back I was talking to this young tester. He was asking mewhich automation tool he should learn. I gave him two choices. He seemed satisfiedwith the reasons why I recommended those two. I also told him to pick any tool of hischoice, not to solely depend on my free advice. I met him online few days back. Heagain asked me the same question - which automation tool he should learn. I wassurprised and asked why he had not started learning the tool already. It seemed hewas still trying to decide which tool was good for him. He lost almost two to threemonths in choosing a tool. I am sure he will take more time. I am even doubtfulwhether he will actually start learning.There is nothing called the best decision in life or career. What is important is to startdoing. Precious times are lost trying to arrive at the best decision. If somethingscares you, it is probably worth a try. Do it. “Karne se hota hai.”Testers from Australia and New Zealand have decided to start a new piece ofbi-monthly testing magazine from February. It will be called “Testing Trapeze” andwill be published under our banner. Read more here -http://www.testingcircus.com/testing-trapeze-faqs/That’s all for now. More exciting news next month. Enjoy this edition and HappyTesting (Circus & Trapeze).

- Ajoy Kumar Singha@TestingCircus // @AjoySingha

From the Keyboard of Editor

Page 6: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

MICHAEL BOLTON

Michael Bolton is a consulting software tester and testing teacher whohelps people to solve testing problems that they didn't realize theycould solve. He is the co-author (with senior author James Bach) ofRapid Software Testing, a course that presents a methodology andmindset for testing software expertly and credibly in uncertainconditions and under extreme time pressure. Michael has 25 years ofexperience testing, developing, managing, and writing about software.Currently, he leads DevelopSense, a Toronto-based consultancy. Priorto that, he was with Quarterdeck Corporation for eight years, duringwhich he managed the company’s flagship products and directedproject and testing teams both in-house and around the world.

Organization: DevelopSenseCurrent Role/Designation: Consulting Software Tester; Testing TeacherLocation: Toronto, Canada

Interview with Testers

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 06 -

1. Tell us about your journey to becoming a softwaretester. How did it start and how this has been so far?Was it planned or by accident?Life is the outcome of exploratory processes. In mylife I’ve been an actor, dishwasher, barista, book-keeper, bartender, waiter, restaurant manager,lighting designer, theatre stage manager, stagehand,dresser (working in theatre wardrobe), data entryclerk, computer hardware and software reviewer,technical trainer, database programmer, technicalsupport rep, tester, sales support rep, supportmanager, test coordinator, test manager, programmanager, maintenance programmer, developmentmanager, testing consultant, technical writer, coursedesigner, documentation writer, technical trainer,magazine columnist, technical trainer, consultingsoftware tester, co-author of Rapid Software Testing.And husband, and parent.

2. When did you realize your passion was softwaretesting?Somewhere in there, as I dimly recall.As I said above, life is an exploratory process. Mynatural curiosity and my desire to understand thingsinvolved testing. My development work involvedtesting; my support work involved testing. In 1994, Itook my first position called “tester”, at Quarterdeck.I worked with a group of very smart and very

passionate people—both testers and programmers.The job was challenging and fun from the start— lotsof new learning every day. In 1996, I met Cem Kaner,who was inspiring and helped introduce me to thewider testing community. In 1999 or so, Ross Collardasked me to help him teach his course. In 2001, Iattended my first software testing conference, whereI met Kent Beck, Elisabeth Hendrickson, BrianLawrence, John Musa, and most importantly JamesBach. In 2003, James and I began collaborating moreclosely. So the passion started early, and continuedto grow over time.

3. Do you regret being associated with softwaretesting today? Given a chance would you move fromtesting to any other field in IT?I have no regrets that are strong enough to moveaway from testing. If I had strong regrets, I’d do it.

4. You co-authored the Rapid Software Testingcourse. What made you want to create this course?I didn’t. The course was already up and runningwhen James asked me to work with him. At the time,he felt he was in a kind of drought with respect tocreating exercises for the class. I added someperspective and built on some of his existingexercises, and I had a couple of notions of my own. Iwas pretty good at taking ideas that James was

* Interviewed by Jay Philips

Page 7: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 07 -

skeptical about or had abandoned completely, andI’d play with them until he figured out how to polishthem into really interesting testing problems. Thedice game started that way. The pattern program didtoo. Sometimes we would take the same exercise andteach it in quite different ways, compare notes, andcome up with something that was better than eitherof our approaches. It really has been a remarkablyproductive collaboration.

5. Do you see more people taking the Rapid SoftwareTesting course over the Rapid Software Testing forManagers? Why or why not?More people take Rapid Software Testing,presumably because fewer people are managers.There’s another problem though: in general,managers seem to be the people least likely to attendclasses. Maybe that’s because they went throughterrible testing classes earlier in their careers. Nowthat we’re talking about RSTM more explicitly, morepeople are interested; and people who took the RSTclass years ago are moving into more seniorpositions.

6. You co-founded the Toronto Workshop onSoftware Testing. Can you briefly tell us about someof the challenges you had creating the workshop?With respect to creating the workshop, I can describethe challenges very briefly, because there weren’tany, really. Fiona Charles and I decided that wewanted to get a bunch of people together to talkabout testing for a couple of days, loosely based onthe LAWST peer conference model that I wasfamiliar with thanks to Cem Kaner and hiscommunities. We picked the weekend, found aroom, and invited a bunch of our colleagues to showup. Fiona has mostly taken the lead in contentownership, especially in recent years, and I’ve takenthe lead on logistics (though I missed the workshopentirely this year). To make it even easier on me, for

several of the workshops, Autodesk has generouslydonated space for the conversations, and sinceeverybody who participates is eager to contribute,it’s been very low-stress.

7. Are you planning on creating any moreworkshops, communities or meetups? If so, where?I have no immediate plans for creating anythingnew. I spent the better part of last year as programchair for the EuroSTAR conference, so that kept mebusy along with my training and consulting work.I’m delighted to see that there are plenty of peoplecreating workshops and communities and meet upsall over the world, and I’m happy to help peoplewith hints and suggestions at least. If I’m in theneighbourhood at the time, I’m usually happy toaccept invitations, too.

8. We know about your opinion on ISTQB. What isyour opinion about other certification exams such asTools certification or Project Managementcertification?Certification is really about the delegation of trustand respect. If you trust and respect the organizationthat is promoting the certification, and theirmethods, and the form of scrutiny that theyundertake, then it’s reasonable to have some level oftrust for the people that they certify. But let mesuggest this: some of the worst (and worst-tested)software you’ve ever used has undergone morescrutiny than certain “certified” testers have.I like the Agile Alliance’s position paper oncertification(http://www.agilealliance.org/news/agile-certification-a-position-statement/) The core of it isthat “employers should have confidence only incertifications that are skill-based and difficult toachieve”. I also generally agree that “employersshould not require certification of employees,” but Ican also see contexts in which it’s reasonable for an

MICHAEL BOLTON

Page 8: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 08 -

employer to require certain kinds of difficult-to-achieve, skill-based certification.I’ve heard a story about a certain networkengineering certification. They give the candidate abroken router to fix, and they watch closely as thecandidate fixes it. The examiners make theirevaluations based on what they observe. Whetherthe candidate succeeds or fails in fixing the routerisn’t a big deal. They focus on how the candidatebehaves. If the candidate gets lucky and fixes therouter without demonstrating thoughtfulness andskill, the candidate doesn’t get the certification. Onthe other hand, a candidate who is thoughtful andskillful will get the certification even if they mighthave been unable to fix the router in the timeavailable. To use our parlance, this certification teststhe candidate instead of checking him or her. Now,that’s a kind of certification that I could support. Ihope that the story is true.

9. What will you suggest to people who want to joinIT industry as software testers?For a tester at any stage, it’s critically important tolearn, learn, learn. By all means immerse yourself inthe technologies and tools that are all around you.Ask questions and practice using the tools. Technicalskills are important, but lots of people in thesoftware business have those. I would urge newtesters to study and practice the skills that aresometimes in shorter supply: critical thinking,systems thinking, scientific thinking, test framing,argumentation, storytelling, mathematics, statistics,interviewing... Yes, that’s a lot. Pick something anddive in. When you have to come up for air, take abreath and dive back in—or pick something else fora while and come back later, if you like.Lots of testing books have stuff on equivalenceclasses and boundary conditions and test cases.Very few have material on how to avoid gettingfooled (Perfect Software And Other Illusions About

Testing by Jerry Weinberg and Lessons Learned inSoftware Testing by Kaner, Bach, and Pettichord aremy favourite exceptions; there are a few others).What’s more important, I think, is to read booksfrom outside of testing, strictly speaking, and bringthose ideas in. Here are only three examples: HowDoctors Think (Groopman); Thinking Fast and Slow(Kahneman), and The Black Swan (Taleb). There aretons of others, from all kinds of different domains.One more: How to Use Your Eyes (Elkins), which isabout the visual appreciation of everything from artto X-rays to culverts underneath roadways.

10. According to you, what is lacking in today’scommercialized software testing industry, especiallyin test management?Oh, heavens, there’s so much. Today, for me, it’s theunderstanding that testing is about investigating aproduct, and that test cases are a narrowly focusedand weak way to do that. Tomorrow, I’ll bedespairing about the emphasis on the formal andexplicit over the informal and the tacit. The nextday, I’ll be concerned about the oversimplification ofour models of human and technological systemsalike, and the risk of being misled by over-relianceon oversimplified models.

11. What has been your biggest challenge in softwaretesting? How did you overcome it?People, but especially people in middle managementpositions, seem to have profound misconceptionsabout what testing is, and about what testing canand cannot do. Testing does not assure quality;testing helps us to discover things about the productso that the people responsible for quality—designers,programmers, managers—can assure quality. Onlya fraction of testing is about checking to confirm thatthe product works; the bigger picture is that testingis about investigation and experimentation anddiscovery and learning, to help our clients

MICHAEL BOLTON

Page 9: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 09 -

understand whether the product they’ve got is theproduct they want. Testers are not judges or jurorsor executioners or cops; testers are more likeinvestigative reporters or skilled lab researchers.People—especially people who do not understandtesting and who do not observe the work—seem alltoo eager to make testing prematurely orunnecessarily formal and explicit. They pay far toolittle attention, in my view, to the informal and totacit knowledge and skill. Technical skills areimportant, but technical skills are useless—evenharmful sometimes—unless they are built on a solidbase of critical thinking, skepticism, and focus onrisk. Conveying all that stuff to the wider testing anddevelopment community is my biggest challenge,and my colleagues and I are still working onovercoming it. It’s a pretty hard problem, not leastbecause the misconceptions seem to be rooted intothe software business like a thicket of bamboo; newsilly ideas about testing keep springing up despiteall our efforts to weed and dig them out.

12. What qualities will you look for in a candidatewhen you want to recruit someone for softwaretesting job?Engagement. Curiosity. Skepticism—professionaluncertainty. The capacity to write and speak clearly,concisely, and precisely. The capacity to learnrapidly. An ability to see both obvious and subtlerelationships between things. An ability to see thingsfrom a number of different angles—something thatusually gives rise to a sense of humour. Bravery tostand up to possibly intimidating technologies andpossibly intimidating people. Compassion forprogrammers and managers, whose jobs are farmore difficult than many testers seem to think.

13. Assume you had all the powers in the world,what would you have changed in the world,especially in software testing domain?

I really don’t like questions like this very much.What would you do if you could turn dogs intodiamonds? Or dirt bikes? But I must admit, I’dreally like people to be more careful about sayingwhat they mean, and meaning what they say. We getinto terrible problems and disagreements whenpeople express themselves carelessly. Ordishonestly—but I think carelessness is far morecommon.

14. Name few people you would like to thank,people who helped you directly or indirectly in yourcareer as a software testing professional.There are so many people that have helped me that itwould take too many pages in the magazine forefficient downloads. Every time I refer to someoneelse in my work, I’m doing that implicitly. Here, letme explicitly thank James Bach, Cem Kaner, JerryWeinberg, Ross Collard, Fiona Charles. But you’veinspired me to resolve to thank more people moreexplicitly. And I’d like to thank you for honouringme with an interview request.

15. One last question – Do you read Testing CircusMagazine? If yes, what is your feedback to improvethis magazine?I don’t read the magazine much. Of what I’ve seen,it’s amazing that it’s produced on its scale, but forme, the scale is an impediment to reading it moreclosely. I observe a pretty relaxed hand on theeditorial and design tiller. I was lucky enough towrite for a magazine that took review and editingpretty seriously, on both technical and copy-editingmatters. That takes a good deal of effort, which inturn would probably mean fewer articles eachmonth, but it would also mean more polished andmore thoughtful work; less quantity, perhaps, buthigher quality.Blog/Site: http://www.developsense.comTwitter ID: @michaelbolton

MICHAEL BOLTON

Page 10: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Aries (March 20 - April 18)

General Forecast: Your testing skills will improve in away that you will be asked to test more. Surprises comeyour way in the form of a promotion from senior testerto senior-most tester. What belongs to you belongs tothe developers which mean that the developers darenot reject any bug.

Love Life: You will fall in love with an open sourcetesting tool. Your love affair will continue till this yearend but watch out for some tool issues during mid year.Make sure your enthusiasm for the tool doesn’t de-crease due to these issues.

Lucky Error Code: ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED

Taurus (April 19 - May 19)

General Forecast: A bull might trouble you when youare preparing a test report. So be prepared for a bullfight with your team. A hidden bug will trouble you forsometime during the third month after you test a mo-bile application. Keep your mobile phone close to youwhile sleeping as your test manager might call you tothe office any time.

Love Life: Love blossoms between you and your excelsheet that contains all the estimations and charts. En-sure that you learn all the shortcuts to handle excel filesbetter. Macros might give its heart to you that will bringmore joy through the year.

Lucky Error Code:

ERROR_TOO_MANY_OPEN_ FILES

Gemini (May 20 - June 20)

General Forecast: Stop playing hide & seek with yourjunior testers. Be available to them when they wantleaves. Send your reports on time before the customerfumes. A foreigner tester will join your team who willbe a foodie. See to it that he is never hungry. You maytravel to Amazon for a test process consulting assign-ment.

Love Life: Your planetary positions are not favorable asyou will be busy reviewing thousands of test cases.However, if you try, you can get love vibes from oldtest plans that you created. Be ready to spend more timewith your favorite book on Quality.

Lucky Error Code:

ERROR_DATA_CHECKSUM_ERROR

Cancer (June 21 - July 21)

General Forecast: Your patience shown during reviewswill be highly appreciated. You might get a Crab as areward. Do not get carried away with your sweet talks.There is a surprise waiting for you during user accep-tance testing. Be firm with what you say as you couldbe held responsible for emails that you didn’t send.

Love Life: One of your ex colleagues may you out for adinner party. But beware!!! It could turn out to be aknowledge sharing session. Don’t listen to your in-stincts while dealing with opposite sex. Wearing reddress might help you get closer to your Manager.

Lucky Error Code: ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 10 -

Tester’s Astrology

TASTRO 2014

- Rrajesh Barde

Page 11: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Leo (July 22 - August 21)

General Forecast: There is a lion in every Leo. There is adetective in every tester. The time is right to call yourcustomer and tell that the requirements are clear else youmay have to write the requirements yourself. Encourageyour team to watch more movies as they can come backto office and work sixteen hours a day.

Love Life: At last, you will get your favorite tester inyour team whom you love as a daughter. Positivityspreads due to your teachings on Love and its shelf life.Love on you increases during lunch hours in your officeas people will ask you to pick up food tokens for them.

Lucky Error Code: ERROR_BAD_ENVIRONMENT

Virgo (August 22 - September 21)

General Forecast: Your moment of reckoning has ar-rived. You will be asked to give a presentation on mon-key testing. Follow the rule of the jungle as there will bea tough time ahead testing a wild application. Don’t beselfish. Share some bugs with your team mates. Therewill be a lull before the storm. So brace yourself for toughaudits.

Love Life: Love lingers when you will be evaluating aperformance testing tool. It is not that the tool is bad butthe performance of the performance testing tool will beworrisome. Try not to be too pushy on your customerduring the year as he could be in awe with your perfor-mance and may recommend an appreciation certificate.

Lucky Error Code: ERROR_INVALID_FUNCTION

Libra (September 22 - October 22)

General Forecast: Libra testing fraternity will have theirmental balance intact during the financial year as theycould get a hike in their salaries. However, be preparedto skip the promotion cycle until you finish closing allthe open bugs. Use different quality control methodolo-gies to impress your customer. Take care of your invest-ments.

Love Life: You will reap what you sow. Due to yourcompliance training skills, you will be awarded a heartshaped red balloon. Preserve it carefully. Testers, espe-cially girls will aim big to get the prestigious heartshaped gifts.

Lucky Error Code: ERROR_PATH_NOT_FOUND

Scorpio (October 23 - November 20)

General Forecast: There will be a sting operation againstyou and your team mates during office hours to checkyour productivity. You may be named an internal audi-tor to audit testing projects. Find a solution to clear yourtest cases backlog. You make a good counselor to yourfriend who needs help in regression testing.

Love Life: You will extend your love and support tohim/her during a crisis. You will be the center of attrac-tion for a period of two months during the complianceaudit. You take more than give in your love for knowl-edge in quality assurance.

Lucky Error Code: ERROR_INVALID_ACCESS

Sagittarius (November 21 - December 20)

General Forecast: You will test legacy systems. SuggestV model instead of waterfall model to your customer.Plan for a quick visit to your delivery head’s chamber. Befar from trouble mongers in your team. Typical funfilled year awaits you ahead as you will test the cloud.Break free from monotony, eat gooseberries.

Love Life: Trust your love for metrics. Learn scriptinglanguage that’s close to your heart. You will be emotion-ally attached to sanity tests often. Do not fall prey to falsepromises made by your customer that he likes yourworking skills.

Lucky Error Code: ERROR_BAD_COMMAND

Capricorn (December 21 - January 19)

General Forecast: Capricorns set an example of disci-pline for others to follow. The Goat in you makes you afighter fighting for bugs. Be warned that your rivalscould unseat you from your position if you do not writeclear bug reports. You are in for a good time throughoutthe harvest season of bugs and more bugs. You may endup submitting a white paper on “Software Quality – Ittakes two hands to clap”.

Love Life: Condition is favorable for you to propose asalary hike for yourself as you deserve it. Love all yourtesting tools, hardware and software applications as youhave to live with it for the rest of your life. Success willknock your door soon when your loved ones both inprofessional and personal lives ask you to get a life onyour own.

Lucky Error Code: ERROR_SUCCESSwww.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 11 -

Page 12: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Aquarius (January 20 - February 18)

General Forecast: You will swim against the tide. Not fornothing are you called a tester. Application under testwill fetch you more bugs provided you teach others howto swim. Test only what is given to you. Additionalresponsibilities will make you go mad. Be in a group oftesters always as you may lose your temper for trivialmatters.

Love Life: Preserve your training material as someonefrom opposite sex might need it. Show your caring sideby sharing work with your peers. There is a strong indi-cation that you will get what you want.

Lucky Error Code: ERROR_BAD_ENVIRONMENT

Pisces (February 19 - March 19)

General Forecast: An old Aquarian friend will soonappear in your dreams with a “Negative testing – Apositive approach” book in his hand. Trust in god buttest your application. Luck favors you in all phases oftest life cycle.

Love Life: Luck favors in love life too. Your ex companywill call you to work with them again for the sheer loveand affection they have towards your testing skills.

Lucky Error Code: ERROR_SHARING_VIOLATION

Disclaimer: This is purely a pun intended reading forsoftware testers. The Author respects astrology in itsoriginal form and advises the readers to take TASTRO as

just a wild imagination. The Author is not answerable toanyone or responsible for any outcome from this publica-tion. The Author and the Testing Circus team wish alltesters from all sun signs a good year in their careers.

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 12 -

Support

by donating an amount of your choice.

Your donation = Continued Testing Circuspublication.

http://www.testingcircus.com/donate-to-testing-circus/

Rrajesh Barde is an independentquality assurance and CyberLaws consultant. He is an author,critic, foodie, counselor, blogger(http://bugburji.blogspot.com)and twitter enthusiast (@rrajesh-

barde). He has several whitepapers to his creditincluding a whitepaper published and presentedat an International Conference.

Page 13: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

I’ve seen a lot of writings and talks about eitherbecoming a software testing expert or being one. WhatI see common with them is they all focused on testingskills (question, solve problems, heuristics, etc.).However, there are also for example managers whodon’t test almost at all, but who are still considered assoftware testing experts. Generally, they have goodstorytelling skills and a background in testing.

These people can often answer questions about testing,but they might not be able to do the actual work. A littlelike consultants and PhD graduates in some jokes. Theyare considered experts in their domains, but they can’tactually do the job. So, how come they are stillconsidered as experts?

Harry Collins and Robert Evans wrote a book calledRethinking Expertise (http://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Expertise-Harry-Collins/dp/0226113612). In this book, they talk aboutspecialist tacit knowledge, which they split intocontributory expertise and interactional expertise. (Theyalso mention “no expertise”, but I’ll leave it for thereader to find details about that.) Now, this brings usto an interesting point where being a software testingexpert would not necessarily anymore mean one needsto be very good at testing!Contributory expertise is the kind where you are ableto get the things done. For example, a dentist can fixyour teeth and help another dentist out. In the sameway, a software tester can generate test data for anapplication and assist another tester. In this case, thetester is contributing to the testing effort.

Let’s keep up with the dentist metaphor. Dentistsusually have assistants, who sterilize the instruments

and for example hold the suction device. Theseassistants get familiar with the terminology the dentistuses and they can explain the whole procedure to thecustomer. They know the tools and what they do.Actually, they become so good in talking aboutdentistry they could be confused with dental surgeons.

In the example above, the dental assistant is interactingwith the dental surgeon so much they share a commonterminology. Most likely, he knows a lot about thetheory of dentistry. The exchanges with the specialistgive him the interactional expertise of being a dentist.He can’t do the job, but he can discuss fluently about it.

Let’s move back to software testing. Imagine forexample a manager who is interested to talk with atester about the approaches and methods the tester uses.The manager will become familiar with terminology (ofthat tester) and for example tools from software testing.In case the manager is interested in doing a good job,there are good chances he has recurring one-on-one’swith the tester. The manager can become an expert ofsoftware testing, but he might not be able to carry outthe tasks of a software tester.

A practical example could be an expert like this tellingwe should do some specific security tests, but he couldnot explain us how the tests are done. It’s not only aboutubiquitous tacit knowledge, such as popularunderstanding; the person can have a rather deepunderstanding of the topic, but he is missing the abilityto perform the testing. This has an interesting side effect.If you can’t see the person do testing, it’s impossible (orat least very difficult) to know which type of softwaretesting expert he is.

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 13 -

- Jari Laakso

RethinkingSoftware Testing Experts

Page 14: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

It’s important to notice we need both kind of expertsand one can be both types also. The distinction is usefulto understand expertise better, but it should not be seenas criticism towards interactional expertise. And in caseyou have doubts if someone is a skilled tester, thecontext-driven software testing community has a lot ofchallenges to figure that out.

Jari Laakso is asoftware testingp r o f e s s i o n a lwho constantlystrives tobecome better.He likes to talkand write about

software testing, which has enabled him toconnect with hundreds and hundreds of testersall around the world. His pursuit of deeperunderstanding of testing requires, in his opinion,studying various sciences, including linguisticsand semantics.Jari has spent about a decade in testing, out ofwhich most on software side. Since 2007, he hasworked in different managerial positions, butalways tried to keep up with his hands-on testingskills. In addition to this, he is a proud father ofone.Blog URL: jarilaakso.blogspot.comTwitter URL: https://twitter.com/JariLaakso/

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 14 -

Testing TrapezeComing Soon

http://www.testingcircus.com/testing-trapeze-faqs/

Page 15: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

As testers it is a little too easy to feel like the world isagainst you. We often face daily challenges from thosewho misunderstand our craft and our industry, and theperception that 'anyone can test' pervades far furtherthan it should. We need to stick together. Or do we?

My Experiences of Embracing the Software TestingCommunityI've been working within the software industry for 14years, but it was only in the last 4 years that I discoveredthat there were lots of people like me, who wanted toshare experiences, to learn from each other and tofurther the craft of software testing. Discovering thesoftware testing community gave me a new focus andmotivation, and encouraged me to learn far more thanI would have otherwise. Following an increasinglycontext-driven path has led me to a world beyond thatof traditional software testing, with study ofpsychology, mathematics and sociology. I started goingto software testing meet-ups, conferences, andparticipating in online discussions and social media. Istarted to make friends within the community.This was great for a while. I was learning a lot. I startedto think about how I could put more back into thecommunity, and how I could start to contribute ratherthan just consume. I was meeting a lot of great testersand testing thought leaders. One of the great aspects ofthe software testing community is the availability andwillingness of those thought leaders to help coach andmentor others. They recognize that education is key inorder for software testing to become the craft that webelieve it should be.An important skill in life is to keep learning, and to keepchallenging oneself. There are ample opportunities forthose who wish to learn and it's important that we doso. As a community we can improve together, but I've

found recently that I have started to question whetherparticipation in just the software testing community isenough. On one hand, our community is diverse. Weare based on every continent and come from manydifferent walks of life. We are many differentnationalities and backgrounds. But do our ideas comefrom too narrow a pool and are consumed by too fewpeople?

Time to Branch OutAs I spent more time with the software testingcommunity I found myself meeting the same people,who had the same backgrounds and the same skills.Socially this was great but how effective was it? Theinitial thrill of something new had subsided. I'd sharedmost of my experiences and I had surrounded myselfwith people who agreed with my thinking and myviews on software testing. I was having the sameconversations with the same people. Now of course Ihave not learnt everything that there is to learn, far fromit, but It was time to try something new again as well.So I've started to participate in more than just thesoftware testing communities. I've started going to theodd developer meet-up, talks on continuous deliveryand conferences on DevOps. Going to these sorts ofgroups can be a very interesting and humblingexperience. It helps remind oneself that, as acommunity, we still have a long way to go to ensurethat as many people as possible understand ourmessage and understand that testing is more thanchecking and 'playing with the product'. Our context-driven testing principles are not well known outside ofour own community and the older and more traditionalview of testing does still permeate many areas ofsoftware development. I think that we have done a goodjob in parts of our own community in changing the

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 15 -

- Stephen Janaway

Reach Out Beyond the SoftwareTesting Community

Page 16: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

perception of testing, and it's time to focus outside of itnow.

What You Can DoThink about spending some time interacting withgroups other than the software testing community. Itwon't be the same as the interactions that you have inany testing groups that you go to. You'll have differentconversations and you will meet people with verydifferent views on software testing. Think about howyou will present your message, and how it will bedifferent. In these situations it can be a good idea tothink about discussions that you have in the teams thatyou work in, and with other developers, projectmanagers and product owners. Use these in order tohelp you to prepare for discussions outside of the testingworld.Don't think that it will be easy. Making the decision,and taking the time, to move outside of the normalsoftware testing circles is not easy. It's hard, and it'soften far less fulfilling than staying within those circles.But, assuming that you are currently part of a softwaretesting community, which I assume you are since youare reading this, think back to the time before youjoined. Think about the first meet-up that you attended,or the first conference. That wasn't easy either. Whenyou made the decision to participate in the softwaretesting community you probably made the decision toget out of your comfort zone. Meeting new people andsharing your experiences isn't easy. But I think it's timethat those of us who are within the community get outof our comfort zones again, and get involved in othercommunities, to share the word on software testing andto raise the profile.You can also learn a lot from other communities anduse it to help your testing. By discussing with thoseinvolved in defining the software, designing and codingit, and delivering it, you will get a better idea of not onlyhow the company you work for operates, but also howother companies do. You will learn useful skills andknowledge that you can bring back, and use. If you areable to talk about more than just testing it can actuallyhelp you when you are talking about testing. It will helpyou connect with those who are less interested in yourmessage. Use it to get them on side and use it to help inconversations that you may then turn around towardstesting matters.

Any society thrives and advances due to the diversitywithin it and we will not succeed if we merely spendour time talking to those who agree with our point ofview. We need to seek inspiration and knowledge fromoutside of the software testing community and to sharehow exciting software testing can be to the wideraudience. So why not embrace other softwaredevelopment communities, and start widening yourreach.

Stephen Janaway has beeninvolved with software testingfor over 13 years, starting as aTest Engineer and has workedin various Test and DeliveryManagement roles for a varietyof companies.

Currently he's a Test Manager focusing on mobileand web testing, test automation and softwaredelivery optimization. Previously he's worked forthree of the major mobile device manufacturers,as well as advising a number of mobileapplication developers on testing and deliverystrategies.Stephen loves talking to others about softwaretesting, test techniques and the mobile device andapplication world in general. You can contact himon Twitter or via his blog.Blog URL: www.stephenjanaway.co.ukTwitter URL: @stephenjanaway

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 16 -

Page 17: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

In many organizations, it is relatively common thatthere are difficulties in understanding betweenbusiness and IT on what to develop, why and forwhom. This can lead to the wrong system beingdeveloped or that it becomes an infected atmo-sphere between different parts of the organization.There are several newer methods for managingspecifications and testing as a way to overcomethese difficulties. They share a common core ofprinciples that are quite similar and all of them aimto find ways to bridge the gaps between the re-quirements of the business and the functionalitydeveloped. Some known methods are: • Agile Acceptance Testing • Example-driven Development • Demand-driven Development • Smart scenarios • Specification by ExampleThe fact that there are several different methodsthat all try to tackle the same problem suggests thatit is a common occurrence in this area at the mo-ment. Whether we choose to call it Needs DrivenDevelopment, Agile Acceptance Testing or Specifi-cation by Example, we want the same result - ashared understanding of what is to be developed,why and for whom.This blog post deals with the method Specificationby Example.One of the method's advantages is that it connectsthe development process with requirements man-agement, thus involving the operations side in thedevelopment. This makes it easier to overcomecommunication problems and force a commonconceptual world that supports collaboration be-

tween different stakeholders within the organiza-tion.The purpose of development is usually to solve aproblem or meet a need. Many development teamsexpect that a product owner or customer decideson the details of a solution before implementationbegins. This is the point when problems with de-veloping the right things usually begin. By expect-ing the business side to provide a list ofrequirements, use cases, usage scenarios and otherrequirements documentation, the developmentteam has basically asked the business side to createa solution for them.

Separate the scope from the business objectivesIf the business defines complete solution proposalswith a focus on what systems will be affected andin what way, you would not be using the insightthat exists in the development team. This meansthat the development team would at best deliversoftware that meets the "requirements" but doesnot meet what the customer truly wants or needs.The development team must look beyond the pro-posed solution and separate the solution from thebusiness goal. This should be done in conjunctionwith business representatives who focus on com-municating the business needs and what valuethey expect. This helps everyone to get a commonunderstanding of what expectations they have ofeach other. The development team can often pro-pose a solution that is cheaper, faster and easier todeliver and maintain than what the business sidewould have thought of on their own.

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 17 -

Improving CooperationUsing Specification by Example

- Ulf Eriksson

Page 18: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Specify requirements togetherUnless developers and testers are involved in therequirements process, the requirements have to becommunicated to the team after they are "done",which can easily lead to misunderstandings. A con-sequence of failure to cooperate on requirementsmeans that the business side will need to validatethe solution after delivery, and the developmentteam must correct the errors afterwards, which is anunnecessary work. Instead of relying on the busi-ness side to succeed in getting the correct specifica-tion, the development team should work togetherwith a business representative when specifying re-quirements. People from different backgrounds andwith different ideas then use their collective experi-ence to solve problems and meet needs.Requirements can be specified using many differenttechniques. One way is to express requirements inuser stories. Here is an example of a simple require-ment relating to a function that adds two integersand computes the sum of these.Feature: AdditionIn order to avoid silly calculation mistakesAs a math beginnerI want to be told the sum of two numbers

Increased understanding through usage of examplesOn the business side, it is common that a businessanalyst provides a number of realistic examples thatare communicated to their customer representa-tives. Unfortunately these are then translated intospecifications that describe what should be devel-oped. This type of requirement, which lacks anindication of "why?” and "for whom?", are verydifficult to assimilate and serve as a poor basis fordevelopment and testing.Another challenge is that everyday language is am-biguous and open to interpretation. A requirementthat is described in an everyday language is seldomcomplete. Developers and testers need to interpretsuch requirements in order to produce software andtest scripts, and people tend to interpret informationdifferently. This becomes truly problematic whensomething seems obvious but requires specific do-main knowledge or experience to understand fully.

Instead of trusting that the specifications are imple-mented correctly the first time in a software, youcan make the requirements more specific throughthe use of examples, along with business represen-tatives.Start by identifying key examples which are typical-ly representative examples for all the importantfeatures required to meet a set of requirements.Developers, testers and business representativeswill then add additional examples to illustrate spe-cific cases or other problematic parts of the system.This bridges functional gaps and ensures that allinvolved in the requirements process share an un-derstanding of what needs to be delivered, which inturn reduces the risk of extra work because of mis-interpretation.Let’s go back to our Addition example, and extendit with a scenario. It could look like this:Scenario Outline: Add two numbers Given that I have entered 5 into the calculator And I have entered 7 into the calculator When I press Add Then the result should be 12 on the screenJust to validate that the result is the sum of the twoparts, we can also add examples that clarify whatwe expect.Examples:| INPUT_1 | INPUT_2 | button | output || 20 | 30 | add | 50 || 2 | 5 | add | 7 || 0 | 40 | add | 40 |If the system works properly for all key examples,we know that it meets the specifications that wejointly agreed upon. The examples also define whatthe software needs to do. They serve as an objectivefor development as well as objective evaluationcriteria in order to decide if the development iscompleted. If the examples are easy to understandand communicate we can replace our requirementswith them.

Refining the requirements specificationHaving an open dialogue about cooperation whendeveloping a specification contributes to a shareddomain understanding, but examples often include

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 18 -

Page 19: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

a richer level of detail than is actually necessary inorder to illustrate a feature. Business representa-tives often think of the system based on the userinterface so they will provide examples that illus-trate how one should act on the basis of end-userwho seeks to fulfill a business need.Making use of such descriptions also specifies howsomething should be done and not just what to do.One should try to avoid an excess of details as theymake the examples more difficult to communicateand understand. We refine the specifications byremoving unnecessary details from the key exam-ples, and by refining the examples, we get some-thing very concrete and precise that bothdevelopment and testing can easily make use of.

Automated requirements validationAs soon as we agree on the examples that apply tothe specification and we have refined them, we canuse them in the implementation and validation ofthe product. The system will be validated on severaloccasions during the development process to ensurethat the goal is being met. Performing these checksmanually would cause unnecessary delays and thefeedback would be too slow. Quick feedback is aprimary part of the development process, so weneed to create a process where the validation of thesystem is cheap and effective. One obvious solutionto this is to automate.The kind of automation we want, however, is differ-ent to the normal automation provided by the de-veloper or tester. If we automate the validation ofthe key example by making use of traditional pro-gramming, unit-automation tools or other types ofautomation tools, we risk introducing problems ifthings get lost in the translation of business require-ments into technical automation. Technical auto-mated specifications will be unavailable foroperations because of the technical depth requiredto understand them.When requirements change, which they will dowhen developers and testers need further explana-tion or clarification, we will not be able to use thespecification that we just automated. We could keepthe key examples in a more readable form, but as

soon as there exist more than one ‘truth’, we haveproblems to ensure which ‘truth’ truly applies. Thisis why large requirements documents are nevercompletely accurate.If you save all existing information in the automa-tion tool, the risk of misinterpretation of require-ments is reduced. When you automate validationwithout changing the specifications, you do notchange key examples, they remain in their originalcondition, readable and accessible to all stakehold-ers involved.Example:I choose to use Cucumber, a tool meant to executerequirements specifications. This tool will make useof the requirement to execute code stubs, so weneed a formal way of writing the requirements. Thisarticle does not go into how to set up the environ-ment and everything else around it to make it work;it only seeks to explain the principles.Step 1: We start with taking the feature, the scenarioand the example that I described earlier and enterthem into Notepad. I save the file ascalculate.feature.Feature: CalculateIn order to avoid silly calculation mistakesAs a math beginnerI want to be told the sum of two numbersScenario Outline: Add two numbers Given I have entered into the calculator And I have entered into the calculator When I press Then the result should be on the screenExamples:| INPUT_1 | INPUT_2 | button | output || 20 | 30 | add | 50 || 2 | 5 | add | 7 || 0 | 40 | add | 40 |Step 2: Describe the steps in Ruby code (Ruby is theprogramming language that Cucumber uses) andsave this file as calculator.stepsRequire 'Calculator'Before do @Calc = Calculator.newendAfter do

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 19 -

Page 20: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

endGiven / I have entered (\ d +) into the calculator / do| n | @Calc.push n.to_iendWhen / I press (\ w +) / do | op | @Result = @calc.send opendThen / the result should be (. *) On the screen / do |result | @Result.should == result.to_fendStep 3: Run your executable requirements by callingyour automated requirement by on the commandprompt, run "cucumber feature.calculator".Step 4: If the executable requirement goes well, youwill get an output similar to the following:Feature: CalculateIn order to avoid silly calculation mistakesAs a math beginnerI want to be told the sum of two numbersScenario Outline: Add two numbers Given I have entered into the calculator And I have entered into the calculator When I press Then the result should be on the screenExamples:| INPUT_1 | INPUT_2 | button | output || 20 | 30 | add | 50 || 2 | 5 | add | 7 || 0 | 40 | add | 40 |3 scenarios (3 passed)12 steps (12 passed)0m0.015sAn automated specification with examples becomesan executable specification that we can use withdevelopment to check whether the system doeswhat we agreed on. In our case, the requirement isvalidated if the sum of "INPUT_1" and "INPUT_2"equals the result that is displayed under "output". Ifthe sum does not match the expected result therequirements validation has failed.We may also use this document to get clarificationfrom the business side. In those cases we need to

change the specification we need to do this only inone place.In order to efficiently maintain a software system,we need to know who is doing what with it andwhy. In many cases, the only way to find out this isto analyze the code. The code is often the only thingwe can rely on. Most of the written documentationis old and it is rarely completely accurate. The pro-grammer becomes a source of knowledge but also abottleneck in terms of spreading this knowledge.Executable specifications can easily be validatedagainst the system to check if the system is stilldoing what it should. When validation happensoften we can have equal reliability to the executablespecification as to the actual code. By checking allspecifications we quickly discover deviations be-tween the system and its specifications. Since thespecifications are easy to understand, you can alsodiscuss these changes with the operations side anddecide how to best tackle any problems.

Developing a documentation systemYou do not have to stop at getting executable speci-fications that are frequently validated. You can alsoensure that the specifications are organized, easy tofind, accessible and consistent. As developmentproceeds the domain knowledge increased, marketopportunities arise and this creates changes in thebusiness. To get the most out of Specification byExample you should update the specifications inrelation to these changes. Through this work, youthen create a living documentation system. Livedocumentation replaces all artifacts that the devel-opment team needs to deliver the right product, butin a way that fits well with an iterative way of work-ing.Live documentation is a reliable source of informa-tion about the functionality of the system that is alsoeasily accessible. It is as reliable as code, but easierto read and understand. Support can use it to un-derstand what the system is doing and why. Devel-opers can use it in the development, testers can useit for testing, and requirements analysts can use it asa starting point when analyzing the influence of a

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 20 -

Page 21: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

proposed change in functionality, and it also offersregression testing for free.

SummarySpecification by Example is a collaborative ap-proach to define the requirements and acceptancetests for software-based products, based on docu-menting requirements through realistic and con-crete examples. This approach is applicable in agileenvironment but works particularly well in con-junction with Requirements Driven Development.Specification by Example is intended to create asingle source of truth, from all perspectives. Whenthe business analyst works on their requirementsdocuments, the developer manages their implemen-tation specifications and tester handles a separateset of functional tests, the efficiency of softwaredelivery is heavily reduced owing to the constantcoordination and synchronization of the variousversions of the truth.Specification by Example reduces feedback times insoftware projects, resulting in less rework, higherproduct quality and a better grouping of activitiesfor the different roles involved such as testers, re-quirements analysts and developers.

CitationsBooksSpecification by Example - http://manning.com/adzic/Bridging the Communication Gap -http://www.acceptancetesting.info/the-book/Useful WebsitesSpecification by Example -http://specificationbyexample.com/ATDD Vs. BDD vs. Specification by Example -http://janetgregory.blogspot.se/2010/08/atdd-vs-bdd-vs-specification-by-example.htmlCucumber - http://cukes.info/Cucumber example is based on -https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber/blob/master/examples/i18n/en/features/addition.featureGojko Adzic’s own website http://gojko.net/

Ulf Eriksson is one of thefounders of ReQtest, an on-line bug tracking softwarehand-built and developedin Sweden. ReQtest is theculmination of Ulf’s dec-ades of work in develop-ment and testing. Ulf is ahuge fan of Agile andcounts himself as an early

adopter of the philosophy which he has abided tofor a number of years in his professional life aswell as in private.Ulf’s goal is to life easier for everyone involved intesting and requirements management, and heworks towards this goal in his role of ProductOwner at ReQtest, where he strives to makeReQtest easy and logical for anyone to use, regard-less of their technical knowledge or lack thereof.The author of a number of white papers and arti-cles, mostly on the world of software testing, Ulf isalso slaving over a book, which will be compendi-um of his experiences in the industry. Ulf lives inStockholm, Sweden.

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 21 -

Page 22: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Like most people who are hoping to start the New Year off right, I’m reflecting on what I’ve learned during thepast year, as well as identifying what I can (or need to) improve upon.Also, being a naturally paranoid guy, I’m looking for opportunities to make myself more employable in theevent that I find myself laid off. This usually involves me using the following tools to find out which skills arecurrently in the most demand (and which ones aren’t):

· Simplyhired keyword trends – I use this to see how often certain test automation words appear withinSimply Hired’s job postings. Knowing which words are trending upward helps me decide which skills Ishould focus on learning during the upcoming year.

· indeed.com – I use Indeed to check current test automation job listings in my area, as well as to deter-mine what those companies are currently listing as requirements and/or prerequisites.

· Google trends – I use this to see how many times a certain skill is searched for. This helps me determinewhether interest in a particular skill is growing or not.

Win/WinArmed with this knowledge, I have a clearer idea of which skills I should be honing in order to stay currentwith the latest test automation trends. I did this last year, and discovered that based on the trends at the time,my job was on track to become obsolete because it focused exclusively on automation using QuickTest Profes-sional.Once I realized that fact, I made the decision to move to another position in the same company, which gave mean opportunity to learn newer automation skills using Selenium, Java, Continuous Integration, etc.My move has benefited my employer because I’m taking the time to improve the skills that I use every day. Atthe same time, it has made me more marketable in case I find myself needing to switch gigs.Looking at the numbers, I’ve come to the following conclusions:

Are HP test tools dying?Not surprisingly, every HP test tool product that I’ve researched appears to be on a downward trend. If I’m be-ing honest, this bums me out, since I was a big Mercury fanboy back in the day; not so much since HP tookover. I’m especially surprised by what looks like the steady downward decline of LoadRunner’s popularity.

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 22 -

- Joe Colantonio

Test Automation Trends 2014

Page 23: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Google Keyword Trend Charts

SimplyHired Trends for LoadRunner:

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 23 -

Page 24: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

By contrast, most open-source tools are trending up. This seems to be pretty consistent across the board. Lookslike its time for me to expand my experience with open source performance test tools.

Open source vs. vendor toolIf someone were to ask me which automation tools should they should learn, my answer, without a doubt, Seleni-um as opposed to QTP. If you have been on the fence about learning Selenium, you should make 2014 the year tofinally do so. While you’re at it make sure to check out soapUI as well.

Google Trend Results for Automation Tools:

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 24 -

Page 25: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Indeed - Number of jobs returned for Automation Tools

· QTP – 76· TestComplete – 2· Ranorex – 8· Selenium – 205· eggplant – 0· Sikuli – 5· soapUI - 42

Simplyhired keyword trend for Automation Tools

· Selenium Automation: -12%· QTP Automation: -30%

What programming language should I learn with Selenium?This is one of the most frequent questions I’m asked at http://www.joecolantonio.com. The research I’ve donegives allows me to answer with confidence: Java and Python.

Google Trend Results for Programming Language:

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 25 -

Page 26: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 26 -

Page 27: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Simplyhired Trend for Automation Programming Languages

· Java Automation: +30· C# Automation: -14· Python Automation: +40· Ruby Automation: +9· Php Automation: -6

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 27 -

Page 28: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

· vbScript Automation: +15· javaScript Automation: no change from last year· Groovy Automation: + 25

Indeed – Number of jobs found for Automation Language in Boston, MA

· Java Automation: 446· C# Automation: 181· Python Automation: 305· Ruby Automation: 160· Php Automation: 69· vbScript Automation: 18· javascript Automation: 180· Groovy Automation: 117

jUnit or TestNG

This is another common question I see on the LinkedIn Selenium groups and other automation blogs: “Whichframework should I use? jUnit or TestNG?” . This one is not so straightforward to answer – let’s just call it a tie. Iknow in the past TestNG had the edge but with the latest version of jUnit they are now both pretty much equal toeach other.

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 28 -

Page 29: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Simplyhired Trend for Automation Programming Languages· TestNg: +4· jUnit: +9

Indeed – Number of jobs found for Automation Framework in Boston, MA· TestNG: 47· jUnit Automation: 57

Which Integrated Development Environment is Best?Yet another question I see frequently is: Which IDE should someone that is developing test automation scriptsuse?” Answer: IntelliJ. (FYI: IntelliJ has a free Community Edition available.)

Google Trend Results for IDE:

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 29 -

Page 30: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Simplyhired Trend for Automation IDE

· Eclipse: -19· Visual Studio: -21· Intellij: +13· jDeveloper: -38

Indeed – Number of jobs found for IDE in Boston, MA

· Eclipse: 214· Visual Studio: 355· Intellij: 8· jDeveloper: 3

Other Trends for 2014

QA vs Test DevAnother trend that has actually been ongoing for the past couple of years is the fact that straight QA positions,which require doing manual testing only, are being replaced by the need for test engineers that are also develop-ers. As a matter of fact, I’m seeing more and more of this type of job posting. Check out this one from fitbit. Noticethe wording “this is an engineering lead position, not QA.”

I’ve also been interviewing peoplefor a similar open software engi-neer in test position at my firm andhave been having a hard time find-ing an individual with the properdevelopment/testing skills.

You don’t need to be a program-ming superstar but you shouldnow the basic of programming andare able to code Selenium script incode without relying on using atool like Selenium IDE to generatethe code for you.

In fact there is an excellent book Ireviewed this year: Java For Test-ers: Learn Java Fundamentals Fastby Alan Richardson which lays asolid foundation for beginnerswho need to learn how to programin Java in order to start using Sele-nium. (http://bit.ly/Hj4wVk)

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 30 -

Page 31: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Headless TestingAs I mentioned in the Open Source vs. Vendor Tools section, there’s been a pretty rapid uptick in the use and de-mand for engineers who know soapUI. Since soapUI is used for testing headless technologies like API, REST, DBand JMS I would say that automation engineer needs to start focusing more heavily on headless testing. This isone of the reason why I wrote my book, The UFT API Testing Manifesto - A Step-by-Step, Hands-on Testing Guide forthe Masses. (http://amzn.to/1gmWIBF)

Focusing on headless testingrather than UI testing will makeyour tests more reliable, fasterand reduce your maintenanceefforts. Other headless technolo-gies that are exploding arePhantomJS and Jasmine.GUI testing should always bethe last resort for any test auto-mation engineer, and it lookslike more people are starting toagree with me, as headless test-ing is a skill that is trending up-ward. In fact, in a Forrester 2014forecast report they list API asone of their top 2014 trends. TheJanuary 2014 issue of Wiredmagazine is dedicated to weara-ble tech…and how does one in-teract with these types ofdevices? Mostly by using APIs.

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 31 -

Page 32: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

RecapThis exercise has helped me tremendously. I try to do it at least twice a year. I admit that it’s not 100% accurate;you may have other factors that you look at or give more weight to than I do. But it should give you a good indi-cation of automation trends you should be paying attention to. Hope it helps you. Have a great 2014!

Joe Colantonio is the founder of the popular test automation blogwww.joecolantonio.com, where he writes weekly articles about test automation tools,tips and tricks. Joe specializes in helping readers succeed with test automation tools likeHP's Test Tool Suite (QTP, LoadRunner, ALM/QC) and open-source tools like Seleniumand soapUI. He is also the author of the The UFT API Testing Manifesto - A step-bystep, hands-on testing guide for the masses.

With more than 15 years of experience, Joe has been a software engineer in companies of various sizes,from start-ups to Fortune 10. To contact Joe visit www.joecolantonio.com or follow @jcolantonio onTwitter.

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 32 -

Page 33: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014
Page 34: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

WEEKEND TESTING

No, it is not free.It costs your time on weekends.

Visit www.weekendtesting.com for anopportunity to life time learning.

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 34 -

OVER 100 SUCCESSFUL WEEKEND TESTING SESSIONS

Page 35: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

BOOKWORM’SCORNER

Every journey has multiple paths; the paths always keep chang-ing. My journey is also similar; this year, I have decided to take anew path of book reviews, in addition to publishing recommen-dations from the top testers. Going forward, I am also going tocrawl through other books and let you know of my thoughts onthose books too.This month, I crawled through “Domain Testing Workbook”.This book is written by Cem Kaner, Douglas Hoffman andSowmya Padmanabhan. There has been a lot of critical thoughtthat’s gone into writing this book. Most books that I’ve read tendto tell me a message; this is one of those books which challengeyour thought, make you think about how you test and how thisbook can potentially change the way you test. The authors saythat this book is targeted at testers, test managers and testingteachers. I think even non-testers would be benefited if they readthis book. This book looks like the new age “lessons learnt insoftware testing”!!!Going a bit more into detail on what this book offers, the bookrelies on offering a lot of exercises and works out well becauseyou actually try to solve it; you have ample references to how theauthor’s solved them for your reference. If you are not experi-enced in testing, or if you are unable to appreciate why a testerwould be passionate, this tends to get a bit boring; but outside

software testing, if you love problem-solving, this book gets a “HIGH-TAIL RECOMMENDATION” (Book worms likeme don’t have two thumbs to recommend, you see.)In his blog, Cem Kaner says that there are other such books that he plans to publish --- “when the soup is ready” hequotes; well, this soup was delicious and a definite appetizer to anticipate what’s to come.

Buy this book from Amazon.comBuy this book from Amazon.in

Love,WoBo

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 35 -

Page 36: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Request a free demo by sending us an email at [email protected]

http://www.sahi.co.in

Become our fan -https://twitter.com/_sahihttp://www.facebook.com/sahi.software

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 36 -

Page 37: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Part 37

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 37 -

http://www.testingcircus.com/category/a-fake-testers-diary/

Minority Report

Presumed Guilty --- I tweeted today; I experiencedthe feeling of presumed guilt; I was visiting mycustomer’s location for a day; at the end of the day,they had complained to my management that Iwas using “abusive language”. My companywanted to take effective action and quickly with-drew me from the project site; the Vice-Presidentpaid a visit to the clients and assured them thatsuch things would not happen again (of course,this apology included the mandatory IPL seasonpasses to the client management teams).

What actually happened? I was talking about"Oxymoron" to a friend and our customer repre-sentative sitting in a nearby cubicle heard just theword "morons"; this escalation earned him brown-ie management points and his management actu-ally went on record to praise him for his effectivemanagement skills.

My company refused to give me a hearing as towhat actually transpired; finally, a kind soul frommy management heard me out and decided tomove me into a different project so that I don'tcome into contact with the earlier customer; I wasalso ordered counseled not to interact with earlierclients on social networking sites so that they don’trealize I work with the company any more. But2013 had not yet ended and still had surprises instore.

In the last week of 2013, my manager, whom I callDelSpe (short for Delegation Specialist), visited atesting conference. He shared his report with all of

us. That was the last report we read in 2013. Hereit is.....

Trip Report Introduction

This is to report the trip of me to the testing confer-ence in the December month at the hotel of theLeela Palace; Big hotel. All of you please read thisand learn to do more better at the testing works.

Trip Report Detail

As soon as I registered for this conference, I perkedup all my eyes and ears to be all eyes and ears. Iwanted to observe all the new new initiatives atthe conference halls including testing types, thegreatness of implementing different testing pro-cesses to our teams for succeeding, new testingtechniques, etc. I would strongly recommend thatall of you read and get to implementing this inyour works.

We started the day wishing all of our friends avery happy new year since the conference datewas Dec-28. 1st up was the expert-tester's sessionon why we need to do certifications; we alsoattended the super-tester's session on why weneed to count all our test cases at the end oftesting. After the 2 hours of sessions, we took asmall break for tea and the biscuits served werevery nice and fresh. I took down notes of all thathappened in the 1st and 2nd sessions and I willshare with our brilliant management teams fortheir perusal. Later, the new-certification-blokewith-grey-hair said that we should start equippingourselves by doing more certifications and howtheir company landed 2 Million USD projects be-

Page 38: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 38 -

cause they had a strength of 3000 people, each ofthem having 32 certifications to their credit.

So, I will set objectives for each of my team mem-ber to complete 6 certifications this year; Ourcompany should also sponsor these certificationsif only you all pass the exam. I then went and lefta message in the feedback book. I ensured that Iwritten 2 pages of feedback and all people whowere visiting the conference would know of thecompany name since I wrote our company namein BOLD in the feedback book. I visited the boothof our competitor before lunch and learnt that theyare going to open up a new center for testing inVietnam since it is cheaper to find people overthere.

In the afternoon, I participated in a group discus-sion detailing "Great Testing by Great People" ; wetold everyone how we do the following in ourcompany --- smoke testing, sanity testing, buildverification testing, build acceptance testing, quicktesting, lightning testing, yellow box testing, pinkbox testing, bluish green box testing (Yes; I haveapplied for a patent of combining the colors oftesting into 1), etc. Everyone stated that they notonly got a peek into how we work, but also howwe made use of basic infrastructure which was, ina revolutionary way, synchronized with unifica-tion of the colors of testing. Following this, I visit-ed a few other stalls and made a note of the toolsthat they are proposing.

The conference halls has great places to eat andlounge as well; the drinks were not covered, butthere is enough drinks to drown me. We shouldalso note how the conference hall was designedlike a "red lotus" and they also shot the latestHollywood blockbuster in this place. I also came toknow how all companies do testing and I think weshould do that also.

In the evening, it was time to meet in the bar; Ilearnt that only English speaking testers can makeit big. All others, we will have to do an "English-Speaking-Course" for them and we should ask

them to pay for it. We also went to know that thefunctioning of all the companies was very good.

Trip Report Conclusion

I want to make the following brilliant thingies forour companies peoples career:-

· we should encourage our testers to participatein all of the discussions

· we should think of good ways to better utiliza-tion of our benches

· we should make use of globally used processesto see how we can fit them into our projectsusing our state of the art facilities and the cut-ting edge technologies

· we should ask people to study and becomecertified in more types of testing

· We should improve our infrastructure, takemore measures to control attrition by increasingour notice period to 3 years, promote morediscussion with developers with the testingpeoples

· we should do all the colors of testing

· we should develop our people and give more ofthe onsite opportunities for our testers

· we should find new way to improve the englishof that we talk in our offies; the spell-checkingshould also be korrect in all of the our emails.

My Take

Sometimes, management sends emails to just letus know that they exist; this seems to be one ofthem. I could not wonder

· what stopped him from stating something orig-inal in his trip report

· Why there’s no suggestion about the usefulnessof what was observed; neither is there empha-sis on expediting any promised suggestions orare any new suggestions offered; no lessonslearnt is given as well.

· I wonder how someone knows what the worldis doing by visiting a testing conference.

· And his comments about English… Dude, areyou !@#$@#$?

Page 39: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

For a moment, I thought fake testing is goingdown; reading his report, I am convinced other-wise. Every company has such people who attendtesting conferences and it is sad to see even peoplein test conferences promote fake testers attendingit to show the number of people attending theconference as a parameter of success. I alwaysthought my manager had to learn testing; I wasproved wrong; he needs to learn English too. Seeyou in February.

Collection of all diary pages of Fake Software Tester isavailable in an eBook.

The eBook is available inPDF, ePub and Mobiformat. Our subscriberswill get it free. The 100%discount code has beenemailed to all our sub-scribers.

It can be purchased from

https://leanpub.com/FST_TestingCircus

Subscribe now at

http://www.testingcircus.com/subscribe to get it Free.

More Entries from Fake Tester’s Diary

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 39 -

Testing TrapezeComing Soon

http://www.testingcircus.com/testing-trapeze-faqs/

Page 40: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 40 -

Bill The TesterTest Automation Engineer client/server/web/mobile, SoftwareQuality Assurance, Software Security Assurance, Test Lab Infra-structure, Linux/Unix/Win/Java & .Net

https://twitter.com/BillTheTester

Anand RamdeoTester, automator, speaker & blogger - Trying to improve efficien-cy & effectiveness of test automation with TestSpicer.comhttps://twitter.com/testinggeek

Simon P. SchrijverIndependant Test Consultant. Context driven tester.

https://twitter.com/SimonSaysNoMore

Teri CharlesSoftware Tester, lover of books, old movies, and a seeker. BBSTFoundations graduate, Rapid Software Testing with James Bach,and Context Driven Tester.

https://twitter.com/booksrg8

http://Twitter.com/TestingCircus

We recommend to follow

Page 41: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 41 -

Follow us at Twitter

http://Twitter.com/TestingCircus

Testing Circus

Testing Circus is a world’s leading English language magazine for software testers

and test enthusiasts. Monthly editions since September 2010. #testing

Follow us at https://twitter.com/TestingCircus

Page 42: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Crack The Code!- Blindu Eusebiu

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 42-

Eusebiu Blindu has been working as a tester since 2005. He is experienced inworking in a couple of companies and environments like IBM or EuropeanCommission. In the most recent years, he has tried to find more meaning inthe activity of testing and how it could be more motivating, more rewardingto be a tester. He has experimented with different schools of testing, like contextdriven and different approaches like exploratory testing. But he didn't settlefor any group or methodology as he thinks all of them have their own flaws.After discovering uTest, he is focused more on security testing and security

bug bounties.He tweets as @testalways.You can find more interactive testing puzzles on his website http://www.testalways.com

The following code is part of some encoded intercepted data –

sadhfyuashdyfu23123123sdafasdhayc12737128871287387ashuhuhuzuvcxhuihzx23423423037468697320697320612070757a7a6c65asdfasdhu23432423423

The data contains a valid message that you need to find it out. Because the intercepteddata is not continuous (format is <incomplete_message> +<complete_message>+<incomplete_message>) and it has parts that cannot beidentified, please ignore the noise and find the encoded text in English only.

Answer to this puzzle is available at Page Number - 49

Page 44: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Part 13

- Santhosh Tuppad

Santhosh Tuppad specializes in exploratory testing approach and his coreinterests are security, usability and accessibility amidst other quality criteria.Santhosh loves writing and he has a blog http://tuppad.com/blog. He hasalso authored several articles and crash courses in the past. He attendsconferences and confers with testers he meets. Santhosh is known for hisskills in testing and has won the uTest Top Tester of the Year 2010 apart fromwinning several testing competitions from uTest and Zappers.

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 44 -

Security Testing Tips

In simple terms, vulnerability can be referred to assecurity bug. For more information, look into the glos-sary of OWASP. And disclosure means letting theworld know about the security bug that was found byyou. I am going to share some quick tips to understandhow to report a vulnerability and disclose it responsi-bly which is one of the responsibilities of ethical hacker.Whenever you find security vulnerability in a webapplication, make sure you do not reveal it to anyoneno matter he is your close friend or your boss. Here aresome guidelines or tips that you may utilize in order toreport the findings and disclosing it to the web.1. Proof of concept: Make sure you make a video of thevulnerability and save it in your computer so that youcan disclose it to the web. As you have found it, youown the credits and bragging rights.2. Report it to concerned person: Reporting to the rightperson who can handle this is really important. Theremay be rogue insiders and may misuse this report ifsent to the wrong person in the company.3. Disclosure: Do responsible disclosure and this meansthat you will let the world know about the vulnerabili-ty only after its fixation by the developers in the com-pany.4. Do not sell the data: It may be tempting for you tosell the data to the competitor of the victimized busi-

ness however; it is not ethical for you to sell the datawhile you report the vulnerability to the concernedperson and get it fixed. Also, it is unethical for you tosave the data in your computer and use it for yourpersonal purpose or commercial.5. Bragging rights: It is a personal choice of an individ-ual to publicize on the web about finding the vulnera-bility. Some people disclose it as bragging rights whilesome people just don’t.There are organizations like CERT, NULL and othersthrough which you can submit the vulnerability andthe members of organization will take care of it whilecommunicating to the concerned person. You can alsotrack the status. However, there might be a delayedresponse and I personally have faced a delay in termsof a year or two. Also, product owners are not muchserious about security vulnerabilities [Especially inIndia in my experience], and you need to keep doingfollow-up.Last but not least, be very much careful before youmake your hands dirty, be aware of the cyber laws inyour country and take necessary precautions to notland in jail or get heavy fine for violating the laws.

Vulnerability Reporting & Disclosure Tips

Page 45: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

http://www.facebook.com/TestingCircus

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 45 -

Like our facebook pageto follow all our posts

and updates.

Page 46: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Learn SahiStep by Step

Sahi Tool Tutorials - brought to you by Sahi Team

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 46 -

Page 47: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Here we look at extracting text of a div whose visible text changes completely.For example, let us say there is a div that identifies the total number of items added to a shoppingcart. Here, the total represents the complete text and can change dynamically depending on howmany items were added.This requirement can be solved as follows.

1. We need to identify the div first, to retrieve its text.Sahi identifies a div through the visible text, by default. But since this keeps changing dynamical-ly, it cannot be used to identify the element.

So we need to use one of the following methods to get a unique identifier.

o Use one of the Alternatives from the Alternatives: dropdown in the Controller Record tab,which does not change when the visible text changes.

o Or identify the element in relation to some other anchor element using a Relation API such thatthe identifier remains unique.

2. Once we have the unique element identifier, use _getText() to get the visible text of the element.

Example:

var $text = _getText(_div("/someclass/"));

// Here the div is identified by a regular expression matching the class name. The class nameuniquely identifies the element here.

How do I extract partial text that changes dynamically?

This case is slightly different from the one above. Here the entire text does not change, but only partof it.Let us look at a couple of examples.Example 1: An Amount div that shows "Rs 600", where the amount 600 is variable. The text will al-ways contain "Rs" however. We want to extract the amount, i.e. 600.

Example 2: A Page indicator div that shows "Page 2 of 5". Here 2 and 5 are variable but the rest of thecontent is not. We want to extract the current page number, i.e. 2 and the total pages i.e. 5.

How to extract visible text of a div thatchanges dynamically?

- Narayan RamanTutorial - 11

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 47 -

Page 48: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Example 1

Consider a div's visible text shows Rs 600. We wish to extract 600 from it.This is how we can do it.

· Sahi identifies a div through the visible text, by default. The main problem is in identifying the divsince the amount can keep changing. So the div cannot be identified as _div("Rs 600") since 600 isvariable.So use one of the following methods to get a unique identifier.

o Since part of the text does not change, see if you can use a regular expression on the unchangedtext to uniquely identify the div. Example:_div("/Rs/").

o If there is another div containing "Rs", then we cannot reliably identify our divas _div("/Rs/") since there is more than one div containing "Rs".So try to identify the div in relation to some other anchor element using a Relation API suchthat the identifier remains unique.Example: We may be able to identify this as _div("/Rs/", _in(<some othercontainer>)) where <some other container> identifies a container element, say another div.

o Or use an alternative for the div which does not change (Look at the Alternatives dropdown inthe Recorder tab of the controller)

· Once the div is identified, use _getText.

· Once the text is identified, use the _extract API to extract the partial text.

Working code:var $amount = _getText(_div("/Rs/"));// Assuming that _div("/Rs/") uniquely identifies the div. $amount is now "Rs 600"

var $number = parseInt(_extract($amount, "/Rs (.*)/", true));

// $number is now "600"

Example 2

Another example would be to extract the current page number and total pages from a PageIndicatordiv that says "Page 2 of 5". This div can be identified as _div("/Page .* of/").

Working code:

var $str = _getText("_div("/Page .* of/")"); // $str => "Page 2 of 5"

var $pages = _extract($str, "/Page (.*) of (.*)/", true); // $pages is an array

var $currentPageNumber = parseInt($pages[0]);

var $numPages = parseInt($pages[1]);

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 48 -

Page 49: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Connect withSAHI Team -https://twitter.com/_sahi

http://www.facebook.com/sahi.software

Narayan Raman is thefounder, CEO of Tyto Soft-ware Pvt. Ltd., a Bengalurubased software productscompany specializing issoftware automation prod-ucts. Narayan is the authorof Sahi, an award winning

open source web test automation tool. He hasover 13 years of experience in the industry andholds a B. Tech degree in Chemical Engineeringfrom IIT Bombay. Tyto Software, started in 2008,helps organizations simplify and achieve successin their test automation process. Tyto is now asmall, successfully growing company.

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 49 -

Answer for this month’s puzzle:"this is a puzzle" is correct answer and can be solved by putting the original text into a hex decoder.You will get úß# 1#ÚúÚÁ'7�q(s�¬#B4# this is a puzzleúÒ42B4# and you can observe the intelligibleplaintext.

Page 50: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Thinking what to do with your career?

We can HELP

www.TalentPlusPlus.com

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 50 -

Page 51: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Tools Journal Testing Corner

Testing Circus in exclusivepartnership with Tools Journal(http://toolsjournal.com) presentsthe Tools Journal Testing Corner.

1. 5 Testing Trends Observed In2013 And The Way Forward

2. Functional & PerformanceTesting Services Worth Watching

3. useMango: An Innovative TestAutomation Tool For ERPApplications

"Thank You" to all subscribers who have joined usand have been giving us some good feedback. Mostof all Thank you "Testing Circus" for providing usa good platform to shout our views .

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 51 -

About Us:A start up journal and aspiring socialcommunity with an aim to gain anddistribute knowledge on softwaretools and concepts in Testing, Agile,Cloud, Mobile and EnterpriseIntegration.http://www.toolsjournal.com

With over 500 products listed withquality articles, product ownerinterviews, we are moving swiftly tolaunch product editorial/userreviews, community module in next2 months.

Connect With Us

@toolsjournal

www.toolsjournal.com

www.facebook.com/toolsjournal

Thank You

Testing Circus & Tools Journal

Page 52: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

ToolsJournal core members sat over to identify theprevailing testing trends of the year about to be over ina few days, 2013. We at ToolsJournal also tried to assesshow deep these trends have percolated into the testingsphere and how things would be like moving forward.Here is the ToolsJournal take on the Testing Trends of2013 and beyond.

Crowd Sourced Testing

The practice of getting the software tested by the crowdis something that is not new, how about the beta versionof the tools provided by the tool suppliers? But I wouldsay the practice has caught up this year as the‘intermediary service providers’ which act as a linkbetween the masses having testing capabilities, and theenterprises who need these services, have gainedtraction. Moreover the inundation of the market withmobile devices and the cloud technologies is a strongreason why this type of testing is gaining popularity.

As of now the CrowdSourced testing services are beingused for testing of web and mobile apps. I am sure aswe step into the new year the trend is going to catch up

further, more so because many new mobile OperatingSystems are coming into picture. But does this trend hasthe potential to go beyond web and mobile?

Exploratory Testing

The art of testing the software by exploring it based onthe instincts and skills of the individual testers withoutfollowing a fixed testing procedure has a lot of potential.Exploratory Testing has the ability to unearth defectswhich do not surface even after repeated testing ofproducts. Though a random affair, the practice isgaining acceptance among testers and managers owingto the benefits, awareness created by proponents likeCem Kaner, Michael Bolton and James Bach andevolution of Exploratory Testing in the form of ‘SessionBased Test Management(SBTM)’ to support SBTM avariety of tools are available for recoding of test sessionsto reproduce the defect causing steps.

So what progress has been made this year? Though thevalue it holds had been gauged by the testingcommunity, it appears Exploratory Testing is still amatter of choice, and not a mandatory practice in everyorganization

Mobile Application Testing

Many tools have upgraded to support Mobileapplication testing in their portfolio. But it seems MobileApplication Testing has become limited to Android andiOS and to some extent Windows OS.

The time has come for the Mobile App testing to comeout of the wraps of Operating System support, tosupport for devices of multiple form factors includingwearables like watches and glasses, in-vehicleinfotainment systems, varying screen resolutionsranging with the price of devices. Though Mobile App

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 52 -

5 Testing Trends Observed In2013 And The Way Forward

Page 53: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

testing has become a norm in 2013, it has to grow outof the mobile operating system cocoon in the next year.

Availability of Cloud Based Testing Services

Every tool has a corresponding cloud based variant toit. Most of the functional testing tools have stuck to theon-premise mode like Froglogic Squish GUI Tester,Telerik Test Studio, and Ranorex. The tool suppliers feelrecording of the test cases can best be achieved withon-premise version of the tool. But availability of thetest devices on the cloud for execution of repeated testsservices like Perfecto MobileCloud Performance, usageof the cloud for generation of load instead of on-premiseservers has geared up. Many of the Test Managementtools have started hosting cloud based services and

some are designed from scratch keeping the distributedteams in mind, like the Zephyr.

The trend has been completely soaked by the toolssuppliers. What remains is the total swap of on-premisesolutions with cloud based alternative,

Consolidation of Testing Services

It seems that the tools supplier’s focus of the currentyear is availability of consolidated testing services viatie-ups, acquisitions or enhanced version of tools. Itmakes sense, as all the testing needs of the testers arefulfilled without switching on between tools.

Going forward I feel the trend is going to catch upfurther and we will see more such solutions coming up.

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 53 -

Page 54: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

We juststepped into2014 and thetime has cometo look back att h edevelopmentsover the year toassess where

the technology is heading towards and what surprisesare about to unwrap in the next year. If we take a lookat the testing tools segments, I feel there is a wave ofconsolidation of functional testing and performancetesting solutions to provide a well-rounded solution.

The integration support which was available as plug-insin many of the tools has now converted into out of thebox support due to partnerships, acquisitions andenhancements.

Tricentis and Neotys announced a partnership to offerTricentis' enterprise-testing software and Neotys'NeoLoad load-testing software as a single solution. Asa result of this partnership customers will have theability to conduct complete functional and load testingacross globally distributed enterprise and mobileapplications, reducing the time, risk and cost to deploycritical business applications.

Telerik already provides a Functional Testing tool in theform of Test Studio which offered Performance andLoad Testing services using Fiddler web debuggingproxy as the base. Earlier this year Telerik acquiredFiddler and roped in its creator Eric Lawrence to focuscompletely on the development of Fiddler with financialsupport from Telerik.

Perfecto MobileCloud Services which already includedMobileCloud Interactive – for testing Mobile apps,MobileCloud Automation – for execution of AutomatedTesting and MobileCloud Monitoring – for end to endmonitoring of mobile web services was augmented withMobileCloud Performance services which could enableenterprises to gain insight into mobile service behaviouracross a broad range of business scenarios.

While these are the new developments that havehappened last year, some solutions already provide thispowerful combination of Functional Testing andPerformance Testing. SOASTA provides cloud basedMobile Functional and Performance Testing solutionfor Android and iOS devices. eggPlant provider of crossplatform, cross technology functional testing servicesfor desktop, mobile and web application also providesperformance testing services. SilkTest andSilkPerformer are tools known to everyone.

It seems majority of the functional testing tool providershave performance testing in their agenda. Some havealready achieved it and others are on the path to achievethe same. But it is a true delight for end users if a singletool meets out, if not all, majority of their applicationtesting needs. With the outburst of mobile devices ofmultiple shape, size, hardware & software it bundledsoftware testing tools become all the more important.

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 54 -

Functional & PerformanceTesting Services Worth

Watching

Page 55: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

To Subscribe

Click Here

Still relying onreading

Testing Circusfrom tweets& facebook

updates?Subscribe

just with youremail id and

get themagazine

delivered toyour email

every month,free!Testing Circus

www.testingcircus.com

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 55 -

Page 56: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

Did you get to know of useMango? A company foundedin 2011 as Infuse License Services Limited andrebranded as useMango limited in 2013. useMango wascreated to explore and develop game changing andground breaking Application Lifecycle Management(ALM) solutions that could offer new levels of quality,ease of use and affordability.

The first product in the portfolio included testautomation tool useMango, designed for use in thetesting of enterprise applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel and SAP.The key objective of the tool is to industrialise thedelivery of testing through standardisation,repeatability, high levels of automation and robustness.

useMango makes use of an innovative applicationscanning technique that enables users to createcustomised components for their application in seconds.Users can simply rescan when there are productchanges and the components get updated. Along withscanned components, useMango has a large repository

of prebuilt components which support a large varietyof applications and functions.

Reusability is a core focus of the tool; tool users cancombine existing sets of components into a singlecomponent for instant re-use. useMango can beintegrated straight into the industry standard testautomation frameworks, giving users the all the featuresof existing toolset in addition to useMango™.

useMango had been in news recently owing to therelease of version 1.3 which introduces support forsupports the SAP GUI platform and developmenttoolset SAP Web Dynpro.

Architect of the useMango tool and founder ofuseMango, Nalin Parbhu said: "The release ofuseMango 1.3 and support for SAP applications is animportant and exciting step in our developmentroadmap. Our aim at useMango Ltd is to have all majorERP applications covered from a test perspective andwe are well on the way to making that happen."

It is quite notable that useMango™ was one among thethree finalists in the ‘Testing Innovator of the Year’category for ‘The European Software Testing Awards2013’.

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 56 -

useMango: An InnovativeTest Automation Tool For

ERP Applications

Page 57: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 57 -

The last big thing of software testing has emerged

Moolya’s Super Glue

Approved by ISTQB

The International Software TesterQualitykilling Board which hassuperior testers in its side hasapproved this product for sale allover the world. They certify thatthis won’t damage any tester as

much as their certifications do.

“We wish we had known aboutMoolya Super Glue an year ago, we would havewaved a good bye to one of our product before

it was launched. We had to wave a goodbye after its launch”

– Sorry Stage, Co-Founder,

“Thisis an earth shattering product.

We were billing our customers basedon head count of the project and they were

getting back to us asking – does the head containbrains?. We don’t need to answer that question

anymore. We are now billing our customersbased on hand count (for applying Moolya

Super Glue to the display panel)”

– Chief Minister,

Read more about Moolya's Super Glue -

Click Here

Page 58: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 58 -

Page 59: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 59 -

Page 60: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 60 -

Advertise with us.

***Advertisement rate starting $50/per month.

http://www.testingcircus.com/advertise

Testing Circus is even loved by testerswho do not read blogs and do not havetwitter account. Get connected to thetesters workforce across the globe.

$50 Onl

y

We are offering huge discounts for 12 months regular ad booking.

Page 61: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

QTP Code Corner

Assumption: We have a table named Customer with two columns "Customer_ID" and "Customer_Name"

Create a system DSN "MyConnection"(Please refer previous edition’s QTP Code Corner to see steps to create DSN)

Code:Set con=createobject("adodb.connection")con.Open"MyConnection"Set rs=con.Execute("Select * from customer")rs.MoveFirst

Do while not rs.EOFmsgbox rs("Customer_ID")msgbox rs(Customer_Name")rs.MoveNext

Loop

Problem: How to connect QTP script with DB to fetch test data?

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 61 -

- Jaijeet Pandey

Jaijeet Pandey has over 7 years of experience in Application development,Maintenance & Testing. He has developed different automation frameworksfor financial & publication applications since last 5 years. He is associatedwith various initiatives in NCR region of India with sound knowledge ofQTP, ALM & Load Runner (HP automation tools). Jaijeet provides QTPtrainings on weekends via classroom and online mode.

Page 62: Testing Circus Vol5 Edition01 January 2014

With Testing Circus’ new Community site you will be able to connect with other testers, join special interestgroups, discussing using our forum feature, read articles and download our monthly magazine without anyhassle.

Few tips to make the registration process easy -1. Navigate to My Testing Circus > Register from the main Menu and register with your information. If you

have gravatar.com account, use the same email id during registration in Testing Circus.2. After the registration, you will get an activation link to complete the registration.3. Once you activate your account, LOGIN to the site at least once using the navigation My Testing Circus

> Login Or from the login widget from any page side bar. If you do not login at least once, we will notdisplay your profile in the member section.

4. By default you will have a random profile picture, if you have not used email same as gravatar.comaccount. If you want to change the default profile picture, create a gravatar.com account with the sameemail which you used in Testing Circus. Upload own picture in gravatar.com. We will sync the profilepicture from gravatar automatically.

Remember -● Your login id is the user name you created during the registration (not email id)● If you do not login at least once to the site, we will not show you as member in member section.● To change profile picture, upload your own picture in gravatar.com

Quick Links -http://www.testingcircus.com/register/http://www.testingcircus.com/login/If you have any questions/suggestions, feel free to contact us.

www.TestingCircus.com January 2014 - 62 -

How to Register and Use

Testing Circus Community Site