Automated software testing is not a factor in the success of Open Source projects
From Software Process Maturity and the Success of Free Software Projects
The analysis of processes involving testing shows that successful projects make more
use of release candidates and defect tracking systems than unsuccessful projects. There is no difference in the presence of automated test suites. The availability of release candidates has been taken as an indication of a well defined release plan. While it would be revealing to qualitatively study and compare the release strategies of different projects, the present findings suggest that a clear release strategy coupled with testing contributes to the success of a project. Furthermore, defect tracking systems play a crucial role. While the successful and unsuccessful groups in this case study do not differ significantly in their size, successful projects are likely to receive more feedback from users. This feedback has to be captured properly so it can later be prioritized and analyzed.
Neither successful nor unsuccessful projects make much use of automated test suites. One reason for this may be the nature of open source itself. Raymond argues that open source projects benefit from a greater community surrounding them that provides defect reports. Once a regression occurs it is very likely that one of the users will notice it quickly and report it. This might be a reason why little time is spent on implementing automated tests. However, it remains to be seen whether the use of test suites could lead to even higher quality. The use of automated tests would allow volunteer to spend less time on tracking down regressions and they could devote their time to the removal of other defects or the implementation of new features.
Automated software testing services
Retailer’s website performance testing league table
From The Retail Bulletin
“Of the UK’s top 15 largest general retailers it [Signet] achieved the best performance under SiteMorse’s automated testing of the first 125 pages of each retailers’ websites. This took it to top spot (replacing Next), representing a significant move up from last month’s fifth position.
The sites have been judged on a variety of criteria before being ranked in a table based on their performance. For yet another month both Burberry and Halfords could not be tested because they are reliant on ‘assistive’ technology, which SiteMorse believes breaks the general “rules of accessibility” of internet sites.”
Objective testing for voice and video quality assessment
From Converge
“A cost-effective alternative to subjective testing for voice and video quality assessment is objective measurement. Unlike subjective tests, objective methods do not require a panel of human testers to analyze performance impairments and network parameters to produce a final MOS. Objective measurements are repeatable, efficient and fast. There are two main classes within this type of testing: intrusive and non-intrusive.
Intrusive, or active, testing techniques, require service providers to inject sample voice or video signals into a network. These sample signals are then captured at another point in the network and compared for degradation in voice or video quality in regards to the reference sample.
Non-intrusive, or passive, testing techniques, conserve network capacity by monitoring live network traffic to determine the perceived quality. Through the non-intrusive method the service provider assesses the network and gathers measurement data directly reflecting actual customer use. Non-intrusive techniques also allow for wider scale, denser testing and do not require end point access for test signal injection.”
End-to-end testing framework – Open Source!
From Ajax World
When you need to test things that are not covered by the Rails testing framework (i.e. end-to-end AJAX), open source web testing toolkits are your best friend. While Selenium has merit and is particularly well-suited for cross-browser compatibility tests, this session will focus on putting Watir on Rails. Watir provides a clean API, simple setup, good integration into the Rails testing framework, and is supported in a growing number of browsers. Dave will demonstrate how to use Watir to test a Rails+AJAX application.
End-to-end testing services for software applications and business processes
Testing satnav to help London Cabbies avoid Jam Today.
From The Peninsula
“While hundreds of thousands of the high-tech guidance systems are sold in Britain every year – despite some reports of software glitches that have sent drivers down one-way streets or up impassable mountain tracks – most cabbies in London prefer to rely on their own brain power.”
“The latest generation of satnav devices has low-level traffic congestion recognition and further developments are on the horizon.
George Marshall-Thornhill at consumer magazine Which? has been testing the current crop of new products and believes they will surprise even sceptics when they reach the shops.
Users will likely be able to download new versions onto mobile phones: the latest models will also have functions that tie-in traffic updates from the radio with re-routing software.”
Client side risk testing
From Info World
“Normally, I don’t get excited about updates, but the main improvement to Version 6.0 of Core Security’s CORE IMPACT penetration-testing tool got my attention: It focuses on client-side attack improvements. Essentially, you can drag and drop client-side attacks on top of one or more e-mail addresses. CORE IMPACT will then send e-mails containing those attacks to the selected e-mail addresses.”
Software testing and correcting tool announcement
From CIO.com
“Agitar Software plans to ship a software testing product next year that will test a developer’s code and, if necessary, automatically generate alternate bug-free and more efficient code, according to an executive of the company.”
“The product is focused on helping development teams control quality as they write software, instead of finding and fixing bugs at the end of the development process.The process, called unit level developer testing, gets the bugs out in the early stages, at the level of individual code units, rather than at the final quality-assurance stage, according to Pope. It costs US$16 to find and fix a bug in the software coding stage, as compared to about $2,500 to find and fix the bug after the deployment of the software, he said.”
Software testing tools to monitor compliance
From Enterprise OpenSource Magazine
“It’s possible to demonstrate business process reliability and accuracy and have a transparent development process by manually compiling information at the time of an audit, but as you might imagine there is a high degree of overhead and risk associated with this reactive approach. There is a direct cost as well as the staff distraction and lost opportunity costs.
Establishing an effective governance framework for software delivery, what IBM Rational Software calls “Business Driven Development,” is a better choice. IBM Rational’s Software Development Platform provides guidance to customers with regard to best practices in developing software. Rational’s portfolio, requirements, testing, and software configuration management products provide a wide range of tools that capture information about what’s going on and what changes were made, what tests were done, what the design documents were and so on. It’s an ongoing process, so businesses can continuously capture information and maintain compliance. Using Rational’s automated workflow system for software delivery, a number of people in various locations can sign off on changes and allocate work. Instead of one hour per day spent on compliance issues, an hour-long conference call per week may be all that is required.”
Functional testing Webinar with Forrester and Mercury
From Yahoo Finance
Mercury Interactive, the software testing tool vendor is providing a webinar with Carey Schwaber of Forrester Research. It will cover how to choose functional software testing solutions as well as include market study fincdings from Forrester research.
The webinar will take place today at 10:00am PST.
Empirix launch speech applications managed testing service
From Trans World News,
Empirix has launched the first managed testing service that evaluates the performance of speech applications used by contact centers. Called Hammer Service Assurance for Speech, it leverages Empirix’s patented Hammer testing technology to drive calls into contact centers, emulating real customers, in order to:
- Provide objective data on performance, including application availability, speech recognition rates and transaction length;
- Identify areas for improvement, to boost user adoption rates and ensure that customers have the best possible experience; and
- Test Voice Quality to determine whether speech recognition rates are affected by poor quality — especially useful for contact centers using VoIP.
Hammer Service Assurance for Speech is a fast, easy-to-use automated testing service that is systematic and repeatable, and highly effective for isolating and resolving performance issues. The solution scales to meet different mixes of real-world call traffic and user loads.
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