The HTC One X  will the the first in a new line of devices, and it will be called simply HTC One.

It was  unveiled by the company CEO Peter Chou.

It is a 4.7-inch, quad core Tegra 3-powered beast in a polycarbonate white shell.

HTC one brings a vastly improved camera experience, called Image Sense. The camera takes photos quickly — in 0.7 seconds. It has 8 megapixels and uses an f/2.0 lens, which captures more light than any other HTC smartphone camera. It also takes great photos in unfavorable light conditions using HDR algorithm.

HTC is providing a bunch of extras with the HTC One: 25 GB of free Dropbox-powered storage, Beats Audio sound  and a feature called Media Link, which takes  photos and videos from the smartphone to the TV  with a three-finger swipe on the smartphone’s screen.

Best Cinematography: Robert Richardson for “Hugo.”

Best Art Direction: Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo for “Hugo.”

Best Costume Design: Mark Bridges for “The Artist.”

Best Makeup: Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland for “The Iron Lady.”

Best Foreign Film: “A Separation” (Iran), Asghar Farhadi, producer.

Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, for “The Help.”

Best Documentary Feature: “Undefeated” — TJ Martin, Dan Lindsay and Richard Middlemas.

Best Animated Film: “Rango.”

Best Film Editing: Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”"

Best Sound Editing: Philip Stockton and Eugene Gearty for “Hugo.”

Best Sound Mixing: Tom Fleishchman and John Midgley for “Hugo.”

Best Visual Effects: Rob Legato, Joss Williams, Ben Grossmann and Alex Henning for “Hugo.”

Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer for “Beginners.”

Best Original Score: Ludovic Bource for “The Artist.”

Best Original Song: Bret McKenzie for “Man or Muppet,” from “The Muppets.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash for “The Descendants,” adapted from Kaui Hart Hemmings.

Best Original Screenplay: Woody Allen, “Midnight in Paris.”

Best Live Action Short Film: Terry George and Oorlagh George, “The Shore.”

Best Documentary Short Subject: Daniel Junge and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, “Saving Face.”

Best Animated Short Film: William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg, “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.”

Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius for “The Artist.”

Best Actor: Jean Dujardin for “The Artist.”

Best Actress: Meryl Streep for “The Iron Lady.”

Best Picture: “The Artist.”

According to Bloomberg “The world’s most popular search engine will join with other Web companies to support the anti-tracking initiative, which prevents an individual’s browsing history from being used to tailor ads, according to an e-mailed statement today”.

Bloomberg also notes that “We’re pleased to join a broad industry agreement to respect the ‘do-not-track’ header in a consistent and meaningful way that offers users choice and clearly explained browser controls,” Google Senior Vice President of Advertising Susan Wojcicki said in the statement.

Twitter co-founder Christopher Isaac (Biz) Stone has told the twitter users that spending hours on tweeting is unhealthy.

“I like the kind of engagement where you go to the website and you leave because you’ve found what you are looking for or you found something very interesting and you learned something,” he told the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal on Wednesday.

“I think that’s a much healthier engagement. Obviously, we want you to come frequently.”

In his speech, Mr Stone admitted that when Twitter first launched many thought it would fail because they did not think it was useful. ‘Nobody thought it was a good idea,’ he said.

He also said there were no plans to increase Twitter’s 140-character limit.

Molinari will begin her new job as Google VP of public policy and government relations in March, according to Politico.She will manage policy advocacy and government outreach in North and South America.

She replaces Alan Davidson who left as Google’s top Washington executive in November.

“I am excited about Susan joining Google,” David Drummond, Google Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer said in a statement.“She’s a true trailblazer, and her enthusiasm for our technology and its potential to change lives will be a real asset to our team in the Americas.”

The blueprint will guide efforts to give users more control over how their personal information is used on the Internet and to help businesses maintain consumer trust and grow in the rapidly changing digital environment.

Leading Internet companies and online advertising networks are expected to adopt the “Do Not Track” technology.

“American consumers can’t wait any longer for clear rules of the road that ensure their personal information is safe online,” said President Obama. “As the Internet evolves, consumer trust is essential for the continued growth of the digital economy. That’s why an online privacy Bill of Rights is so important.  For businesses to succeed online, consumers must feel secure. By following this blueprint, companies, consumer advocates and policymakers can help protect consumers and ensure the Internet remains a platform for innovation and economic growth.”

“It’s great to see that companies are stepping up to our challenge to protect privacy so consumers have greater choice and control over how they are tracked online. More needs to be done, but the work they have done so far is very encouraging,” said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz.

“Every day, millions of Americans shop, sell, bank, learn, talk and work online.  At the turn of the century, online retail sales were around $20 billion in the United States, now they’re nearing $200 billion,” said Secretary Bryson

The people familiar with the Google glasses said they would be Android-based, and will include a small screen that will sit a few inches from someone’s eye. They will also have a 3G or 4G data connection and a number of sensors including motion and GPS.

“According to several Google employees familiar with the project who asked not to be named, the glasses will go on sale to the public by the end of the year. These people said they are expected “to cost around the price of current smartphones,” or $250 to $600″, The New York Times’s report says.

The glasses were developed by Google X, a secretive laboratory near Google’s main campus that is charged with working on robots, space elevators and dozens of other futuristic projects.

In August 2011 Randi Zuckerberg had announced about her new Social Media firm RtoZ Media after she resigned from Facebook.

The home page of “R to Z Studios” is showing as,

At R to Z Studios, we believe social moments represent the biggest opportunity for companies, organizations and public figures to connect with their audiences. We help them find their opportune social moments, and then create shared experiences where people can participate in those moments together.

The company’s mission is described as below.

1) to provide strategic counsel and assistance to leading organizations and brands who are ready to have their own “social moments”;

2) to create and distribute original content via online social networks, with a particular focus on innovative “social productions” that combine the excitement of live media events with the interactivity of social, participatory viewing, and

3) to innovate and develop new concepts, ideas and technologies that intersect traditional media with social networks.

Randi Zuckerberg works as CEO in “R to Z Studios” and  Erin Kanaley Famularo takes Production Director role.

Updates on February 25

“R to Z Studios” has taken down the web pages in RtoZStudios.com. Now The home page is just showing their logo only. All other contents were removed Previously it was showing lot of information including Team, Services and News. Google cache is still showing those content. And, Link to the RtoZStudios.com from their previous name RtozMedia.com also removed now.

It is not clear why they had taken down RtoZStudios.com. Whether Randi Zuckerberg is again going to change her company name, or working on to launch “R to Z Studios” with huge advertisements.

LinkedIn profile of “R to Z Studios” is showing the Number of Employees as “1-10″.

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz was a German physicist.He was born in Hamburg.

He proved the existence of electromagnetic waves by engineering instruments to transmit and receive radio pulses using experimental procedures.This only leads to the development of wireless telegraph and radio.

The unit of frequency of a radio wave is called hertz in honor of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz.

He died at the age of 36 in Bonn, Germany in 1894.

There are many Test Management Tools available on the market, a few example of which include HP Quality Center and IBM Rational Quality Manager.

HP Quality Center is sold as a web based Tool, but in order to allow users to access it from the web browser, it needs to be installed in an in-house server. Quality Center also requires installing some ActiveX controls in the Client machines.

Setting up and using HP Quality Center requires some skill. I often get requests  asking for guidance to set up Quality Center. In fact there are a number of courses on offer aimed solely at teaching people how to use Quality Center.  Additionally, the price of Quality Center used to be high.

I used to ask myself why there is no efficient Test management Tool available at an affordable price so that small startups and companies can also use them?

Recently I got to know about a Cloud Based Software Test Management Tool  called “ReQtest“. ReQtest is be provided as a SaaS service (Software as a Service).

If you are not very familiar with Cloud computing or SaaS, you can read this post. In summary, using the Cloud you will avoid the burden of installing and setting up the software or Tool and it will make updates to the software very easy.

Though Cloud based systems have many advantages, there are few things that  need to be verified before you start using Cloud based system. The important thing is a low Downtime. The latest technologies help to have almost a full uptime. Anyway, we need to make sure that Cloud based systems are using those latest technologies to avoid any Downtime. Another important thing is taking Data Backups so that we can continue our business if something unexpected happens to the Server Data. Given that ReQtest is used by big companies such as Sony Ericsson and Thomas Cook, I believe they have an excellent Server Uptime and enough Data Backup facilities.

ReQtest is seamlessly integrated into three modules for writing the requirements, writing and sharing test cases and for bug reporting.

Requirements

ReQtest makes creating and managing requirements effortless. ReQtest supports both agile and traditional development methods and makes it easy to get an overview of all your requirements.

Using ReQtest, requirements, design documents and test documents are all stored in single place,  instead of  spreading  out over different servers, e-mail, document archives etc.  Since ReQtest is web-based, it allows various stakeholders to view the requirements.

Ranking and prioritizing requirements is  a simple task in ReQtest.  We  can prioritize requirements using any kind of scale: numeric, high/low/medium, or the MoSCoW scale (Must, Should, Could and Won’t).

Test Cases

ReQtest has a test case module in which test cases can be written and assigned to testers in a team. Test cases can be easily grouped so you can follow up on results,  for example to find test cases with status OK, failed or not run.

When you create a bug report from a test case, ReQtest automatically copies information from the test case to the bug report. This makes it easy to quickly create structured, high-quality bug reports.

You can Customize the contents of forms in ReQtest to make them fit your process even better. Some of the things you can change include the contents of lists as well as adding, reordering and removing fields.

The key features of the Test Case module of the ReQtest Tool -

• Checklists are a powerful complement to test cases, allowing you to quickly create lists of short test instructions.
• Traceability allows you to see which requirement a test case is based on, and which bug reports are linked to a particular test case.
• It is easy to attach files, for example design documents, use cases or screenshots.
• Test cases can easily be e-mailed to project members or other persons

Since ReQtest is web based, you can share test cases with both our customers and suppliers, with different access rights for each if required.

Bug Reporting

You can easily customize the contents of forms in ReQtest to make them fit your business. You can rename, add and remove fields as well as use your own scales to describe the priority and severity of bug, for example using numeric scales, letter scales, or descriptive texts. Bug reports can easily be e-mailed to project members or other persons

Starting to use ReQtest is NOT a difficult task. ReQtest is structured in a logical manner and can be easily understood by anyone who uses a computer regularly.

ReQtest has extensive statistical functions which are particularly useful when working with requirements and test cases, especially for decision-makers at various levels.

You can choose different chart types and export charts as an image or an Excel file. The traceability matrix gives a clear summary of all the links between requirements, test cases and bug reports.

ReQtest allows the users to save Frequently Used Searches so that they can be accessed easily later.

And, ReQtest give you Free support by phone, by e-mail and remote desktop.

ReQtest offers a 10 day free trial for the Tool with full access to all features. Starting your the Free Trial is easy.

You just fill this Simple Form for getting the Free Trial. Once you submit the form, you will receive the verification link to your email. The verification link will allow you to set a password for your account and you can start using the Free Trial right away.

It seems they are providing the User Interface in two languages (English and Swedish). You need to choose your preferred language when starting the Trial. I chose “English” and started exploring the various options available in ReQtest. So far it all looks good. You can share your experience of the ReQtest trial in the comments section.

Click here to get a free 10 day trial of ReQtest.

Watch below Video giving overview of ReQtest.

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i-e If a job seeker enters his Resume details in one place, the script will automatically create User Accounts in many U.S job sites for him, and it will automatically post his Resume details in all these Job Sites.

This Kind of Script development is NOT an easy task. It involves lot of complexities. And, we haven’t started doing it properly. Initially we did similar script for one particular customer as a custom development, and later we enhanced it further to bring this Automatic Resume posting script.

Since, we are a small Team with limited budget, right now we are doing some kind of AdHoc testing only.

I am writing this post to initiate a discussion about exploring various Testing Strategies suitable for improving quality of this Automatic Resume Posting Script without requiring more Resources and Time.

Before discussing Test Strategies, let me give some details about this script development.

The important Steps involved in this kind of script development are,

- Automatic resume posting can be done in two different ways. One is, using javascript for auto filling the Forms in the job sites by accessing the DOM of the web page in the Client Side (i-e User’s browser). The other way is, posting the job seeker resume details to the Job Site using php cURL at the http protocol level. (i-e From Server where the Script is Hosted)

The second way (i-e php cURL) is involving some risks. Since the data for all job seekers are getting posted to job sites from same IP Address (i-e same server), the job sites may block that IP address if they thought that it is a DDoS attack.

But I came to know that almost all job sites are encouraging to automatically receive genuine Resume details of Job seekers to increase their customer base. That’s why, they are allowing continuous posting from particular IP. So, I decided to go with the php curl approach.

- First we created set of Function libraries for posting data in various situations (e.g GET method, POST method, with SSL, etc). Unit Testing of these functions is done by hardcoding the resume details in php files.
- Then, we did mapping of various fields of various job sites in mysql tables. (e.g The Input Resume will say experience as 3 years, but one job site will be having option for specifying experience  as “2-4 Years”, and another one will be having the option as “more than 2 years”. We need to map them manually onetime in mysql tables)

- Once after completing Function library creation and Job sites Fields mapping, we started creating php files for each job sites for getting the resume details and mapping details from db and post them to the corresponding job site. Live HTTP header firefox Add-on helped much to do this job. Some job sites will he having Captcha entry. The php script is developed to show the captcha image while doing resume posting.

- Then, created few php files for integrating posting of all job sites and for updating the status of account creation (account creation may fail if the user name already exists in particular job site) and resume posting process.

- Then, created user interface for allowing the Job Seekers to make payment, use discount codes, see reports, do Auto login into job sites, etc. And, created Admin Interface for managing users and resume posting.

I think I have given enough details about the background of this script. Now, let us start discussing about Testing this script.

The important challenge of Testing this Resume submission Script is, we can NOT have any separate Testing Environment. For testing our Time Sheet application, first we setup timesheet script in our local machine, and we will move the code to server only after completing the testing in local machine. We can do whatever we want to do testing in the local machine. But the samething can not be done for testing the Resume submission script. Even if we setup the script in local machine the script need to post the details to the external job sites only.

So, we can not Test the script with junk data as it will spam the job sites.

The Next challenge for Testing the script is, the difficulty of choosing appropriate Test data. As I specified earlier, data Mapping plays important role in this script. So, if you decide to test the script with various test data to test the script including the quality of mapping, we will end with thousands of test data. So, it is NOT feasible to test the script completely by giving Test data. The only workaround is, we need to manually check the mapping in mysql table, by going thro’ the lot of mapping data. It is really difficult task and we will be missing to find some incorrect mappings.

Almost all job sites are updating their user interface frequently. Some job sites are getting closed and some of them are acquired by huge job sites. Some jobsites change their CMS completely. So, the script needs to be updated frequently.

As part of the regression testing, we need to find some way for testing the entire script whenever we update the script. (either the coding or mapping). I think just doing adHoc Testing is NOT enough.

Right Now, I am thinking one approach for testing the script with real data. Instead of testing the script with junk data, I plan to allow the Job seekers to use the Resume Posting Service at very cheap price, in return they need to inform us if they find any issue in the job postings. I am working on creating some Special Discount Codes for the Job Seekers who are interested in joining this plan.
This approach won’t do any harm to the Job seekers. Because during this phase, our Team will be manually checking the quality of resume postings by logining into the each and every job site once the script completed the automatic posting. We can easily update any data if our Team find any issue.

Similarly, I am Planning to sell few copies of this entire script at very low price to the people who are showing willingness to cooperate with us to increase the quality of the script and to maintain the quality of the script at long run even if the job sites are getting changed frequently.

Let me see whether this approach works or not. Anyway, I believe there should be some other ways to test the script properly. You can share your thoughts thro’ the comments.

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It seems small bugs are there in this kind of website too. Today I asked a question about QTP certification in LinkedIn and wanted to share this question to the Quality Assurance related LinkedIn Groups. While choosing the Group name I wrongly selected “SEO” group instead of “Software Testing” Group name.

So, I wanted to delete the SEO group name. But I couldn’t delete it as the icon for deleting the name is NOT visible because of the length of the SEO group name is more than the text box length.

I closed the “Share” pop-up window to remove the SEO group name. After doing this, I realized that I might have used keyboard “backspace” button to remove only the SEO Group name.

Anyway I was surprised to see this kind of error in a popular website. Initially I thought that it is happening only in Particular browser “Firefox”.  So, I tested it in Google Chrome also,  but samething happened in Google  Chrome also.

Similarly I had noticed few issues/bugs in the popular website marketplace site Flippa also.

Have you noticed this kind of issues in any other popular websites? If “Yes”, you can share the details thro’ the comments.

What do you think as the reason for this kind of bugs even if this companies can afford good budget for doing Software testing?

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If we talk about business, there is a risk of failure; but at the same time, by taking the risks, there are chances of great success as well. We can’t avoid any future uncertainty; but yes, the impact of loss can be minimized by analyzing and planning the strategy to handle it in advance. This is Risk Management – identify/analyze the risks and then handle those risks in the best possible way by mitigating them.

In the world of IT industry, one of the biggest risk factors is when a software program, without testing and software quality assurance, is released to end users, and in case the application is error prone, the denouement is disastrous. Therefore, a risk mitigation plan must be in place to avoid the consequences of such software failure in the market.

In a broader sense, software quality assurance and testing itself is a risk mitigation strategy. Even after sufficient qa and testing, all risks are not purged, but the risks that will exist will be of low priority with minimum impact.

Below are the key points that are considered while managing the risks:

• Identify the risks
• Determine Criticality of risk, i.e. how severe will be the impact of risk, if it occurs
• Take required actions on the risk, i.e. either mitigate the risk or accept it if it’s of low priority

After taking appropriate actions against critical risks, quality software is released to the customers with low priority risks called out as known issues.

Some of the typical strategies  to mitigate risks include:

• Adding more trained resources to help enhance test coverage in the limited amount of time
• Looking at automation strategies to created automated regression suites to catch bugs which might otherwise be missed in mundane manual testing
• Empowering the team with productivity tools and utilities to help them better focus on the areas that are not very stable

Thus, probability or encountering of risks is not an alert; however, we need to make sure we take appropriate actions for the encountered risks and handle the consequences if they do occur. It is important to focus and proactively work on the impact of risks.

Rajini Padmanaban is Director Engagement – Global Testing Services at QA InfoTech specializing in writing insightful articles on quality testing, providing technical consultation. Find her resourceful articles on quality assurance over the web.

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Most of the people ask me about QTP Certification. They want to know whether QTP Certification will help them to get good job, and they want to know how to get QTP Certification, how much money they need to spend for getting QTP certification, where to get mock tests and model question papers, what are the various certifications available for QTP certification, where to get syllabus for QTP certification, who is giving QTP certification? HP? Mercury? or any other thrid-party, whether it is easy to pass the QTP Certification, and whether they will be allowed to retake the exam if they didn’t pass the first attempt.

Even Today I got a query like whether qtp 9.2 v exams can be taken up or qtp 11 v alone can be taken up.

Personally, I am NOT a fan of QTP certification. Because, I was able to get good high paying automation jobs easily without getting QTP certification. Anyway, I understand that QTP certification may help the Job seekers in some way.

What is your opinion? Do you believe that QTP Certification will Give you any Benefit?

I would like to know whether anyone still searching for Automation job even after getting the QTP certification.

So, you can share your experience thro’ the comments. And, you may answer for the various QTP certifications related queries thro’ the comments. If you blindly add your advertisements without contributing any content, your comments will be deleted. I want to keep this post as single place to get everything about QTP certification.

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And, you can mention your favorite Software testing related website thro’ the comments section. We will rearrange the order of this list based on comments. i-e We will keep the the website which receives most number of positive comments.

1. SQA Forums – This is the very useful Forum for learning Software Testing and for learning Software Testing Tools especially QTP (Quick Test Professional). Mostly, you will get appropriate solution/answer for your problem/questions within few days if you post your questions in this Forum. Personally, I had used this Forum effectively to learn QTP many years back. I think this Forum is available for more than a decade. Previously it was known as qaforum.com
2. JAMES BACH’S BLOG This blog is having lot of interesting software testing related posts starting from year 2003. James Bach is one of the Authors of the book titled “Lessons Learned in Software Testing”
3. LinkedIn Discussions - LinkedIn is having lot of Software Testing Related Groups. We can join the desired Groups and we can participate in the Software Testing related Discussions and we can start our own discussion also. Apart from these Groups, LinkedIn is having Answers section which will allow us to ask our questions.
4. Google Testing Blog – This Google blog explains the Testing processes followed within Google.
5. QualityPoint Blog – This blog is written by myself. I had written an eBook about Software Testing and QTP automation. Mostly my articles will be telling more about practical approaches of Software Testing. Because, I work as Developer also apart from being a Tester. And, I am doing Business also now. So, my main focus will be doing Software Testing in a way to help Developers and Business (Obviously it should help the End Users)
6. Agile Testing – Thoughts on testing and systems infrastructure with an agile, mostly Pythonic, twist
7. Martinfowler This blogs speaks more about effective Software Developments and Agile methods to improve productivity.
8. Cem Kaner’s Blog – He is one of the authors of the book titled “Lessons Learned in Software Testing”
9. Misko Hevery – He writes about writing Testable Code
10. Develop Sense – Michael Bolton writes about how to do excellent software testing in a way that is very fast, inexpensive, credible, and accountable.
11. Sara Ford’s Weblog – Former Microsoft employee writes about combining agile methodologies with community management to provide the best user experience possible for websites
12. Association for Software Testing – AST is dedicated to advancing the understanding of the science and practice of software testing according to context-driven principles.
13. IT Knowledge Exchange
14. GOJKO ADZIC
15. Thinking Tester- This blog provides information about software testing.
16. Chris McMahon’sblog
17. JW on Test
18. Software Testing Help
19. Corey Goldberg
20. Testertested
21. Steve Rowe’s Blog
22. Exploration Through Example
23. Test this Blog
24. Expected Results
25. QA Intelligence- This is a Testing & QA Management blog.
26. Adam Goucher
27. Stevesouders.com
28. QA Hates You
29. Curioustester
30. Stefan Thelenius about Software Testing
31. Testledaren.se
32. Relevantcodes.com
33. I.M.TESTY
34. Automated Chaos
35. Software Testing Hotlist
36. Practical QA
37. ABAKAS
38. Tooth of the Weasel
39. Test Obsessed
40. Quality Frog
41. Testing Hotlist Update
42. Collaborative Software Testing
43. Eric Jarvi
44. Test Guide
45. Testy Redhead
46. Software testing zone
47. Marlena’s Blog
48. Software Testing and more
49. patrickwilsonwelsh.com
50. Quality Assurance and Software Testing
51. Testing Testing 1,2,3
52. Mike Kelly’s blog
53. Enjoy testing
54. Evil Tester
55. Charlie Audritsh’s blog
56. Maverick Tester
57. Paul Gerrard’s blog
58. shino.de
59. Cartoon Tester
60. cLabs Blogki
61. Jeff Fry on Testing
62. Venkat’s Blog
63. Agile Testing and Process Thoughts
64. Software Testing Stuff
65. selenadelesie.com
66. Software Sleuthing
67. The Software Quality Blog
68. One of the wolves
69. Musing about Software Testing
70. Jon Bach’s blog- Jon Bach’s blog, highlighting the humanity in software testing
71. Quardev
72. Software Testing Club Blog
73. TestToTester
74. Agile Testing with Lisa Crispin
75. Confessions of a Passionate Tester
76. I am filled with solutions
77. Software Testing
78. Rosie Land
79. Still Life- This blog is about testing, work, random thoughts, automation and scripting.
80. Brian Osman
81. Dhanasekar S’s Blog
82. The Social Tester
83. QA Insight
84. The Testing Blog
85. Testingminded
86. Swgetesting
87. Jeroen’s world of Software Testing
88. TestingPerspective
89. Adam White
90. Purple Box Testing-It gives some brief information to Testing terms like Bugs,Test Cases,Manual Testing,Automation,Tools and Test management.
91. Lessons Learned by a Software Tester
92. Pliant Alliance
93. Testjutsu
94. Illiteration
95. Tester Testifies
96. Santhosh Tuppad’s Blog
97. Teknologika
98. Creative Tester
99. Tester Troubles
100. Thoughts on QA and Engineering-This blog contains information of about Software Quality,Testing,Quality Assurance and Engineering in general.
101. Quick Testing Tips
102. Cruisin QA
103. Tester Lost Focus
104. James McCaffrey’s blog-This  blog explains the Software Research, Development, and Testing.James McCaffrey is an author of .NET Test Automation Recipes and Software Testing.

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Previously I had published a Post about the importance of the Domain Knowledge for the Software Testers.

Some people are arguing that hiring Software Testers with Domain knowledge may drive them to change the ambiguous  requirements by themselves without discussing with the Business Analyst.  It will lead to poor quality. Anyway, the companies especially BFSI (Banking, Financial Services and Insurance) domain companies give high priority to Domain knowledge while hiring Software Testers.

Apart from BFSI applications few other things such as,  Mobile application testing, VoIP applications, Gaming testing, Network testing, Wireless application testing and Protocol testing are also requiring domain knowledge for the software Testing professionals.

So, the Software Testers need to have below skills.

• Testing skill
• Domain knowledge
• Technical skills
• Communication skill
• Automation skill
• programming skill

If I missed to mention any other important skills, you can say it thro’ the comments.

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So, we are offering this QTP Book site content in Amazon Kindle format also.

But, you need to buy it from Amazon site using this link.

Buy this Kindle version only if you are very much interested to read it in your Kindle.

Otherwise, My suggestion is you can freely read the content from this QTP Book site, or you can buy it as eBook from here.

Because, we update the Kindle version very rarely. But this site will be updated frequently. And, We will make any corrections immediately here.

Anyway, you can just refer the kindle sales page to know the fact of this Book ranking Good in Amazon Best Sellers Rank.

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VBscript is used by other technologies also. For example, it is used in ASP (Active Server Page) for web site development. So we will be getting more ready-made functions/code written in vbscript from the Internet. It will save QTP script development time.

VBscript will access the host/system thro’ Microsoft’s Windows Script Host (WSH). We can use WSH scripts also in QTP. It can be effectively used to automate the Test scenarios such as rebooting the system automatically after doing some steps and locking the system automatically.

QTP recording feature will automatically generate VBscript code while recording the steps.

And, QTP IDE is having ‘Function Generator” for creating the vbscript functions.

VBScript Variables

In VBScript, all variables are of type variant, that can store different types of data.
Rules for VBScript variable names:

• Must begin with a letter
• Cannot contain a period (.)
• Cannot exceed 255 characters

dim will be used for declaring the variable as below.
Dim TestCaseID

The value for this variable can be assigned as below
TestCaseID=”TC1″

Remember to use option explicit at top of your script. Otherwise a new variable will be created automatically if you misspell the variable name when assigning value for it.

We need to understand scope/lifetime of variable clearly. A variable declared within a function will exist only within that function. That means the variable will be destroyed when exiting the function, and more than one function can have variable with same name. So it is called as Local variable.

So, it is very important to have clear understanding about the scope/lifetime of variable declared/used in Test/Action/function library/datatable/environment.

Array variable can be declared as below.
Dim ArrIDs(10)
The above declaration will create single-dimension array containing 11 elements. i-e the array in vbscript is 0 based.

Operators

Arithmetic

Comparison

Logical

VBScript Procedures

In VBScript, there are two types of procedures:

• Sub procedure
• Function procedure

A Sub procedure:

• is a series of statements, enclosed by the Sub and End Sub statements
• does not return a value
• can take arguments
• without arguments, it must include an empty set of parentheses ()

eg.
Sub displayName()
msgbox(“QualityPoint Technologies”)
End Sub

or

Sub addvalues(value1,value2)
msgbox(value1+value2)
End Sub

When calling a Sub procedure you can use the Call statement, like this:

Or, you can omit the Call statement, like this:

MyProc argument

A Function procedure:

• is a series of statements, enclosed by the Function and End Function statements
• can return a value
• can take arguments
• without arguments, must include an empty set of parentheses ()
• returns a value by assigning a value to its name

Find below a Sample function.

Function addvalues(value1,value2)
addvalues=value1+value2
End Function

The above function will take two arguments and will add those two values and then it will return the sum value. Note here the sum value is retured by assigning it to the function name.

The above function can be called as below.

msgbox “Sum value is ” & addvalues(1,2)

Conditional Statements

In VBScript we have four conditional statements:

if statement – executes a set of code when a condition is true

(e.g) if i=10 then
msgbox “I am 10″
End if
if…then…else statement – select one of two sets of lines to execute
(e.g) if i=10 then  msgbox “I am 10″
else msgbox “other than 10″
end if
if…then…elseif statement – select one of many sets of lines to execute

(e.g) if i=10 then  msgbox “I am 10″
elseif i=11 then msgbox “I am 11″
else msgbox “unknown”
end if

select case statement – select one of many sets of lines to execute

select case value
case 1
msgbox “1″
case 2
msgbox “2″
case 3
msgbox “3″
case else
msgbox “other than 1,2 and 3″
end select

Looping Statements

Use the For…Next statement to run a block of code a specified number of times.
e.g
for i = 0 to 5
msgbox(“The number is ” & i )
next

If you don’t know how many repetitions you want, use a Do…Loop statement.

The Do…Loop statement repeats a block of code while a condition is true, or until a condition becomes true.

Built-in Functions

VBscript is having many useful built-in functions.
You can refer this page for the complete list
inStr, isNull, LCase, Left, Len, Mid, Now, Replace, Split, UBound, CStr, CreateObject, Date and DatePart are functions that are most frequently used in QTP script development.

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• “To Error is Human” is the fact which drives the need for automation testing. Because, manual testers may not execute the test cases correctly. There will be lot of possibilities for making mistakes. They may give wrong input data due to typo, or they may not notice the actual behavior of the system correctly, or they may not report the test result correctly, or they may miss to execute some test cases, or they may forget to run some preconditions, or they may change the sequence of test case execution in case sequence is important.

• Another important factor is, Automation test scripts will be used as a way of storing domain/project/task Knowledge gained by the Test Engineers. Say for example, if a Tester works in project for one year, he might have spent more time for learning the domain, purpose of the project, modules in the project, flow of all functionalities. He will be familiar with known issues and challenges.
  If this Tester leaves from the project, the knowledge gained by him also will leave.
  It is very difficult for the newly joining Tester to understand everything from the Test Case document.If automation test scripts are already available then the new Tester can just start the testing by running the automation scripts, without gaining much knowledge about the project.He can understand the flow/data by seeing the execution of the automation test scripts. But anyway, he should gain project/domain knowledge to enhance/update the automation scripts further.
  So we can say that test automation is a way of storing knowledge.

• Automation tool such as QTP (Quick Test Professional) has feature for storing screenshot of each and every page navigated during the execution. So it can be used as a proof for completion of testing, and also we can refer the screenshots of previous executions if there is any need to refer them.

• Test report can be automatically written to a customized report page which will ensure accuracy of the report and also it can improve look & feel of the report.

• The very important advantage of automation testing over manual testing is execution speed. Test execution can be completed quickly and also we can execution the scripts in night time also without human involvement. So ultimately total time needed for testing can be reduced which will significantly help for timely project completion.

• Here may be requirement of doing some testing at specific time. It can be easily achieved by putting execution of those automation test scripts in a task scheduler/crone job. The tool such as QTP supports automation object model to achieve this.

• The functional test automation scripts will be useful for doing performance testing also. Because many performance test tools will support reusing/calling of these test scripts.

• Some type of testing involves comparing large amount of data between previous version and current version as part of regression testing. Practically it may not possible for doing it manually. This problem can be easily solved by simple shell script or any other scripts such as vbs, wsh.

• As the automation test tools support Data Driven Testing, Test execution can be done repeatedly with many different data sets.

There are lot of automation test tools are available for doing Functional, Regression and Performance Testing. Test complete, SilkTest, SilkPerformer, QARun, QALoad, TestPartner, WinRunner, LoadRunner, QTP, Rational Robot and openSTA are some of them. QTP is most widely used now as it supports vbscript and it can be used for testing many different applications just by adding required add-ins.

You can Watch the below video explaining Importance of Software Test Automation.

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