Due to the interaction of many software components, there is increased complexity in testing today's software solutions. The problem becomes especially difficult when the solution includes combinations of hardware, software, and multiple operating systems. To automate this process, Steven Hagerott's company developed "Build Rules," a Web-based application with inputs from their build management and test execution systems. Using logical rules about the builds, test engineers define the characteristics of the build solution points. To deliver the latest and greatest builds that meet the characteristics defined for each solution point, the system dynamically translates these rules into server side nested SQL queries. Learn how their efficiency and accuracy has improved significantly, allowing test engineers to stay on track with many different build combinations and to communicate results to outside departments and customers.

A behavior specification is a valuable engineering artifact for the design, review, and testing of embedded software. It is a black-box model defining all interactions between system and environment and the conditional state-based causal relationships among them. Based on work by IEEE working group P1175, Dwayne Knirk describes a new reference model for specifying the behavior of computing systems. An embedded software control application is used to illustrate the application of this model. Dwayne provides an overview of the application and shows specification examples from the requirements document. He focuses on how the specification was initially developed, analyzed for completeness and consistency, used for generating test cases, and valued by the entire development and test team throughout the project.

You have the automation tool. You have the right technical skills. You have the application experts at your disposal. It's time to jump in and start coding! Or is it? Many well-intentioned test automation efforts fail due to a lack of planning. Steve Walters describes his practical approach for developing an overall test automation strategy. Learn how to plan for automation success, select the right tests to automate, and prioritize them for a faster return on investment. By quickly eliminating poor automation candidates and using Steve's scorecard to assess the value of automating a test, you will be on the right track to achieving your automation goals. Take away a quantitative approach for deciding what to automate-and what not to automate-and the steps to develop a realistic plan and timeline for getting the job done.

To achieve the most effective test automation, you need to go beyond automated test case creation and implement automated environment setup. In tracking the testing time spent over several projects, the Clustering group Amit Mathur worked with found that more staff time was being spent on setup than on actual testing. He discusses and demonstrates the Environment Configuration System (ECS) his group developed to automatically set up test environments and trigger automated test execution. Find out how ECS has dramatically improved the ability to automate many more manual tests. ECS employs a scripting language (Perl) and libraries for environment setup and test cases. Based on interface specifications and dependency rules, ECS bundles environment setups and test cases for complex test scenarios. Learn how you can adapt the ECS approach for your applications and environment.