Process

In "Practical Test Reporting," David Freeman wrote about how to start a basic test metrics program. In this follow-up article, he shows how to combine the historical information to predict how your future projects may track–kind of like creating your own metric "magic eight ball."

Developing a usable and consumable test-metric-reporting system is a challenge for all testing organizations. This article describes a system employable by small and large organizations and all test efforts. By using existing tools, test teams can show current progress and predict future test efforts.

In his article "Data Crunching Tips and Techniques," Greg Wilson taught us how to translate legacy data into XML. In the second half, he explains how to merge new data into an existing database. Developers will always face these types of data crunching problems, and knowing the standard data crunching tools can save you a lot of time. Greg also shares the basic knowledge about relational databases that every developer should possess.

Data crunching is probably the least glamorous part of our jobs, but it has to be done. Someone will always need to recycle legacy code, translate files from one vendor's proprietary binary format into XML, check the integrity of configuration files, or search Web logs to see how many people have downloaded the latest release of the product. Knowing how to compile this data with the least amount of effort can be crucial to a project's success or failure. In this week's column, Greg Wilson looks at some of the existing tools and techniques used to crunch data more efficiently and productively.