Whats wrong with my inputs for dates here?

 

start date: 3/1/1999

End date: 8/25/2000

the validation error: Date must be equal to or after Start Date (mm/dd/yyyy).

 

 

 

Role of Dev and Test

Stop, If You Want To…

I agree on thoughts in this post. The testers should be really looking for the dataflow and analyze the root cause of data loss, the security glitches, the performance issues and so on. Last couple years, I switched over to end to test testing space in enterprise commerce testing over 20 to 30 applications in a data flow sequence. When I used to be on vertical applications, the integration played very limited role. But then I wanted to expand my horizon to see how the data flow worked between the integrated systems.

I transitioned over to being a QA data analyst from being a vertical tester. Sure, my automation contribution has reduced off late, but still thinking about ways to automate the end to end context, However, the point is I learned a whole lot about making integration between various applications seamless, which is a daunting task.

It becomes more so important to have the thorough E2E testing in supply chain management and interacting with umpteen number of systems from Quote to Contracts to Orders to Invoicing to Fulfillments eligibility and user access. Connect the dots and that would certainly end at what users could do and the kind of data they process day in and day out . Lets take an example that you booked 4 tickets on XYZ Airlines to travel international. What if the instructions to baggage systems were wrong? what if your transition in 2nd leg had only 3 tickets and missing one for your family member? What if their meal preferences were messed up on the 2nd or 3rd leg where you would be so hungry traveling long distance? and several other what if’s. The Data flow analysis and testing plays crucial role that may or may not be efficiently automated. The goals is to see the same data flowing across the systems. Most vertical application level testing intends to mock up the data as input source, and that may or may not comprise the same set of data flowing from upstream and that wouldn’t provide the good coverage there.

Testers should be adding value testing the right things that matters to the end users. And Developers writing the tests for the functional checking.

Rollback Strategy…

Rollback testing is one of the hot topics in the software application deployment where you push the updates into production frequently or even if once in a while bug talking about number of applications and number of patches into production.

What is your Rollback Strategy?

How would you plan for one?

what is your understanding of application Rollback at deployment?

Nice story about Software quality – a Fable

http://www.ayeconference.com/test-trimming-a-fable-about-testing/ 

Fable about knowingly taking shortcuts and not adhering to the quality of the outcome…

read the rest and enjoy the rhubarb cake…

NaN error on weather forecast in place of date?

 

Looking at the weather forecast for next 10 days, indicates the NaN (not a Number) error on page

Interesting … is there some testing going on the production or is just that the data not available and the computing or rendering made it as NaN?

Purchase price different from Advertised price?

Interesting to see the purchase price different from the advertised price on the same site between two pages…

This company has put up a front page banners saying 80% off on 100pk DVD spindle that turns out to $9.99/- . Proceed further to place an order for this item, the item results page shows $14.48.

Now proceed further to check out page or the shopping cart, it shows the $14.48 and other summary of delivery charge etc…

Amount inconsistency? Where might this have gone wrong?
data Configuration?
intentional?
latency in price points?  so the images for advertisement did not have this price?

 

 

Looking at the coupon page, i realized if the offer was In-Store only, and went back to the home page to check if it was available online too. Well, it looks like it does the advt shows “in store and online” .

#WhatIsWronghere #PricingBug #AmImissingSomething

ps: i am not posting this to pin point an issue on the site here. The intent is to probe other software professional visitors here to think what might have happened and how such scenarios can be prevented in their work situations.

Tags: Software quality, User Experience

Great learning on TFS2010 and warehouse ….

I have been playing around the TFS2010 (Team foundation Server) and the way it manages the data between the operational database and its counterpart Data Warehouse. It has been a long time since I had ever tried the warehouse concepts and learning some of those concepts…

At the same time Microsoft Team Foundation Server also offers the Client side of the tools like Test and Lab Manager and they are part of the Microsoft Visual Studio Test Professional SKU. Being a v1.0 of this client utility, obviously we can say there are some limitations, but on the positive side there are great features to leverage with Source control, work item associations, work item management overall and several others…

Computer account trust relationship – Excel to Analysis Server

 

This issue popped up on my computer several weeks ago on my Excel instance when  connecting to the SQL Analysis services. Enquired several people and searched several blogs.

Here is how I had installed the applications on my machine .

Client config: 
                Windows 7   [7600]
                Office 2010 
                VS 2010 ultimate

Sequence of installation, if that matters:
     Windows 7 –> Office 2010 –>  VS2010 –>  uninstall/reinstall Office 2010.

This is pretty straight forward, right? I don’t see any conflicts here of course, and the add-ins that were required were still in place. And I thought i didn’t have to reinstall VS2010 at this time.

Here is how i would connect the Excel instance to an Analysis services

1. Launch Excel
2. Data –> from other sources –> Analysis services
 
3. Provide the server name on data connection dialog, and connect if you are connecting with windows authentication
  
4. takes a while and boom – gives this following error message:

“The following system error occurred: The Security database on the server does not have the computer account for this workstation trust relationship”

5. well, apparently i tried logging in with the same user account but via providing UserName and the Password.
6. it would go through the first level ok and gives the list of cubes and perspectives available
7. select one of those and proceed to create a Pivot –> now again, gives the same error message as above….

It is at times frustrating when the message doesn’t say exactly what is wrong and how it can be fixed. It gets more frustrating if the issue wasn’t resolved for longer time.

Well anyways, finally found the solution – who would have thought the issue was something completely *repeat* completely unrelated in nature with an Excel application connecting to a SQL Analysis service, and where did Live ID assistant come into picture.

Yes, thanks to the following MSDN forum post – http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqlanalysisservices/thread/b058635f-6d3e-4240-a555-1dbd945ae25a – that said three options
1. to update the kernel on the Server
2. check the windows Live ID assistant on client
3. connect as NTLM from the client machine

…and recommended #1. Well, why should I be looking at the server level configuration when i know another person could connect to  the same server and i was unable to. Well, I was also able to connect to the same server from different client machines and not from this current machine…  So, i chose option #2..

yes, uninstalled the Windows Live Id Sign in Assistant:
1. Launch Control Panel –> Programs and Features
2. look for Windows LiveID sign in Assistant
3. right click and uninstall
4. if cautions close all the applications suggested (Outlook, Visual Studio, etc)
5. Restart the machine
6. go over the Excel –> Analysis service connection process
7. wow! connects through and able to retrieve the data..

ufff! this hard just because the message was not that friendly and the event log didn’t have the right message?

WTANZ 07 – Web page automation with Ruby / Watir

As usual, I was not sure if I was going to login tonight. However, just made it somehow. The first question I was asked was if i have done the homework. For not looking at the mission completely and not being sure of joining, obviously I had not done my homework.

Oliver got me started with links and pointers right away. I had to do the following:

1. Download Ruby and Install http://watir.com/installation/#win
2. go over the wiki for some details to update and install further components
3. install Watir.

Mission for this session can be found here: http://weekendtesting.com/discussions?vasthtmlaction=viewtopic&t=126.0 

it took a while with several glitches to get through, but got back to track with the session. Oliver walked us through basic commands to navigate the page, locate the page controls, etc. and put the exercise for the team to put the learning into practice. hmmm.. great approach, the lessons have to be applied immediately to get better at it and theoretical knowledge is not good enough.

as we went along, we tried several commands and controls to get hand of it.

What I learned:
> certainly a great start learning another tool/language
> teamwork in helping each other getting upto speed
> got some hang of ruby/watir which i had never used before
> while following the chat, i tried copying the commands so i could get upto speed and worked well at the same time.
> I still couldn’t get the regular expression search working, i need to try it over again.
> attend  another similar session 🙂

my sample code:

>> b = Watir::Browser.new
>> b.goto("http://weekendtesting.com")
>> b.text.include?"Forum"
>> b.link(:text,"Forum").click
>> b.text.include?"Next weekend Testing Session"
>> b.text.include?"Forum"
>> b.text.include?"Next Weekend"
>> b.text_field(:id,"log").set "<username>"
>> b.text_field(:id,"pwd").set "<password>"
>> b.checkbox(:id,"rememberme").click
>> b.button(:value,"Login").click
>> b.text_field(:id,"s4").set "comments via Watir on july 24 WTANZ 07"
>> b.button(:value, "Submit Comment").click
>> b.link(:text, "Next Weekend Testing Session").click
>> b.link(:text, "WTANZ session #07 – Test Automation with Watir").click
>> b.text.include?"Reply"
>> b.link(:text, "Reply").click
>> b.text_field(:name,"message").set "Reply WTANZ 07 message via Watir on july>
>> b.button(:value, "Submit").click

What would have helped me in this session:
> a little homework would have helped, but with the team’s sharing all through the session, helped get back on track
> when working on Web page automation, getting to know the control properties
> using home computer, i didn’t have the IE web developer add-in or fiddler tool  installed, and having those would help get the control properties sooner.
> the posts, and search worked well on this session, I need to venture into validating if the actions really took place in addition to visual verification.

There was a great debriefing / retrospection session after the learning and applying tasks. There were conversations around Watir, Cucumber, Selenium, and other tools. No, i haven’t used any of these. It would be interesting to know how these several tools scale up to the robust web automation.

There is always a challenge of changing the Control IDs and Names in regular coding cycle. How would a tool cope up with such changes. We had once taken an approach of keeping these in configuration / resource file, so we wouldn’t have to change the code with any of those controls changes.

Overall, it was a great session. Thank you Marlena (@marlenac), Oliver (@Oliver_NZ) and the team.

How is file transfer rate computed?

Is there a problem here? or am I reading wrong?

i am uploading some files over to the server and the file transfer progress bar indicates the speed as 24.2KB/second and about 29kb of file size remaining to be uploaded. With a simple observation, it should take a little over a second to upload the remaining data. Then, is there a reason for it to compute as over 4minutes as estimated time of file transfer?