Entries from January 2008 ↓

I have mentioned importance of proper test data in many of my previous articles. Tester should check and update the test data before execution of any test case. In this article I will provide tips on how to prepare test environment so that any important test case will not be missed by improper test data and incomplete test environment setup.

What do I mean by test data?

If you are writing test case then you need input data for any kind of test. Tester may provide this input data at the time of executing the test cases or application may pick the required input data from the predefined data locations. The test data may be any kind of input to application, any kind of file that is loaded by the application or entries read from the database tables. It may be in any format like xml test data, system test data, SQL test data or stress test data.

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This article will help you to learn basic web terminologies. While testing web applications it’s very necessary to know all web technologies. This will increase the test coverage and also the capabilities of web application tester.

This web terminology article is compiled by Meenakshi M. She is working as a Test Engineer and having 3+yrs of experience in Manual and Automation (QTP) testing.

This article basically covers following terminologies:

What is: Internet, www, TCP/IP, HTTP protocol, SSL (Secure socket layer), HTTPS, HTML, Web servers, Web client, Proxy server, Caching, Cookies, Application server, Thin client, Thick client, Daemon, Client side scripting, Server side scripting, CGI, Dynamic web pages, Digital certificates and list of HTTP status codes.

You can download this article on following link:
Web terminologies: Useful for web testers

You can also visit our “Software testing resources” page for other downloadable resources.

We have also updated our “Job section page” with some latest job openings in testing:

• Performance Testing openings
• Manual Testers requirement in Pune

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I hate “Invalid bug” label from developers for the bugs reported by me, do you? I think every tester should try to get his/her 100% bugs resolved. This requires bug reporting skill. See my previous post on “How to write a good bug report? Tips and Tricks” to report bugs professionally and without any ambiguity.

The main reason for bug being marked as invalid is “Insufficient troubleshooting” by tester before reporting the bug. In this post I will focus only on troubleshooting to find main cause of the bug. Troubleshooting will help you to decide whether the ambiguity you found in your application under test is really a bug or any test setup mistake.

Yes, 50% bugs get marked as “Invalid bugs” only due to testers incomplete testing setup. Let’s say you found an ambiguity in application under test. You are now preparing the steps to report this ambiguity as a bug. But wait! Have you done enough troubleshooting before reporting this bug? Or have you confirmed if it is really a bug?

What troubleshooting you need to perform before reporting any bug?

Troubleshooting of:

• What’s not working?
• Why it’s not working?
• How can you make it work?
• What are the possible reasons for the failure?

Answer for the first question “what’s not working?” is sufficient for you to report the bug steps in bug tracking system. Then why to answer remaining three questions? Think beyond your responsibilities. Act smarter, don’t be a dumb person who only follow his routine steps and don’t even think outside of that. You should be able to suggest all possible solutions to resolve the bug and efficiency as well as drawbacks of each solution. This will increase your respect in your team and will also reduce the possibility of getting your bugs rejected, not due to this respect but due to your troubleshooting skill.

Before reporting any bug, make sure it isn’t your mistake while testing, you have missed any important flag to set or you might have not configured your test setup properly.

Troubleshoot the reasons for the failure in application. On proper troubleshooting report the bug. I have complied a troubleshooting list. Check it out – what can be different reasons for failure.

Reasons of failure:
1) If you are using any configuration file for testing your application then make sure this file is upto date as per the application requirements: Many times some global configuration file is used to pick or set some application flags. Failure to maintain this file as per your software requirements will lead to malfunctioning of your application under test. You can’t report it as bug.

2) Check if your database is proper: Missing table is main reason that your application will not work properly.
I have a classic example for this: One of my projects was querying many monthly user database tables for showing the user reports. First table existence was checked in master table (This table was maintaining only monthly table names) and then data was queried from different individual monthly tables. Many testers were selecting big date range to see the user reports. But many times it was crashing the application as those tables were not present in database of test machine server, giving SQL query error and they were reporting it as bug which subsequently was getting marked as invalid by developers.

3) If you are working on automation testing project then debug your script twice before coming to conclusion that the application failure is a bug.

4) Check if you are not using invalid access credentials for authentication.

5) Check if software versions are compatible.

6) Check if there is any other hardware issue that is not related to your application.

7) Make sure your application hardware and software prerequisites are correct.

8 ) Check if all software components are installed properly on your test machine. Check whether registry entries are valid.

9) For any failure look into ‘system event viewer’ for details. You can trace out many failure reasons from system event log file.

10) Before starting to test make sure you have uploaded all latest version files to your test environment.

These are all small and common mistakes but can mostly impact on your relations and credibility in your team. When you will find that your bug is marked as invalid and the invalid bug reason is from above mentioned list – it will be a silly mistake and it will definitely hurt you. (At least to me!)

Share mistakes done by you while reporting any bug. This will help other readers to learn from your experience!

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The most frequently asked questions to me till date are “What is the future of software testing business?” “Should I consider software testing as my career option?” – Now you don’t need to ask these question to me any more. See the good news below.

Infosys Chief Executive and Managing Director, Mr. Kris Gopalakrishnan estimated global software testing business to reach $13 Billion by 2010. Out of these approximately half of the testing work will be outsourced to India – according to Mr. Gopalakrishnan. That’s great news for Indian software testers.

Mr.Gopalakrishnan was speaking in inauguration of International software testing conference in Bangalore organized by STeP-IN. The conference was aimed to discuss on various software testing opportunities and future of Indian test community.

Currently Indian software testing community is the largest in the industry and hence there is tremendous business competition in Indian corporations. This competition finally leads to quality work and this is helping India to satisfy global customers. India is having immense talent and customers are coming to India for superior work quality.

Software testers and analysts are now key part of any product team. Indian IT giants like Infosys is deriving upto 10 per cent of revenue from software testing services and significantly growing each year.

Irrespective of software testing global or Indian business I have always suggested candidates to choose your career according to your interest. One can make a good career in any field if you have interest and goal to pioneer in that field. Without interest not a single career option will work for you.

So tighten the belts – learn new technologies on software testing, continuously update your knowledge and don’t even think about future of software testing market!

What’s that you say?

This a guest post from author “Sharath R Bhat”

What do we mean by a great software testing team?

“A team with a star player is a good team, but a team without one is a great
team.” – Author unknown.

The above quote from Author leads us to discussion on great teams and its characteristics. The article stems from experience gained while working for different teams, observation of team members behavior under time pressure coupled with complex nature of project.This holds good for Software Testing team which finds prominence place in a project activities and requires right mix of people for performing these activities.

Why does some software testing team fails and others succeed? Continue reading →

This post is in continuation with QTP interview questions series. Following questions will help for preparing interview as well as learning the QTP basics.

Quick Test Professional: Interview Questions and answers.

1. What are the features and benefits of Quick Test Pro(QTP)?

1. Key word driven testing
2. Suitable for both client server and web based application
3. VB script as the script language
4. Better error handling mechanism
5. Excellent data driven testing features

Continue reading →