STAREAST 2002 - Software Testing Conference

PRESENTATIONS

Testing Your Software's Requirements

Many testing organizations focus primarily on software executable code, but that's not the only thing you can test. For instance, did you ever consider testing your software requirements? When you test only code, you face some big disadvantages, not to mention that design defects often aren't even fixable because they demand too much effort, too late in the release cycle. In fact, it's difficult to even report some requirements defects since the developers have already committed to the design strategy.

Brian Lawrence, Coyote Valley Software
The Context-Driven Approach to Software Testing

Several jokes about consultants revolve around the idea that they answer most questions by saying "It depends." The context-driven school of testing accepts the "It depends" reality but then asks, "Depends on what?" Rather than talking about best practices, this approach asks when and why a given practice would be beneficial; what risks and benefits are associated with it; what skills, documents, development processes, and other resources are required to enable the process; and so on.

Cem Kaner, Florida Institute of Technology

The Road to UML is Paved with Good Intentions

A picture is worth a thousand words. Does that mean that a model is worth a thousand requirements? A thousand test cases? Not exactly, but a model will tremendously aid in the development of requirements and test cases, and help facilitate inter-team communication of requirements and test cases; at least, that's always the intent. One way to help ensure that these good intentions come to fruition is to test the diagrams that the model is composed of, for 4C compliance-completeness, correctness, consistency, and clarity.

Dion Johnson, Pointe Technology Group

The W Model Strengthening the Bond Between Development and Test

In software development, thirty to forty percent of all software activities are testing related. That is why it is critical to launch test activities at the beginning of the project rather than after coding is completed. Based on the Vmodel, this paper describes a model that shows how the tasks for testing relate to the tasks in the development model. This testing model-the W-model further clarifies the priority of the tasks and the dependence between the development and testing activities.

Andreas Spillner, Hochschule Bremen and Karin Vosseberg, Specialists
Unified Test Automation Using XML

Are you looking to reduce the maintenance costs of your testware? Unified Test Automation (UTA) is one approach that's demonstrated cost-saving success. UTA serves as a cost-reduction strategy by centralizing test resources and minimizing the overhead of maintaining the different components of testware, such as test documents, test software, and test data.

Rodrigo Geve, Geve & Associates
Web Log Analysis for Performance Troubleshooting

Web server logs contain powerful-but often hidden-information about the performance of your Web application. In this session, you'll learn how easy it is to enlarge your toolkit for Web performance testing. For instance, Web Performance Log Analysis is a new activity that's based on performance information of Web server logs (elapsed time, bandwidth, number of hits, and more). Giuseppe Cassone shows you all the information you can extract from the log (with a focus on performance) and how you can best use it.

Giuseppe Cassone, Telecom Italia Lab SPA
What's That Supposed to Do? The Archeology of Legacy Systems

In testing utopia, all software products submitted for testing have thorough and comprehensive documentation describing how every program function should work. On planet Earth, however, test engineers usually have to make do under less-than-ideal circumstances. It's not uncommon for test engineers to be asked to verify the functionality of a critical legacy system which has no documented requirements whatsoever.

Patricia Ensworth, Moody's Investors Service

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