Testing a sat nav for the supermarket

There is a news story about how Tesco are testing a new mobile application that finds the best route for getting your shopping around the store. It seems that you put your shopping list into this mobile app and it tells you where all the things you want to buy are. Then it works out the best route for you too.

“The app uses dozens of wifi hotspots already installed for staff. By comparing their signal strength, it can pinpont a shopper’s position. It currently only works on phones running Google’s Android software but could eventually be available on all mobiles. “

If its only on Google Android phones then it will cut down the amount of mobile device testing required. With the variety of smartphones about at the moment mobile app testing has increased in importance (and amount of testing done).

Only one drawback is that there is only one store involved in the test. And unless you live in the Romford area, you may miss being involved in this test..

Open Source test tool downloads

What testing tool has now passed teh 10,000 download mark? It’s an open source test tool. Its for testing mobile applications and web apps. It’s particularly good at testing Adobe Flex. Still not sure. No still not got it. Well, its a test tool from a thinking primate.

Yes that’s right! Gorrila Logic have annouced that there have been over 10,0000 downloads of FlexMonkey – their open source testing tool.

“FlexMonkey allows developers and testers of rich Internet applications to record, playback and verify real-world user interactions. If desired, the test automation tool can also generate ActionScript test scripts that teams can easily use within a continuous integration environment. “

ISO/IEC 29119 Part 1

Many people are interested in the software testing standard ISO/IEC software testing standard 29119. If you are amongst them you may want to know the contents of Part 1 which covers concept and vocabulary.  These is a draft being produced which wil probably cover:

• An introduction to software testing
• Software testing in an organisational context
• The software testing process
• The relationship between software testing and software development
• The implications of software development lifecycle (SDLC) models (such as agile and waterfall)
• The main types of testing, test techniques and the test phases/levels
• Risk-based testing (RBT)
• Test items
• System requirements verification
• System requirements validation

Testing and the cloud

There is an interesting article on cloud computing and the benefits it brings to testing here. This is not about testing the cloud but about how the resources of the cloud can enhance testing. It covers two key areas that offer improvement to testing – virtualization and distributed computing. There are some practical examples of these testing benefits being realised – for example using virtualization to create multiple systems with different browsers for compatibility testing on a single machine.

It also looks at the limiations with the current cloud, such as security:

True “cloud computing” generally involves renting servers from some outsourced provider. That means migrating your data to the provider, which can involve questions of trust, security, and, in some cases, regulation. Some of these are compliance issues, some legal, but a good tester who can analyze and communicate risks could be invaluable to this process.

Cloud load test

Automating software testing

A researcher from the University of Twente has developed an automated testing system that removes any need for manual software testing. Machiel van der Bijl, the researcher, describes the system as quick and accurate and predicts that it provides significant cost savings for developers of software.

He said “Software testing easily accounts for a third to half of total development costs. Our automated method can improve product quality and significantly shorten the testing phase, thereby greatly reducing the cost of software development.”

If you’d like to know more about this software testing automation research a digital version of the dissertation ‘On Changing Models in Model-Based Testing’ then contact Machiel van der Bijl +31(0)6-1642 6332).

Cloud based application performance testing

There is a webinar on May 10 2011 covering cloud based application performance testing. That’s testing the performance of applications that are in the cloud, rather than using cloud based performance testing for applications (that aren’t necessarily in the cloud).

“Join this webinar to see how the OpSource Cloud platform, combined with ZSL’s ZLOAD testing framework, provides clients with a cost-effective solution to conduct on-demand performance and scalability testing on an application. Topics covered will include:

• Types of tests most important for testing applications in the cloud.
• Using a wide range of performance tests (load, stress, reliability, spike, etc.) to generate a thorough understanding of system behaviour.
• A general approach to performance testing.
• A live product demo of ZSL’s ZLOAD testing framework.”