Evironmental solutions
From Reuters
CSA Group, today officially announces the launch of its new Environmental Solutions website, a comprehensive online portfolio of environmental management tools and solutions.
CSA Group is providing strategic support for the commercialization of emerging, cleaner technologies in the energy, infrastructure and transportation sectors, as well as leading-edge expertise in climate change solutions. The website highlights CSA Group’s environmental expertise and the diversity of products and services available from our various divisions including standards, guidelines, training, advisory services, registries, and personnel certification from CSA Standards, product testing and product certification from CSA International, and performance testing and evaluation services from OnSpeX.
Test Driven Development
From An interview with Gerard Meszaros
All techniques have limitations, especially when they are abused or overused. The biggest hazard with automated unit testing is writing tests that are hard to understand and which are therefore hard to maintain as you evolve the code. A lot of the techniques I describe are ways to avoid this issue.
As for using TDD and automated unit tests in bare-metal tools like C, the higher the overhead of debugging, the more benefit there is to doing TDD because preventing mistakes (also known as bugs) saves even more effort. One area particularly ripe for the application of TDD is embedded software. Developers can save a lot of effort by removing most of the bugs while working in an IDE so that when they deploy the code into the hardware the only bugs left are ones related to integration, not basic logic errors. This requires building some test infrastructure and layering in the software properly to allow stubbing out of the actual hardware interfaces, but the payback is huge.
Testing and Cloud computing portals
From Telephony Online
Application testing vendor SOASTA is a strategic partner in the new Rackspace Cloud Tools program, but has worked with other cloud providers including Amazon.com as well. SOASTA is both a consumer of cloud resources – it’s test environments require thousands of servers to stress test large Web sites and applications – and also sells its test service to companies building their own apps in cloud environments. “It does take a community of vendors to help companies build and deploy a cloud application. Different vendors supply different pieces of the puzzle,” said SOASTA CEO Tom Lounibos.
Rackspace’s Cloud Tools portal supports its Rackspace Cloud computing environment. Tool categories include monitoring and reporting; development tools; system management; and client software. Initially, the portal includes tools from more than 15 “strategic” partners, with which Rackspace entered into formal co-marketing agreements.
Performance testing without simulated load
From Sys-Con
Performance testing does not require simulating load, or the process of testing your site under the simulated condition of many people hitting it at once. When you introduce load, you begin to test the scalability of a website and not the “pure” performance. Scalability tests are important, but when your focus is strictly improving site performance, load testing should not be used when collecting measurements.
When should testing begin?
From ebiz
Let us look at a cause of delaying testing. Historically, systems were developed to end-user requirements. The development teams were able to predict the behaviours of the applications and systems. The testing, to some extent, thus was sidelined. The testing team therefore did not create much of an uproar when things failed and did not work as expected. Moreover, the testing teams were generally part of the development team and reporting to the same manager.
This resulted in poor quality software. The IT department’s image is more often than not tainted from various perspectives not the least being the quality of the systems delivered. Therefore, all along, while the theories suggest that testing should begin early enough in the SDLC, not many could practice this.
New version of Elite testing tool
From Virtualization
BreakingPoint has introduced the latest version of the BreakingPoint Elite testing tool, including more than 30 new features that significantly expand testing capabilities, trim hours from test configuration and reporting, and accelerate device debugging. The new upgrade is available instantly to current BreakingPoint customers and positions BreakingPoint Elite as the most advanced application, performance and security testing tool available today.
BreakingPoint Elite updated features and functionality include:
- BreakingPoint First to Deliver Dual Stack IPv4/IPv6 Testing Capabilities and Support for Current IPv6 Standard.
- BreakingPoint is now the exclusive provider of resiliency testing using current IPv6 traffic to simulate true global network traffic.
- BreakingPoint IPv6 dual stack testing is the industry’s most comprehensive and up to date IPv6 capable testing.
Secret No 2 turns out to be testing
From Three secrets to ponder before launching your online business
Secret #2 – Testing your site.
This is almost always missed. Check function and stress testing results. If the site doesn’t have the bandwidth or response time, Christmas could be a dismal time of year. You should be very interested in: Proof that the vendor is well versed in load, stress, volume and performance testing. At least, the site will respond and not act weird during peak purchasing times. Make sure all functions and links are valid. Example – If you take orders, make sure they have ways to track your inventory, returns, pricing and refunds – on time
Testing the London Olympic systems
From The Times
The system will have to disseminate information to a 300,000-strong Olympic family of athletes as well as the world’s media. It must be ready a year early for 12 months of testing of the venues, when dummy sports events will be staged. That is because, unusually for an IT contract, there is no scope for delaying the final delivery date.
The IOC’s big partners, such as Omega, the timekeeper, have long-term contracts. Some are new this time, including Cisco, the internet equipment maker, which has replaced troubled Nortel. Many more are picked locally by Locog, the London organising body that will run the games.
BT is building a telecoms network for the Olympic Park. It will be capable of carrying six gigabits of information every second — the equivalent of 6,000 novels.
ISTQB testing questions
From Zindaggi
How does testing contribute to software quality?
A. Testing ensures that the system under test will not error out in a production environment.
B. Testing identifies defects which ensures a successful product will be released to market.
C. Testing increases the quality of a software system by avoiding defects in the system under test.
D. Testing through verification and validation of functionality identifies defects in the system under test.
What is integration testing?
A. Integration of automated software test suites with the application under test.
B. Testing performed to expose faults in the interaction between components and systems.
C. Testing to verify that a component is ready for integration with the rest of the system.
D. Testing to verify that the test environment can be integrated with the product.
Testing Wireless Networks
From V3
Motorola has released a tool which it claims can help businesses make sure that their wireless networks are secure.
AirDefense Wireless Vulnerability Assessment (AWVA) offers a new method to secure wireless networks against current threats by using active wireless testing to examine and assess every deployed wireless access point within the network.
The system uses a patented testing technology to simulate a variety of attacks on the network to highlight security holes to administrators.
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