By Jeff Rappoport

Looking back at past test automation projects that MapleWorks has been involved with leads me to conclude that test automation is no different than any other software development project. 

Typically test automation tools are built using scripting or programming languages; a commercial platform such as AutomatedQA’s TestComplete or Emprix’s Hammer; an open source platform such as STAF; or an in-house development platform. Regardless of the approach taken, test automation is a product. It is a stand alone tool used to trigger events and then report whether the event triggered was handled appropriately by the system under test.

The key attributes surrounding test automation are:

• Understanding how the system under test operates
• Understanding the characteristics of the automation test tool
• Defining a precondition
• Creating an automated test
• Verifying the test case outcome
• Removing all evidence about the test

Understanding how the system under test operates is the most important component of any test automation activity. Knowing what triggers need to be injected into the system is crucial since the core component of any automated test case is to create activity on the system under test. Understanding what output is generated by the system under test is equally important because this output will be used by the test automation platform to declare whether the automated test case passes or fails.

Understanding the characteristics of an automation test tool is crucial in the construction of an action (the automated test case) from the desired intent (wanting to test the system). Each test tool is bound to some technology and each technology has limitations. The resourceful test case developer has the ability to use creativity and possibly out of the box approaches to bridge the gap between what is needed to trigger activity on the system under test and how to manipulate the test tool to generate this trigger. Understanding the automation test tool is also important in defining mechanisms for retrieving output data from the system under test.

A precondition essentially states what the starting point is prior to injecting the trigger onto the system under test. This precondition needs to be applied to the system under test as well as the automation test tool. A state machine analogy can be applied to this idea. In order to arrive at state “B”, event “B” must be applied from state “A”. Precondition requires that the system under test and the test tool be initialized and set to state “A”.

Creating an automated test case is the mechanics of applying the lessons learned from the previous two points in the construction of a tool to test the system under test. The test tool identifies the language used to create the test case and the decision making criteria in evaluating the test case outcome.

Verifying the outcome is a means to determine if the system under test is sane and behaving as expected. Once all the triggers are applied it is important to retrieve information from the system under test in order to evaluate its behavior. The automated test tool needs to obtain this data, and determine if the data meets expectations. If the expectations are satisfied then the test succeeded. If the expectations are not satisfied then the test case failed.

A failed test case is just is as valuable as a successful outcome because this suggests that the system under test is faulty.

Removing all evidence is an eye catching phrase to describe the post condition cleanup step. The goal is to place the system under test as well as the automation test tool into a known state so the next automated test case can be run. As stated previously, the test tool and system under test needs to be reset to state “A”.

At the end of the day successful test automation requires:

• Understand and prioritize your requirements
  • Understand the product that needs to be tested
  • Understand how the intended user is planning on using the tool
  • Understand how the system under test reports a successful or failed outcome
• Gain knowledge
  • Prototype the most complex procedure the intended user wants tested
  • Understand the technological limitations imposed by the system under test
  • Understand the limitations imposed by third party tools
• Go off and build the automation tool.
  • Design a suitable architecture
  • Implement the solution

By Paul Gasparro

Two feet (9.44 cm) of snow fell in Denver over the weekend. I called my contact to ask if we should reschedule our Tuesday meeting.  He told me "don't worry be happy" it will melt before you arrive. By the time I got there the snow was gone and the temperature was 75 F (22 C) and sunny. On Monday the Dow Jones fell 300 points because people thought that the BoA results were too good. On Tuesday it rose over 120 points beause Geitner told Wall Street "don't worry, be happy" the banks are strong. Things change very fast in the world today. Part of the reason for the change is attitude. Read the Secret by Rhonda Byrne.

Many people are talking about the demise of the Venture Capital industry. In fact, investments in the first quarter($3.9B)in the US were 50% lower than in the first quarter in 2008. However when you look for the silver lining it actually exists. Scott Austin of VentureWire Alert does find it.  In the April 21 edition of Venture Dispatch he makes 3 excellent points about the recent quarter. First, the percentage of investment money going into startups has remained relatively constant (39%) since 2002. Second, not all regions of the country have been hit hard.  In fact, New England was down only 15%. Finally, the VC's are flushed with cash having raised $24.7B in 2008, which has to be put to work.

So as the saying goes "don't worry be happy". The high tech industry will soon be vibrant again and  you will begin to turn on your product development faucet. When that happens, you can be sure that MapleWorks will be ready to support your needs. We have been using this economic slump to build cash reserves and strengthen our staff. We are in a position to turn on as fast as you need us.

 (Paul Gasparro is Co-founder and Vice President of Business Development for MapleWorks – the smart choice for on-shore software development.)

by Dawn McGee

For anyone who had the opportunity to read my latest newsletter, you've already seen this title, but let me take a moment to expand upon it. It is springtime in New England, so there is a sense of rebirth in the air already, and maybe you're thinking that I took my exuberance too far.

I was wondering the same thing. Really though, it does feel like there is a small sense of relief in the high tech community, even if it's not necessarily right here in the Northeast. Normally, there is a regional nature to business, particularly in high tech. However, over the past year or so, everyone has been sharing the same sense of doom. Lately, though, the daily alerts that I've been receiving from Venture Deal have been strongly pointing to a resurgence of funding for California companies.

So that's one data point. As I surfed a little more, I found that Cisco is buying up companies again. They just purchased Tidal Software and Pure Digital Technologies. I also found that VC firms based in the San Francisco Bay area are reporting more confidence again. Lastly, to bolster a general sense that the banking world will survive, Wells Fargo reported a record quarterly profit, giving some hope that the deterioriation in the financial sector is slowing if not outright reversing.

Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Who can really say for sure? What I know is this - if the world is going to continue turning and businesses are going to continue running, innovation will also continue to occur and software projects will still need to be architected and developed. For me, at least, this speaks well of our future.

Dawn McGee is a Business Development Manager for MapleWorks – the smart choice for on-shore software development.

By Yi Liang

The convergence of data, voice and video poses increased challenges for testing, as the network has to perform to the user’s expectations across different media types. The challenges in this area are two fold. One is to achieve a very high coverage of scenarios in a time, cost effective, and efficient manner. The other challenge is to achieve very high coverage of scenarios, the amount of equipment needed can grow to a point where it would be cost ineffective, or physically unfeasible to create sufficiently complex environments. Therefore it is important to build expertise in the following key areas:

• Automation

· Explore innovative and cost effective means of tying systems together to operate in a coordinated fashion to achieve test scenarios

· Leverage techniques of massively parallel programming and grid computing to achieve faster test scenario execution

· Develop adapters for commonly used and cutting edge test equipment, so that it can be controlled through an automation framework

• Simulation

· Create generic simulation frameworks that can be adapted to any kind of specific network infrastructures and protocols

· Integrate simulation frameworks with a computing grid to allow simulations to use variable amount of CPU power

By Paul Gasparro 

When someone asks Bert Hill of the Ottawa Citizen, "why Canada?", his answer is simple, “a highly-educated workforce, R&D tax credits that cut up to 70 per cent (of the cost of ) developing technology, and backed by the world's soundest banking system.”

Canada always comes out on top of any survey for outsourcing when evaluated for language, infrastructure, culture, education, security, etc. just take a look at the recent Gartner report. The only place it does not excel is in labor costs.

The economy is almost in a freefall and governments are in a rush to put money into the economy to create jobs. Canada is ahead of the game with Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED), Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP), Quebec's eBusiness, etc. IP incentive programs. These benefits are being passed onto US customers in the form of reduced costs, with the result being that Canada now leads in total cost of ownership

In a research report published by Black Book Research and Brown-Wilson Group, ranking the safest countries in the world to do outsourcing—India ranked in the bottom ten, Canada, the top ten.

Talking to a prospect the other day, he said he really was not interested in the price, he was interested in expertise. I AGREED. I told him MapleWorks engineers have an average of 15 years experience with all of our DNA in network communications—HE AGREED.

 The economy has placed ever more pressure on companies to save money while avoiding risks. Offshoring is adventurous and risky. Onshoring (MapleWorks) offers services that provide an innovative, high quality solution on time, without the geopolitical risks of offshoring and at significantly lower cost than US development.

It is hard to believe anyone that says they have not been impacted by the downturn.

(Paul Gasparro is Co-founder and Vice President of Business Development for MapleWorks – the smart choice for on-shore software development.)