scripting

Articles

Fixing the Brittleness Problem with GUI Tests

One common complaint about test automation is that it’s too brittle. Small changes in the system can cause lots of rework during the automated checks. In this article, Clint Hoagland shows a way to fix “the brittleness problem” by using the right abstractions in your automation design.
Clint Hoagland's picture Clint Hoagland
April 13, 2014
Database Compare and Synchronize Methods as a Part of the Software Release Management Process

By testing migration processes between environments, bugs are able to be found earlier, and before the migration to production. Using automatic packages, and well-thought out staging areas, migration can be a less painful, and more informative process than it may have been for you in the past.
Yaniv Yehuda's picture Yaniv Yehuda
January 19, 2010
Options for Promoting and Controlling Changes in Risk Adverse Environments

Change occurs everywhere, and every day - especially in the software world. Knowing how to navigate that change, and maximizing it's acceptance across the board is crucial for development teams to reach their goals. Learn how this can be accomplished in processes that are easy to adopt.
Anonymous
June 22, 2009
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Better Software Magazine Articles

What's Wrong with Your Testing Strategy?

When the design and the coding are complete, and the product seems ready to ship, it’s hard to understand why testing takes so long. Discover how your source code management system can help you unblock the testing bottleneck.
William W. White
July 2, 2007
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Interviews

Mistakes to Avoid in Test Automation: An Interview with Dorothy Graham

With more than thirty years of experience in the testing world, Dorothy Graham knows a thing or two about test automation. We asked Dorothy about how to get the most out of automation and how to avoid "intelligent mistakes."
Noel Wurst's picture Noel Wurst
January 18, 2013
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Conference Presentations

Preventing Security Breaches at the Source

Security is a complex and often overwhelming issue. You cannot rely solely on trying to prevent hackers from entering your systems. Instead, you must ensure that the system safeguards itself if a hacker does break in. Three of the most common internal software weaknesses hackers exploit are dangerously constructed SQL, buffer overflows, and runtime exceptions that are not properly handled. Although testing existing code for these defects can help, it is not fool proof. You also need to make a concerted effort to prevent security vulnerabilities from being introduced as the team is writing code. Through the application of practices, such as static analysis, dynamic analysis, unit testing, and runtime error detection, you can jumpstart your security efforts and keep the hackers at bay.

  • The most common internal software weaknesses that hackers exploit
Sergei Sokolov, ParaSoft Corporation
Design Testability and Service Level Measurements into Software

Design and architecture decisions made early in the project have a profound influence on the testability of an application. Although testing is a necessary and integral part of application development, architecture and design considerations rarely include the impacts of development design decisions on testability. In addition, build vs. buy, third party controls, open source vs. proprietary, and other similar questions can affect greatly the ability of an organization to carry out automated functional and performance testing-both positively and negatively. If the software or service is delivered to a separate set of end-users who then need to perform testing activities, the problems compound. Join Jay Weiser to find out about the important design and architecture decisions that will ensure more efficient and effective testability of your applications.
Jay Weiser, WorkSoft
Toward a Totally Automatic Test Scripts Generation

The component testing phase remains mostly a human activity. In particular, the conception of test cases, which can be a very tedious task, is usually completely manual. Although existing tools alleviate the task of the tester and increase his or her productivity, very few actually help in the generation of input test data. Discover a new generation of tools that can automatically generate test cases parameterized with various test objectives (functional, structural, and both). Learn how these tools use advanced technologies in software analysis as abstract interpretation.
Dominique Guilbaud, ATTOL Testware
Problems with Vendorscripts: Why You Should Avoid Proprietary Languages

Most test tools come bundled with vendor-specific scripting languages that I call vendorscripts. They are hard to learn, weakly implemented, and most importantly, they discourage collaboration between testers and developers. Testers deserve full-featured, standardized languages for their test development. Here’s why.
Bret Pettichord, Pettichord Consulting
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