Testing an Application without documents

I have taken the Stefan's dashboard just to show how the exploratory testing can be done, as recently i met a person(tester) as our conversion went as follows

Tester : Do you know anything about Win Runner, QTP
TesterWorld(ME) : They are automational tools used for checkinging the functionality
Tester : That answer any one can say who are in testing field. Tell me are you manual / automation tester.

Our conversation went top to the hill, as he argued that Automation will re place manual testing, I got annoyed with his reasonless argument and I just asked a simple question. Can you test any appliccation that has no functionality/specification document).Tester : No, i cant test. how can we test with out any of the documents.

This was the answer he gave me, i really pitty for most of the people who are not skilled testers and still acts as if they are senior QA, etc. So this post is for those people who are really intrested and passionate about testing.

I have taken the Stefans Dash board as it really looks great and made me exciting while i was testing for this post, (http://abouttesting.blogspot.com/2008/06/testing-dashboard.html) . This made me really exciting while seeing the sample screen shot in the above mentioned post and i downloaded the file with out reading the whole post

First thought regarding the Dashboard :
when I unzipped it, i found a html file, excel sheet, two images, and one sample screen shot. I opened the HTML file AND FOUND no values are getting populated in dashboard, I was shocked why is this not getting opened, i thought some of the files must have been deleted intensionally.

Second thought regarding the dashboard :
After some time later, again i went into the folder and opened the html File in notepad, unfortunately i am poor at programming languages but i gussed the path that was given in html file, that excel sheet has to be placed in C drive and then immediately i did that and again i opened the html file. Hurray it got opened. Offcourse the path can also be changed to as desired location and can be given in the notepad, inorder to make the dashboard to be worked.

Third thought regarding the dashboard :
So i tried in doing couple of changes, just by status to pass to fail, changing version and adding comments everythings seems to be cool and working fine, then i used some of diffrent scenarios.
Sceanrio 1
Steps to reproduce:
1. Open the "autteststatus.html" file, and click on the change status button
2. In the comments give as 'test' and try to save a java script error is populated.

Scenario 2
Steps to reproduce:
1. Open the "autteststatus.html" file, and click on the change status button
2. Now give the word in double quotes in comments column and save, you can observe that comments column is saved, now again click on the change button you can observe that, there is no data present for the changes you done previously

Scenario 3
Steps to reproduce:
1. Open the "autteststatus.html" file, and click on the change status button
2. Enter the comments column with html tags like test and save you can find that it is saved and displayed as bold. Now again click on the change button, now ive the name in html tags like and save, changes were saved successfully but text i changed is not visible, now click on change button then you can find that text is present as given but it is not visible after we savee save.

Scenario 4:
Steps to reproduce:
1. Open the "autteststatus.xls" file, and click on the change status button
2. Give the comments as 'test' note the costumer and version no. now open the html file and observe that starting quote is misssing in the column.
These were some of the scenarios Please be passioante about the work you do, that will make you rich and wealthy.

"Automation or Manual testing"

While this seems to be quite abnormal if you ask in what we want typo to work before coming to the testing carrier. In Hyderabad, the teaching culture of software testing has changed/seems to be changed a little bit like previously it was a struggle between our friends(upcoming testers) that automation means QTP, win runner etc where I used to object that though this is not the means but just to have a regular basis discussion. When I was into this testing carrier I asked a lot of people (An upcoming testers) about these two terms “Manual testing or automation testing”, every time we start we do have a several arguments and in the end we do have nothing but just to smile on each other faces which makes that we are an upcoming testers.
In my basis Automation is just an added skill to the Tester, but not just that it is the world. Without the manual there is no automation and off course there are vice versa in some cases. Automation itself is not just the tools like “QTP, Win runner, Silk runner” etc. the point is what ever we needed in our regular basis used for testing purpose that reduces time is an automation.. this was the basic of Automation testing.
I do like to give few examples. Let’s have field something like this

FIELD ONE




Conditions : Only 2000 characters will allow.

In such kind of test cases what would someone will do. I saw few people who started to write 2000 characters in a notepad. Which was a waste of time, in order to save time we do have lots of tools like test data generator. Search for them and generate 2000 characters which would prominently save time and increase the productivity. Such tools help us a lot in increasing productivity. Another small example is WORD/emails where we have a spell checker, which is an automated tool where we correct the wrong spellings.
Automation is not just the tools like QTP or win runner, Typically one has to be understand that what ever is needed for automating to increase our productivity is an Automation tool.


NOTE : DEAR UPCOMING TESTER’s This post is especially to increase awareness about the automation or manual. I would really happy if at least one got understood from this post and implement in your daily basis to increase your productivity and don’t forget to leave your comments before you go away from this blog.


SOME OF THE AWSOME SITE :
you will never leave once you are visit these as at some point or the other you always need to increase your productivity

www.testingmentor.com
www.testersdesk.com

Working with STAF (part 2)

Well we have discussed some of the concepts of staf in post WAORKING WITH STAF. NOW we will have some thing interesting interaction by using JMeter.

Now let us know the concepts of Jmeter inorder to go further.

JMeter is a open source tool we can download from the site Apache Jmeter.
Jmeter is a performance tool used for finding the avg. response time, devaition etc parameters like the other tools load runner. The only use of the Jmeter is a open source and also it is a less memory eater when compared to the other tools.

NOW create a test plan according to the manual given in the Apache Jakarata site site itself, After creating a test plan save the file with desired name. LETs go to STAF now.

IF for suppose this file is in the remote system. we can execute this file and and the results can be obtained in our systems. INORDER to do this we have to give the trust levels to the remote systems. There are 5 trust levels, according to each trust level the access is differnet for the remote systems. After giving the trust level. Now we can execute the test plan by making a batch file.

In this Batch file we need the controller where the system we handle load generators where the test case is present, Well, i will make batch file very simple to understand and an idea how to execute the test plan by using the batch file.


REM set the controllers
REM set the load generators
REM set the plan

SET controller= webserver1
SET load = webserver2
SET plan=myplan.jmx

REM checking the STAF connecting to the remote systems

FOR %%H IN (%controller% %load%) DO STAF %%H PING PING

REM executing the test plan using jmeter

for %%H IN (%load%) Do staf %%H PROCESS START SHELL COMMAND C:\jmeter\bin\jmeter-n.cmd C:\jmeter\bin\myplan.jmx

REM copying the results from the remote system to our system

for %%H IN (%load%) Do staf %%H fs copy directory c:\jmeter\bin todirectory c:\logs\ tomachine %controller% EXT log CASEINSENSITIVE


This is a small batch file where we can use staf and make wonders.


Dear Upcoming Testers...

Testers can't go away with "click here,click there and see the result" kind of a thing while testing. Testers always need the "DEEP THINKING" while they test. One of the famous example given by Mr.James Bach which i already mentioned in About test cases. Testers always need Deep thinking.I have spoken with some of the Upcoming testers, they are in situation what is the role of a tester after getting into the company ! i don't want to pinpoint saying that "here goes the wrong so you don't know the role of a tester". I meet some of my friends who are trained like me, we are trained in different schools in different arts of styles but final output we get is knowledge. We also have a discussion several times, what is the job/role of testers in a company ? we always have to compromise by saying one thing or the other in our battle.
And more important most of the upcoming tester think automation means "QTP.LOAD Runner". This is not at all the correct way of thinking, automation includes many concepts to discuss tools and as far as approach. for example spell check in MS Office or in some application can also called as automated way. we have resources and the only thing is we have to improve our knowledge by implementing and sharing it. i got few examples for testers,

f'ing counting

interactive puzzle

The above examples are really awesome and we can also correlate this examples with Testing.

Working with STAF

STAF (software testing automation framework) is designed for reusable components called services. STAF is a remote agent used to control the test on various machines.for making easier to create automated test cases and workloads. it works on Windows,Linux,AS/400,MVS.

Concepts of STAF

1).STAFProc

2).STAF services
a)Internal services are within the STAFProc which means they are always available
and having the constant names.
b)External services are outside the STAFProc which means they are always from
outside for example from the java,c++ etc.
c)Custom services are always the external services then can also be written in our
custom and can be plugged into STAF.

3).Queues and handles

4).Variables

5).Security

6).Submitting Staf requests.

Configuration file:
After installing the Staf, in order to get the access to local machines, trust level has to be given and java sdk is needed for running the staf.


TRUST LEVEL 5 MACHINE tcp://local machine name or ip address.*


you can find the STAF.CFG file in the bin folder of STAF. You can also alter many features in the configuration file like

1).Specify the network interfaces

2).Define operational parameters

3).Define global variables

4).Specify the security access

5).Define startup/shutdown process

6).Enable and configure tracing

7).Register and configure external services

The idea behind STAF is to run a very simple agent on all the machines that participate in the STAF testbed. Every machine can then run services on any other machine, subject to a so-called trust level. In practice, one machine will act as what I called the 'test management' machine, and will coordinate the test runs by sending jobs to the test clients. STAX is one of the services offered on top of the low-level STAF plumbing. It greatly facilitates the distribution of jobs to the test clients and the collection and logging of test results. STAX jobs are XML files spiced up with special tags that contain Python code (actually Jython, but there are no differences for the purpose of this tutorial). This in itself was for us a major reason for choosing STAF over other solutions.