HTML 5 is getting out

HTML got renewed for the last 10 years.

• HTML 5 differences from HTML 4
• HTML 5 specification

We should just wait a bit and see how browsers will be dealing with it.

Software Testing Job Market

There was an article in July 2007 about job market for software testers produced by Cem Kaner, Professor of Software Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology. I want to highlight it again here because I found it quite interesting and worth reading at least.

• job market for software testers

Recently I looked into the requirements to the position of QA Engineer and similar ones. Practically all QA positions require development/coding skills.

Quotation from the article: “If you are a tester with some budget for enhancing your education, your best investment might be upgrading your development skills.“

Web Quality Assurance

Here is a basic guideline about how to make the quality of your website better.

• http://www.w3schools.com/quality/default.asp

It’s very basic and very simple but essential to consider when checking website for a quality level or developing a new one.

Learning English: How to improve communication skills

There is one confident way that helps improve communication skills – talk as much as possible. Nowadays, when VoIP is commonly widespread, it becomes much easier to find an english speaking partner. The most popular tool that allows to communicate via voice with someone over the Internet is Skype

There are quite a few services that gather people from all over the world and help them communicate between each other. One of such ones is kantalk.com

It’s a skype-based service with a convenient interface. You can find there a lot of video tutorials, records and so on.

And here is one more great web-site for english learners – http://esl.about.com/ – English as 2nd language.

So have fun!

YouTube stuff: Software development – for real

Just have a look at this youtube movie!

Source

Resources about Performance testing

In this post I’m going to share a set of URLs about performance testing.

There is a wonderful monthly on-line journal “Software Test and Performance“. It’s free.

There are interesting articles on StikyMinds.com:

“Web Load Test Planning”
Summary:
Predicting how a particular Web site will respond to a specific load is a real challenge. Here are three basic steps necessary to design highly realistic and accurate Web site load tests.

” The Science and Art of Web Site Load Testing”
Summary:
Web site load testing is very different from traditional load testing and requires new tools and new approaches. Most Web site load tests are wildly inaccurate and unrealistic and consequently useless or dangerously misleading. Useful load testing requires loading a Web site with different scenarios, at different load points, and monitoring all the key components. Approach Web site load testing as 80% science and 20% art.

“Web Page Response Time 101”
Summary:
Online sites lose billions of dollars every year due to sluggish performance speed and user bailouts. Here are four laws of Web site performance that will help you understand response rates and deal with your “abandonment issues.”

Articles, Columns and Papers on PerfTestPlus, Inc.

Also I would recommend reading “Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications” .

J.D. Meier, Carlos Farre, Prashant Bansode, Scott Barber, and Dennis Rea
Microsoft Corporation

September 2007

This guide shows you an end-to-end approach for implementing performance testing. Whether you are new to performance testing, or looking for ways to improve your current performance testing approach, you will find insights that you can tailor for your specific scenarios.

Download the guide:
The Final Release is Available! Start using the guide today, while we continue to make improvements.

• Download the Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications Guide

MySQL: Tracking slow queries

While running performance testing against some web application we should measure not only such metrics as page download time, hits per second and so on, but also those ones that relate to a database. It’s obvious that the time of queries execution has a great impact on the first metrics like page download time.

For such cases MySQL has a very handy ability to track slow queries. For more info please visit http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/slow-query-log.html

Also there is a simple program called MySQL Proxy that can monitor, analyze or transform communication between application and server. Please go here to get more info.

And it’s useful to know about MySQL Profiles. Here is an article “Using the new MySQL Query Profiler“

How to use Quality Center Open Test Architecture API

Recently I’ve encountered a task: to create a script that would connect to QC and run a test set. It was expected that the execution of this script will be initiated by Outlook. The main idea was – a notification comes to my inbox and Outlook runs the script that runs a test set.

Standards for software testing

Recently I’ve asked myself about the standards in software testing industry.

I’ve looked for it in the The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE.

There are:

• IEEE 1008, a standard for unit testing
• IEEE 1012, a standard for Software Verification and Validation
• IEEE 1028, a standard for software inspections
• IEEE 1044, a standard for the classification of software anomalies
• IEEE 1044-1, a guide to the classification of software anomalies
• IEEE 1233, a guide for developing system requirements specifications
• IEEE 730, a standard for software quality assurance plans
• IEEE 1061, a standard for software quality metrics and methodology
• IEEE 12207, a standard for software life cycle processes and life cycle data
• BSS 7925-1, a vocabulary of terms used in software testing
• BSS 7925-2, a standard for software component testing
• IEEE 829-1998, a standard for Software Test Documentation

To get the template you should be a member of ieee.org and it’s not free.

But there are some descriptions of them. Here is the link: http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/std_public/description/se/

And here is the more detailed content of IEEE 829-1998 http://www.gerrardconsulting.com/tkb/guidelines/ieee829/main.html

Sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_829
• http://standards.ieee.org/

Love

I took this picture on Lake Balaton (Hungary), Tihan’ peninsula (2007)