Checklist and Guidelines for LISA Virtualization

DB connection:

1) Put the OJDBC14 jar file in LISA—lib and hot deploy folder
2) Go to LISA – database and copy oracle-site property file and paste it in the LISA home directory
3) Change the file name as Site
4) Edit the below properties

lisadb.pool.common.driverClass
lisadb.pool.common.url
lisadb.pool.common.user
lisadb.pool.common.password
lisadb.internal.enabled=false

5) In LISA add a step for sql injection with the below instructions

Enter jdbc driver as oracle.jdbc.driver.Oracledriver
Enter connection string
Enter username and pw
Select “Returns results set” checkbox only for select query. Disable it for insert and update queries
Make the sql command in single line
Remove semi colon at the end of the query

6) Always declare the property in the below format -  '{{ItemTag}}'

Creating WSDL

1) Click Add button in stateless transaction section
2) Change the match style as operation
3) In operation enter ( GET /”End point”) not wsdl url
4) In request data add an arguments name and value as “wsdl”
5) In request data meta data add the below details

HTTP-Method    GET
HTTP-URI    /”End point”
HTTP-Version    HTTP/1.1
Accept    image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, application/x-shockwave-flash, application/x-ms-application, application/x-ms-xbap, application/vnd.ms-xpsdocument, application/xaml+xml, application/vnd.ms-excel, application/vnd.ms-powerpoint, application/msword, */*
Accept-Language    en-us
User-Agent    Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; InfoPath.2; MS-RTC LM 8)
Accept-Encoding    gzip, deflate
Host    localhost:8001
Connection    Keep-Alive

6) In response section copy and paste the request

Enter the wsdl url for the service and copy the request and paste it in the response body section
Change the end point of the service in the request. It should be in            “ ”

7) In Meta data section enter the below keys

Content-Type    text/xml; charset=utf-8
Date    {{=httpNow()}}
HTTP-Response-Code    200
HTTP-Response-Code-Text    OK
Server    LISA/Virtual-Environment-Server

X-Powered-By        Servlet/2.5 JSP/2.1

8) Run the ITR and open IE , open the end point wsdl url. It should display the request without error



Deploying the VSM:

1) Open server console
2) Right click VSM and select create MAR info file
3) Enter the name and version and click ok
4) Now select mar info and click Build model archive
5) Save it to the project
6) In server console select deploy a new service button in the top
7) Select a model archive from your project and click deploy button
8) After deploy start the service
9) Now hit the service in the real environment

VSM Model

1) Always the respond should come from the virtual image selection
2) We can remove virtual route tracker
3) Double click https listen and enter the end point in  the base path field “/end point”

Adding a filter

Select https listen
Select add filter button under filter section
Select xml filter – parse text from xml flter
Enter filter in as “lisa.vse.http.current.transaction.body”
Enter the tag which is used in the request for ex : v12:StoreID
Enter any property name

For database filter

Select databse filter – Extract result from jdbc result set

Adding an assertion

Select add xml filter ---ensure result contains the string


Adding a data set


Select common data sets and random code generator




General guidelines:

1) All the req and res pair should be in Data folder
2) Req should be in the format of –req and response should be in the format f –rsp
3) Save the service image as “SI_project name.VSI” and the vsm as “VSM_project name.vsm”
4) Save the project as BBYM_RL_service name_Ver01”
5) Enter 9090 in the port while configuring HTTPS protocol
6) Save the ITR after execution if required
7) Request match style should be signature and response should be exact
8) Enable magic string check box for the all the values which is passed through the request
9) In response all the comparison operation should be “Anything” under the arguments
10) Check for the VSM path before the execution
11) Note down all the steps added and the changes made under Documentation section
12) Check with the content type in the response
13) Check with the req/res pairs which is currently used  in the application

Web Service Virtualization

Service Virtualization

The most increasing trend in web service testing is Virtualization. Before dragging into virtualization and the tools used for this we will have a look into the basic concepts of web services.

What is web service?

Web service is an API which can be used from a common repository or in a web server. For ex: In your company you will be developing n no of projects. Consider that most of the projects are using the common login functionality. In that case we can implement the login functionality as a web service, so that all the projects can call the login we service which is configured in a web server.

Types of Web Services:

There are two types of web services listed below,
1) SOAP – Soap is xml oriented protocol
2) REST – Rest is architecture oriented protocol which can be used for different data formats

What is Virtualization?

While testing these web services the most common issues what we have faced is all the Environment issues. Because if the project has very complex architecture and if it has many interfaces, most of the time this web services may be down and it will affect the testing flow. This is the place where virtualization of web services comes into picture. In virtualization we are going to create a Service Images by using the request and response pairs and that will use as a virtual web service where we can test the request what we have created.

Tools used for Virtualization:

 Most common tool used for this virtualization is ITKO LISA and I have worked on this tool only.

Advantages of Virtualization:

1) Don’t bother about the environment issues. You can continue your testing without interruption
2) Most effective
3) Time conception method of testing
4) We can test in lower environments, that will end up in investing more of server configuration
   

Testing during production deployment:

Last week we had a major production deployment for our existing website.Project team came up with an eight hour estimate whereas testing covered with 2 hours time period. So we are in a position to plan our self to complete the entire testing activities within the scheduled time period.

For this initially, we have prepared some smoke and sanity test cases for existing application and the new enhancements. Also we have included some test cases from regression test suite to this. We executed this smoke and sanity suite as part of our daily testing activities five days prior to deployment, with the intention of getting some hands on experience in execution to reduce the time period during production deployment.

After completing the successful deployment we came up with some checklists for testing the application during production deployment. They are listed below,

1) Get the test login id’s for production server
2) Ask the data team to insert some test data to the test user login or account
3) Check for the “Website Maintenance / Offline messages displayed while accessing the website at the time of        deployment
4) Execute the sanity and smoke test cases which you have prepared to ensure all the major functionalities are working fine
5) Check for any broken links
6) Check for any images missing throughout the application
7) If the website has different group of users, test by using the default user in every group
8) Ensure with the browser you are testing with the project team
9) If there are any configuration or environmental issues during deployment , convey them to the project team immediately
10) Sign off email from QA team to ensure the website is working fine after the deployment

If you want to add some more points to this post please add them in the comments section.

Also please correct me if anything wrong.

Quality Center (9.2)

Important notes about Quality Center (9.2):


Modules:

Releases
Requirements
Test Plan
Test Lab
Defects

Priority:

Resolve immediately,
High,
Normal,
Low.

Severity:

Critical,
High,
Medium,
Low

Status:

Assigned,
Closed,
Deferred,
Fixed,
New,
Open,
Ready for retest,
Rejected,
Reopen,
Request for deferral,
Requirement Evaluation,
Unassigned

New Defect:

Mandatory Fields while posting a defect:

Summary
Application Area,
Defect Type,
Detected in version,
Environment
Priority
Status
Customer Issue
Detected By
Detected on date
Focus Area
Reproducible
Description
Screenshot

Non Mandatory fields:

Cost estimate in dollars
Customer name
Detected in Release
Estimated fix time
Severity
Target release
Assigned to
Current production issue
Detected in cycle
Escalation
Resolved by
Target cycle


Attachment options:

File attachment
Camera capture 9snapshot)
Attach URL
Attach system info
Attach clip content

Roles of QA in Requirement Analysis Phase of SDLC

Requirement Analysis:

It is the first phase of Software Development Life Cycle and so important too, since defects can be found early through this phase.Generally it will be done by both dev team and the qa team. Both teams will analyze the requirements documents from the client.
This document will be prepared by Business Analyst who is having thorough rapport with the client regarding their requirements.

Documents

This Requirement document contains the following files,

1) Functional Specification
2) Mock ups
3) Data Layouts

Roles of QA

1) Take the FS as a baseline document and analyze each and every page of it
2) If any clarification needed on any particular functionality or any suggestions to implement the features or any logical issues, then raise a defect or clarification against the Functional Specification document
3) Track the defect or clarification raised against the FS
4) If it is addressed, check whether it is updated in the base line document
5) Check whether the updated functional specification is available for all stake holders with the latest version
6) Check whether the version history is updated with change date and the author name who made changes in the document
7) Sign off from RA phase

Basic Unix Commands

ls ................. show directory, in alphabetical order
logout ............. logs off system
mkdir .............. make a directory
rmdir .............. remove directory (rm -r to delete folders with files)
rm ................. remove files
cd ................. change current directory
man (command) ...... shows help on a specific command
talk (user) ........ pages user for chat - (user) is a email address
write (user) ....... write a user on the local system (control-c to end)

pico (filename) .... easy to use text editor to edit files
pine ............... easy to use mailer
more (file) ........ views a file, pausing every screenful

sz ................. send a file (to you) using zmodem
rz ................. recieve a file (to the unix system) using zmodem

telnet (host) ...... connect to another Internet site
ftp (host) ......... connects to a FTP site
archie (filename) .. search the Archie database for a file on a FTP site
irc ................ connect to Internet Relay Chat
lynx ............... a textual World Wide Web browser
gopher ............. a Gopher database browser
tin, trn ........... read Usenet newsgroups

passwd ............. change your password
chfn ............... change your "Real Name" as seen on finger
chsh ............... change the shell you log into

grep ............... search for a string in a file
tail ............... show the last few lines of a file
who ................ shows who is logged into the local system
w .................. shows who is logged on and what they're doing
finger (emailaddr).. shows more information about a user
df ................. shows disk space available on the system
du ................. shows how much disk space is being used up by folders
chmod .............. changes permissions on a file
bc ................. a simple calculator

make ............... compiles source code
gcc (file.c) ....... compiles C source into a file named 'a.out'

gzip ............... best compression for UNIX files
zip ................ zip for IBM files
tar ................ combines multiple files into one or vice-versa

Some Basic SQL Queries

1) Query to select Maximum Salary from a Table

Select Max (ActualSalary) from employees


2) Query to select Minimum Salary from a Table

Select Min (ActualSalary) from employees


3) Query to select unique values from a table

Select Distinct EmpStatusCode from employees


4) Query to select 6th highest Salary

SELECT TOP 1 ActualSalary
FROM (SELECT DISTINCT TOP 6 ActualSalary FROM employees
ORDER BY ActualSalary DESC) a
ORDER BY ActualSalary


5) Query to select total count from table

SELECT count (* or field name) from employees


6) Query for ascending order display

SELECT * from employees Order by LastName


7) Query for Descending Order display

SELECT * from employees Order by LastName DESC



8) Query to insert Values into a table

INSERT INTO Persons (P_Id, Last Name, FirstName)
VALUES (5, 'Tjessem', 'Jacob')


9) Query to update values in a table

SET EmpID =1000 WHERE LastName=’Rakesh’


10) Query to delete a value from a table

Delete from employees where EmpID=1000



If you know some basic queries other than this, kindly drop it in the comment section.

Importance of Resolution Testing

Few Days back we got a bug from our client when the application was in Production Server.They got java script error and blank page while accessing a particular menu. (Find the Screen shot below)

It was straightly forwarded to the development team by our project manager.
They tried many times to reproduce the issue but they can’t.At last as usual it came to our testing team and we also tried to reproduce the same and failed.

We tried in lot of scenarios and by changing the system environment also.
At Last we changed our screen resolution into 800 * 600 pixels and tried to access the same menu which was reported by our client and we got the same error this time.

At that day we learnt a lesson to test the application by changing the screen resolution.After that we had added this scenario into our lesson learnt document and also in Test Scenario document.

Many of us were aware of this type of Resolution Testing. But due to lack of schedule we missed to execute these scenarios and these things will become very big issues to the client.

So make sure to test the application by changing the screen resolution before delivering the application to the client.






If you have any feedbacks for this post, kindly drop it in the comment section

Testing Interview Questions

If you are going to attend an interview in Manual Testing, then you have to prepare for the following basic questions which were asked in many interviews.

1) Prepare about you and your professional experience. It will be within 3 to 5 minutes.
2) Prepare something about your company details
3) Your Roles and Responsibilities in your company
4) Prepare about your current project. You have to tell the Project title, Client of the project, Short Description about the project, how many modules are there in the project and which part you have involved in the project.
5) Your Daily Regular activities after entering and leaving from office?
6) Types of testing u have done in your experience?
7) What are the challenges situations you have faced?
8) What are Severity and priority and some examples?
9) What are all the achievements you made in your company in your role?
10) What are all the challenging defects you found?
11) What will you do to reproduce issues, if the developer says that he can’t able to reproduce?
12) How will you Communication within your team and stake holders?
13) What is the Difference between client server applications and Web Applications?
14) What is SDLC and explain about it?
15) What is STLC and explain about it?
16) Testing process you follow in your company?
17) What is Bug life cycle and explain about it?
18) Test case preparation and sample test cases?
19) What is Requirement traceability matrix and how will you do it in your company?
20) What is Defect traceability matrix?
21) How does a web applications works?
22) What is V- Model and explain about it?
23) What is the Difference between waterfall model and V MODEL?
24) What are all the Testing Techniques?
25) What is Boundary Value analysis and Equivalence partitioning and give examples?

If you people have more questions that will be asked in interviews, kindly add it in the comments section.

Severity and Priority of Defects

Generally we have to set the Severity and Priority level for a Defect. Severity level will be set by the Testing Team and the Priority level will be set by the Development Team.

Severity means how much severe is the particular defect in the application (i.e.) how it affects the functionality of the application

Priority means the importance and urgency to fix the defect by the developers (i.e.) which defect should be fixed first and which should be fixed in later versions.

There and some levels in severity and priority, they are as follows….

Severity levels:

Trivial
Minor
Major
Critical
Block

Priority Levels:

Low
Medium
High
Urgent
Immediate

The Severity and Priority levels must vary depends upon the company and the defect tracking tool used by the company.

Some Examples for the priority levels….

Low Priority: Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, Textual Errors, Orphan pages, broken links, GUI errors,

High Priority: Wrong Functionality, Applications Crashes, Errors

If you have any feed backs for this post, kindly drop it in the comments section.

Details to be given while posting a Defect

I know that all the experienced Testers must have knowledge on what are all the details that should be given to a developer while posting a defect. But I am writing this article for fresh testers. Anyway experienced testers, write down your comments, feed backs and valuable points which can be added from your experience. It will be more helpful for the fresh peoples who are reading this article.

1) Category of the defect
2) Defect Reproducibility
3) Severity of the defect
4) Version of the product/project
5) OS Version
6) Environment Details
7) Summary of the defect
8) Description
9) Steps to Reproduce
10) Additional Information
11) Login Details
12) Test Data
13) Actual Result
14) Expected Result
15) Screen shots for proof
16) Videos if any for reproduce

Roles and Responsibilities of a "Software Testing Engineer"

Generally Roles and Responsibilities of a Testing Engineer may vary, depending upon the working company. But here we are going to discuss about the general and important roles and responsibilities of a Testing Engineer.

1) Analyzing the Requirements from the client
2) Participating in preparing Test Plans
3) Preparing Test Scenarios
4) Preparing Test Cases for module, integration and system testing
5) Preparing Test Data’s for the test cases
6) Preparing Test Environment to execute the test cases
7) Analyzing the Test Cases prepared by other team members
8) Executing the Test Cases
9) Defect Tracking
10) Giving mandatory information of a defect to developers in order to fix it
11) Preparing Summary Reports
12) Preparing Lesson Learnt documents from the previous project testing experience
13) Preparing Suggestion Documents to improve the quality of the application
14) Communication with the Test Lead / Test Manager
15) Conducting Review Meetings within the Team

These are the Roles and Responsibilities of a Testing Engineer which is based upon my knowledge. If you know more about this kindly write it down in the comments section.
Your Feed backs are welcome!

Expert Rating Certification in Software Testing

Here comes another one certification for Software Testing, "Expert Rating".
While comparing with other certifications it is very cheap and i don't know how worth is this certification
in India. But i am sure that it will increase our confidence level in our "Software Testing" field.

Syllabus for this certification :

1) Fundamentals concepts in software testing
2) Advanced Testing concepts
3) Types of Testing
4) Automation Testing

Fees and Payment Details :

Charges for taking up this certification is 9.95 USD and they are charging 5 USD for hard copy of your certificate.

You can pay the fee by using credit/debit cards and take the exam in online.

Question Types:

There will be 40 multiple choice questions and 40 minutes duration for the exam.
No negative mark is given for your wrong answers. You have to get 50 % to pass the exam.

For more details kindly visit : http://www.expertrating.com/certifications/Software-Testing-Test.asp

There are other useful certifications available for software professionals in this site, for more details visit : http://www.expertrating.com/certifications.asp

I Have completed this certifications and got my logo, Kindly view my Transcript Details in the below link,
http://www.expertrating.com/transcript.asp?transcriptid=2253348

Basic SQL Commands

DDL

DDL (Data Definition Language) statements are used to define the database structure or schema. Some examples:

• CREATE - to create objects in the database
• ALTER - alters the structure of the database
• DROP - delete objects from the database
• TRUNCATE - remove all records from a table, including all spaces allocated for the records are removed
• COMMENT - add comments to the data dictionary
• RENAME - rename an object

DML

DML (Data Manipulation Language) statements are used for managing data within schema objects. Some examples:
• SELECT - retrieve data from the a database
• INSERT - insert data into a table
• UPDATE - updates existing data within a table
• DELETE - deletes all records from a table, the space for the records remain
• MERGE - UPSERT operation (insert or update)
• CALL - call a PL/SQL or Java subprogram
• EXPLAIN PLAN - explain access path to data
• LOCK TABLE - control concurrency

DCL

DCL is Data Control Language statements. Some examples:
• GRANT - gives user’s access privileges to database
• REVOKE - withdraw access privileges given with the GRANT command

Benefits Of Certification

In this time of "Recession" all the professionals are doing certification in their fields.Here we will discuss about the benefits of doing certification in software testing field.

1) Increases Company Reputation
2) Recognition by IT management for professional achievement
3) Competency resources to IT staff
4) Helpful for Marketing with the clients
5) Increased Confidence in Personal Capabilities
6) Improved Software Testing Methods, Techniques, and Measurement
7) Certification gives you a competitive edge for promotion and hiring.
8) Raises profile of testing in an organization
9) Able to detect defects those others miss and save your employers and clients from costly and embarrassing field failures.
10)Knows how to apply sound software testing techniques
11)Reduced development costs
12)Increased customer trust and confidence
13)We understood the software life cycle
14)Quality of the defect has been increase
15)Understood the testing terminology
16)Increase the standard for defect post
17)Started thinking out of the box
18)Increase in Communication
19)Testing based on the risk factors
20)We started concentrating on usability
21)Started conducting meeting and reviews
22)Soft skills (e.g. handling the development team)
23)Updated the process/frame work
24)Increase the type of testing. (e.g. compatibility)

If i missed out any benefits, please add that in the comments field.

Habits of Highly Effective Negative Testers

1) First check if all the tabs, menus and links are displaying proper pages
2) Put negative numbers into text fields
3) Put ridiculously long strings anywhere you can,
4) Paste inappropriate stuff - like binary files into text boxes
5) Open 13 instances of your app at once
6) Unplug the network or the power in the middle of an important flow
7) Change the system date and time
8) Install on a system way below the minimum specs
9) Use weird characters like ì È Ö
10) Run 10 other apps while you are testing
11) Delete crucial files
12) Don't close other applications before proceeding
13) Press submit button in all the forms for more than one time and see
the application response
14) Try to login with case sensitive passwords
15) Close your Browser while doing any uploading or submitting in the application
16) Test with low bandwidth networks
17) Change the parameter id’s displayed in the URL
18) View for Application icon in browser address bar
19) Check with the displayed error messages through out the application
20) Check whether the user can find on which page he is now (i-e) Application
have to highlight the current page

Tips to Capture “Unable to reproduce issues”

A Very challenge thing to a Software Tester is if he posted one critical issues by spending more time, then the developer will simply add comment as “Unable to reproduce”.
At this stage we have to fight with the developer by adding more screenshots or by conducting meetings to explain how to reproduce the issue.
Now a simple way comes to capture a defect in the application. Using this we can record how to reproduce the issue.

http://www.screentoaster.com/

1) Go to the above site and register as a new user
2) Login to the application and click Start Recording button
3) It will display Record button
4) Now go to your application and click “Alt+S”
5) Try your scenario to reproduce the issue
6) After reproducing the issue click “Alt+S” and go to screen toaster
7) Click stop recording
8) Now the video to reproduce your issue is ready to view

You can upload the video into screen toaster and you will get a URL for that
You can upload it in YouTube
You can download the video in “AVI” and “SWF” formats

Now attach the video or give the link while reporting the issue. Developers will not say “Unable to reproduce” after seeing this video.

For your reference I have attached a video to explain about how to record a video to capture an issue.
I have recorded the scenario in login page of “YouTube”

http://www.screentoaster.com/watch/stU0ldRkRIR1pYRVlcXF9RUFVX/how_to_record_a_video

“Happy Testing”

Useful Tips for Testing

In this article we can discuss about some useful tips that are used for software testing.
While testing a web application, there will be some clone sites available for that application.
First we need to check the functionality of the clone site to know more about the application. At that time we need to register in that clone site and then only we can able to proceed. But now a site is giving sample login details for all the famous sites. Link for the site is

http://www.bugmenot.com/

Using this site we can get sample login details for any popular sites and it will be more useful while testing.
For Ex: If you are going to study about the functionality of “YouTube”, but you don’t have login details for YouTube. At this time you can use this above site to get sample details for YouTube.
Check out some sample login details in the below link,

http://www.bugmenot.com/view/youtube.com

Using this logins you can enter into “YouTube” as a registered user.

Categories of Defect

While posting a defect we have to choose appropriate category for the defect.
If you are using any bug tracking tool, then it will be mandatory to select category for the defect while posting. Here we can see how many categories are available for a defect,

1) Functionality Issues
2) Logical Issues
3) Designing Issues
4) Flash Issues
5) Errors
6) Compatibility Issues
7) Usability Issues
8) User Interface Issues
9) Textual Errors
10)Documentation Issues
11) Validation Errors
12) Feature Additional
13) Suggestions
14) Query
15) Enhancements

If you know more categories of defects, kindly write down in comments section or send an e-mail to me.

User Interface Testing

User Interface Testing:

User interface testing is defined as to test the interface between the application and the end user.
Here we will see how to test a simple form for user interface testing.



Steps for User Interface Testing:

1) Check with the spellings for all the labels
2) Check whether the Tab sequence is working properly in all the fields
3) Anyone option have to be selected as default in the Radio box
4) Able to select the options in the radio box by using right and left
arrows in the keyboard
5) Select option have to display as default in the combo box
6) It will not allow to enter a new option in the combo box
7) We can able to select the options in the list by using up and down
arrows in the keyboard
8) “ * “symbol have to display in all the mandatory fields
9) By clicking submit button without entering any texts, it have to
display error message in mandatory fields
10) By Clicking Cancel button it have to display the previous or home page
11) Font size should be proper as per the requirement
12) Font style should be proper as per the requirement
13) Spaces between the texts and the fields should be proper

If you know more about User Interface Testing, kindly write down in comments section or send an e-mail to me.