QA Bean

Today let’s talk about what is API testing, and what exactly do we test when we perform API testing? To start from the very beginning lets understand what API is.   What Is API? API – Application Programming Interface. This is a functional piece of a system that sits usually between a data source and a front end presentation to the user. In other words if we take a simple example of a web application the nice looking web site will be using API calls to retrieve data from the back-end database. It is important to understand that API can mean different things in different systems, for example for web application an API can be a SOAP or a REST web service, but for a desktop application API can be a set of known functions that allow retrieve or modify data within that application.   What Do We Test With API? When we talk about API testing we talk about testing some specific functionality that is described in the requirements for that API, and our verification...

Today I wanted to discuss a very useful tip to get a Wifi Password of a network that your machine used in the past. For software testers this knowledge is particular useful when dealing with lab equipment that was pre-set and required additional changes and modifications. Imagen a scenario when you as a quality assurance analyst in the company have received a lab laptop that you need to install some software on it, and because of the type of the software you expect that pre-set wifi password for your network might be lost. Your first order of business will be to find out and back-up existing passwords, but how to do it? Here is a quick and easy way: The only thing you need for that tip to work is Admin level access to the machine you are working on. We begin by opening a Command Prompt with admin rights Then we write the following command: netsh wlan show profile A list of existing wifi networks profiles will be shown, pick a name of the network you want ...

Today I want to take a look on the 3 freely available tools that allow for test management without breaking the bank those are good starting point for those who are looking for an alternative for high end tools like HP ALM and Smart Bear Test Complete. Kiwi TCMS This is a test case management tool that allow for proper test case creation and execution with nice reporting functionality. This tool does not contain internal bug tracking but integrates nicely with big players like BugZilla  (A free Bug tracking tool) TestLink This is a full free solution for Software test management. It has it all from Requirement management to test case creation trough reporting and up to bug tracking. Everything can be done in this tool that has a lot of documentation online and a stable version the only downside is that its look and feel very outdated and might concern some modern testers out there XStudio This one is a commercial product that has a free, community, edition. It has a full s...

I lately noticed that there is some confusion going on around the software testing in regards to user facing parts of the system. Testers mention that they are planning to “run some UI testing” or others speak about “strange UX on that system”. I would like to spent some time today and emphasizing the main 3 differences between UI and UX and how we are testing each one, and by whom. But let’s start from the beginning what is UI and what is UX? UI is a User Interface, usually referring to anything that can be visually seen by the user when interacting with the system. That will include colors, page design, logos, element shapes, etc. UX is a User eXperience, usually referring to anything that can be done by the user when interacting with the system. That will include what can be clicked, what can be done, what will be returned back to user and in what way, etc. With that understanding we can now define the 3 most important identification points for each one UI - User inte...

Today we are going to return back to basics of software testing and discuss the 7 most popular test types that are being used in every software testing effort. Those different test types cover all the levels of the software to make sure that the final result matching the expectations from every possible angle. Here is our list: Unit testing Smoke testing Regression testing Functional testing Integration testing User Acceptance Testing Performance Testing Now let’s have a deeper dive into each one of those by using a simple example of an imaginary system that was created in order to manage warehouse activity including shipments, inventory and goods receptions from suppliers. Unit Testing This type of testing is usually performed by the developers and is covering the very basic development component. In this test developers are testing the straight forward functionality of a functional piece of code to make sure that it is performing according to th...

It is all began long time ago when Development Teams were constantly asked to provide estimate and they were having a hard time to properly face the task. Let's admit it, there are so many things that can change, happen, and simply go wrong during the development process that one can hardly expect a proper estimation of hours for each task. That why a relative estimation with Story Points came along. Story Points Estimation Its a different way to estimate the effort of the Scrum Development Team with-in Agile methodology, which means that instead of estimating hours of work the team estimates each effort relatively to other efforts in the project. Let's assume that a developer knows that specific 'Task 1' is much harder than another 'Task 2' it is hard for him/her to quantify that harder feeling in hours of additional work but it is possible to say that it much more work. This situation is being address by Story Points when each story point is ...

Today I wanted to discuss the basic automation question - what exactly do we want to automate? We can of course be extreme and say "everything" or "nothing" but both of those options are a very costly choices, first takes a lot of resources the other get you pay for it at the end. I was consulting a client once where they had a complex process of ROI calculation that resulted in them not automating anything as the process to choose what to automate was time consuming by itself and ironically enough was not part of the Return Of Investment formula. With this client we had to find and streamline the process to make a quick and easy decision regarding the automation candidates and I wanted to share this process with you. To better understand the process we will need to answer two simple questions - Why and What: Why we automate What we automate Why we automate? Imagine yourself in an epic competition Human against the Machine in a battle of ham...

For those of you who start with HP ALM, or using it for basic functionality and looking to increase the capacity of the tool, I wanted to mention one of the most powerful features within HP ALM, and the one that sets it above the competitors - the ability to fully customize most of sections within the tool. This customization goes as far as giving the possibility to create new buttons with customizable functionality, updating functionality of existing functions and adding fields to different components. All that can be achieved through HP ALM’s workflow section. This sections allows configuration of day to day functionality like preventing defect from being closed without a reason, to a more complex customization with have VBScripting like exports, execution or even initiation of other tools and applications. In future posts I’m planning to explore some specific application of this powerful tool, meanwhile for those who interested here are some examples of what can be achieved...

Lately, I was facing a strange issue when the defect notification coming from HP ALM were all missing the video attachment which were there to help with the bug reproduction process. It was the first project with this client that decided to include video attachment instead of a screenshots and it was obviously related to the size. Reviewing of HP documentation shows that there is a parameter in Site Administration tool that defines this limitation it's called: ATTACH_MAX_SIZE By default this parameter set-up to 3000kb which allows for 3Mb of email attachments, any attachment above this size will be excluded from the email. We did a quick check of our attachments and found out that we don't need more than 10Mb for our purpose and hence the Outlook server limit was set to 20Mb we were good to go with the change. Now if you looking to limit the attachment size or type to a specific module (e.g. Defects, Test Plan) you will need to use ALM workflow to achieve that.

I have noticed in many places that are working on implementing Agile methodology a popular misconception around the question who are the Scrum Development Team. Most people wrongly assume that it is the de facto developers who write the code and when I point out that it is not the case it is being met by dismay and skepticism. "Developers are developers, who else can development team be?" I was told once in a such discussion, and the answers to that is hidden with in the Scrum guide If one will go and carefully review the guide one can find the following definition there: "The Development Team consists of professionals who do the work of delivering a potentially releasable Increment of "Done" product at the end of each Sprint." Take a note of the phrase "... rofessionals who do the work of delivering..." those are not only the developers who write the code but also the Testers who test the code, the BAs who taking care of Backlog items ...

It happens, specially when you are doing some testing with mobile devices, that you need to connect to only internally available application. The issue is with devices that have only WiFi connection and cannot be directly connected to internal network (LAN). For those cases you can create a temporary HotSpot (a connection sharing) on your Windows machine that will allow you to connect your device through it to your internal network, to have the following set-up: Lets create the set-up: Click Windows logo at the bottom left hand corner, type cmd , right-click the Cmd.exe link and select “Run as Administrator”. If you don’t have this option you cannot proceed. Sorry. Talk to your System Admin and show them this article. But if you can the following black window will open up: Here Type the command below: netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=MyNetwork key=MyPass You of-course welcome to replace “MyNetwork” with the name you’d like to use for your new wifi ne...

My team and I were recently faced with a challenge that required us to search the database for a stored procedure that contains reference for a specific table or another stored procedure. We were able to accomplish that by a simple text search query that uses the system object definition and goes like that: SELECT OBJECT_NAME(object_id) FROM sys.sql_modules (nolock) WHERE definition like '%----SOME TEXT HERE----%' The interesting part begins once we were faced with a more complex system structure that included stored procedures which can be called from different databases and include inserts, updates and selects to yet another set of databases. Of curse executing the same query again and again for each database to perform the required search was not an option so the solution presented itself in an undocumented system stored procedure called sp_MSforeachtable . This stored procedure allows us execute the same query for all the databases on the server with "?" us...

There are different approaches to achieve a proper Defect life-cycle solution with different theories and goals behind each one of them but from my experience most of the solutions that will have the following 10 statuses when implemented will have the better results in improving the final quality of the company’s product:

Lately, I found myself helping several people to begin their automation testing journey. And what a better place to do it then a nice new installation of a Robot Framework with its Selenium2Library on a Windows OS. Why Robot Framework with Selenium2Library? While you are probably here because you are looking for a quick installation guide for Automation Testing platform for you web project, I still need to do my do diligence and explain in couple of words why we need it. Robot Framework it's a Python framework that allows for a less development oriented Manual QA professionals to do a quick switch into Test Automation. This can be achieved by allowing for easy English phrases (e.g. Click Element, Wait, etc) to replace a more complex Python syntax. Selenium2Library it's additional add on on top of Robot Framework that allows easy interaction with web elements during the automation process. That's it..... DONE with the talking now the installation.... Installatio...

To be honest interviewing for any position it is a hard task and QA is no different. Interviewer have to know what is the set of required qualities to do the requested tasks and what is the set of qualities that should be placed in "Nice to Have" category. From that perspective QA is the most complicated position in IT market as two general approaches are gaining ground in the field: "Technology View" and "Quality View". So which one of those two is more efficient in finding highly rated QA professionals?