OTA API

What is OTA? How to use OTA API? What all are possible with OTA API?

Quality Centre is a HP product, well before was HP it was owned by Mercury. Well this product is basically used by QA Organization with in a company as a Test Management Tool. Most of the organizations use this. However there could be a scenario where a particular project requires to use some other tool to log defects/ bugs. For ex: a project running in an Agile development environment that may use BugZilla for example, so development using 1 tool and QA using its organization specific QualityCentre may not be possible or in other words its hell a lot of work to enter bugs in to both the tools & keep them in sync as the project goes along.

To handle those scenarios QualityCentre comes with an API that a project can use to sync up other tools with QualityCentre. This API is called Open Test Architecture (OTA). You may notice QuickTest Professional and Quality Centre also uses this API to speak to each other. Another example is, people exporting bulk tests/  defects/ requirements in to QualityCentre from excel. This process also uses OTA in the background. However for this API the entry point is TDconnect.exe. You can download this exe file from internet by google'ing for it. Once you install this you will have the flexibility to use this in Excel or use the references/ API's in any other programming languages.

This way user can directly play with the database that the Quality Centre is running on without opening the GUI for it. You can literally perform every function that you can perform by logging on to its console, like

• Logging in to QC
• Find specific details about a Defect/ Requirement/ Test/ TestSet
• Filtering Tests/ defects/ Requirements etc
• Perform CRUD operations on Requirements/Tests/ TestSets/ Runs/ Defects etc
• Also create links between Requirements > Tests, Tests > TestSets, TestSets > Defects and so on

You name it, you got it. Everything that you can manually on Quality Centre can also be done programatically using this API.

In order to perform most of the above mentioned stuff you would need to know the database structure/ schema so you know which table, which column to hit to get a value associated with a particular field in QC. Database schema is all open for everyone to know and is available on-line as well.

If you have Quality Centre installed on your machine, you can find the OTA reference guide, OTA database guide, and OTA custom type help files in your help folder. Alternatively, you can hit Help and then go to documentation page where you should get all this documentation ready available for you to either reference or download. In these help files you should see a good set of examples for each and every class module that we can use. an Example code to connect to QC is found as below:

Example-1: How to Connect to Quality Centre using OTA API

Example-2: How to Use Filter method to filter the results (Bug Factory)

Example-3: Find a specified requirement in a specified folder

Example-4: How to Create a Test using OTA

Reference: OTA COM 9.0 Type Library

Note: You can find a list of open source tools that're currently available by searching for them on the internet. I found this link on the net http://www.software-pointers.com/en-defecttracking-opensource-tools.html

Quality Centre: All about it

Quality Centre: All about it

Quality Centre is a test management tool that provides a web interface to manage the test cases from
Writing the Requirements (Requirements Module is used to tracker requirements),
Planning tests for those requirements (Test Plan module is used to track the tests associated with a requirement),
Executing the tests (Test Lab module is used to track the execution of tests and associated defects),
Defects (Defects module is used to track the execution of defects raised while executing the tests in Test Lab)


Note: as a tester you're not expected to know the technical information of where the quality centre application is deployed & which server it is running on rather your QC Admin will provide you with a log-in credentials as soon as you join the company and you will soon find all the details about in no time.

Quality Center Login Procedure:

Quality centre is a quality management tool that is widely used to manage the test planning, execution and Defects. User can write a requirement, create tests for that particular requirement, run the tests and create defects thus completing a test cycle using Quality Centre.

Typically quality centre can be accessed using a link provided by your QC administrator. It could be something like http://localhost:8080/qcbin/start_a.jsp or http://localhost:8080/qcbin/start_a.html depending on the deployment server etc

Here localhost is server address, 8080 is the port number where the application server is running. It could be something like http://qc.companyname.com/qabin/start_a.html where companyname is the company you're working for.

Steps to follow to start working on QC are:

1. Obtain the link to access QC from your team lead or if you have access to QC administrator

2. Obtain authentication details from the above mentioned people

3. Obtain the Domain name & Project name that you should use to see ONLY your project. You can find this information from your project lead

4. Access the link obtained for QC by entering in to a IE browser & hit Enter. Remember, QC can not be accessed in Firefox or Chrome or any other latest browsers. Make sure the browser you're using is in the list of compatible browsers

5. Now enter userID, Password and click Authenticate button. This would enable Domain, Project combo-box where user can select the correct project name, domain name to which he has access to. Click Login button to complete Login

User Interface & Architecture: Depending on your installation, you may see the modules like Cycles/ Releases, Requirements, Business Components, Test Plan, Test Lab, Defects.

Business components module is used only when required in addition to other modules. This is completely installation based. This is widely/ specifically used in SAP based application testing, however this is not limited to only SAP application testing.

Write Requirements:

How and where do we write requirements in Quality Centre
Requirements module will consist of a space available for user to create a requirement or user story so user can plan writing tests in Test Plan module specific to an already existing requirement. A Typical requirements module will look like below (screen shot taken from Hp's website for reference)

Writing a requirement would require the following details. Number of mandatory fields would be installation based. 

1. Name: Name of the requirement. This could be unique description or a brief description of what is this requirement for?
2. Author: Who actually created this requirement? This is field will get populated automatically with the user ID with which the user is logged in to Quality Centre
3. Creation Date: The Date on which this requirement was initially created
4. Creation Time: Time on which this requirement was initially created
5. Modified: Last modified date/time value. Automatically gets populated as soon one of any fields of the requirements is updated. This log is maintained and is available to view under History TAB
6. Priority: Priority of the requirement. It could be something like 1 - Urgent, 2 - Major, 3 - High, 4 - Medium, 5 - Normal etc. This could vary from 1 installation to the other
7. Req Id: An automatically populated field. This is a unique ID for every requirement created in the database
8. Description: a details description of the requirement giving full details from A to Z
9. Req Type: Type of the requirement is something to suggest whether this requirement was initiated/ taken from? Example, business requirements document or a user story taken from acceptance criteria set in the product's system requirement specification and so on
10. Product: which product this requirement belongs to? there could be a number of projects/ products running in a company. To differentiate the requirements from 1 specific product area to the other
11. Reviewed: who reviewed this requirement as to certify this is right
12. Targert Release: release name under which this requirement is set to be released? Ex: In a waterfall model it could be something like "April 2012" or if its in an agile environment it could be something like "Sprint 25"
13. Targert Cycle: In which cycle you would expect this to run thru? Ex: Regression Cycle, or Cycle4 or Sprint12 etc

You can find more about requirements module available in HP's Quality Centre module at the following link  https://h10078.www1.hp.com/cda/hpms/display/main/hpms_content.jsp?zn=bto&cp=1-11-127-24^37802_4000_100__

QA Concepts

 

Testing Tools: Different tools used for Testing

Depending on the size of the company, testing is done using various tools for each phase of testing.

Quality Management Tools:

Quality Center (9.2+) - Latest version available is 11. You can actually download a copy of it from HP's BTO software website. Most of the medium to big organizations do use HP's Quality Centre for writing and running tests
Note: For version 11 onwards this is more referenced as Application Life Cycle Management software - ALM
Microsoft Excel - for writing test cases

Microsoft Word - for writing test plans and test strategy document

Test Tools:
SOAP UI: for making web service requests and to verify the responses coming back
QTP: for automating the regression tests & create a regression suite that can be run continuously
Test Complete: for automating the regression suites
Load Runner: for load testing purposes
Win Runner: for automating the regression suites. Most of the places is now replaced by QTP
Fitnesse: to test individual methods or classes. Generally used to Unit test, or may be used for integration testing purposes. Mostly used by development in Agile development projects
Selenium: to perform integration or system test on web application using specific technologies. Can not run on all platforms/ applications. Mostly used in agile development projects

and so on..there's no end to this because of wide variety of projects and environment today's projects running on

Monday, October 25, 2010

Automation Tools - Different tools used for Automation

Automation is something that is becoming an important skill for any tester. If you have a minimum knowledge on how to automate an application & how to use the available automation tools would give a distinct quality for your profile.

Here in this blog, will try to explain what tools are in use in the present market and little bit about each of those tools.

GUI Layer Testing Tools:

Quick Test Professional (QTP) - by Hewlett-Packard (formerly owned by Mercury)

Test Complete (TC) - by Smart Bear (formerly Automated QA)

WinRunner - by Hewlett-Packard (formerly owned by Mercury)

IBM Rational Functional Tester - by IBM

Silk Test - by Borland

Note: This list contains only important or tools that are used by most of the companies. It doesn't include every tool that is in use.

Load/ Performance Testing Tools:

Load Runner - by Hewlett-Packard (formerly owned by Mercury)

IBM Rational performance Tester - by IBM

VisualStudio Load Test - Microsoft

Silk performer - by MicroFocus

GH Tester - by Greenhat

There's load of other load testing tools that you can find on internet.

References:

http://www.load-testing-tools.com/

http://www.testingfaqs.org/t-load.html

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Test Cases: Plan/ Write/ Execute

Test case is the test documentation that a tester would write documenting the below:

• what functionality he's going to test, 
• what input he would require to give to execute this test, 
• in how many steps can he finish the step
• what is expected out of each step and finally document what is the Actual result of each step while executing.

Writing test cases is one of the typical responsibility that any tester would do all the time at his work. However writing test cases is done in chunks in different stages of SDLC. Test cases are planned, written and executed in different stages of application development. Test cases should be

Planned: when requirement documents are being prepared

Written: when requirement documents are signed off and when development is busy coding, should be peer reviewed, walk through'ed with all stake holders

Executed: when development is done with coding and when code is handed off to QA

What is a Test case Matrix:

Test cases could be written in either a spresdsheet or in Quality Centre like quality management tools. In most of the small companies, would go prepare a Test Case Matrix if they want save some money on these quality management tools.

Test case Matrix is nothing but a spreadsheet that has a list of tests and its results formatted in a column format for readability purposes. In some cases Test case matrix may have a set of requirements, set of test cases for each of those requirements and its results after the run, any defects if raised and a link to the test case running which caused that defect. A perfect relationship that one would see in Quality Centre like management tools can be replicated in Excel spreadsheet.

Example Template can be found here......

Testing Deliverables

When you perform testing, you deliver a quality product that is clean code (defect free code). However on top of this as QA team you would also deliver documents suggesting how did you go about testing, what all test cases you ran, are you happy with the application or not? & finally any lessons learned from this testing. Typically the documents expected to be delivered from QA are given below:

1. Manual Test case Matrix

2. Automation Test Scripts

3. Test Strategy/ Master Test Plan Document

4. Lessons Learnt Document

5. Sign-off Document

Note: These documents are stored in a file repository database so they can be referred to, if needed. Ex: Sometimes there's a bug found in production, so QA lead has a repository to go back to check for test cases that they wrote for testing that piece of functionality currently broke in production. If there were no tests written to test this particular scenario that failed in production, we will add a test to the regression test suite with High priority as this may repeat again

On top of this, you would be reporting the status of testing (may be in a weekly progress report call) using a document that you produce on the fly:

1. Defect Report

Note: Defect reports are generally used to track either test team or dev progress on the raised defects.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Testing Process - Steps Involved in Testing an Application

Whether it is waterfall or agile, typically testing starts right after development. If it is waterfall, testing will start after development is complete with coding. Where as in Agile, testing will start with only some x% of development is done. So obviously there's a lot of going back & forth in agile then waterfall. In both cases, to test an application a process needs to be followed. I tried to depict the process that a tester has to follow at different stages of development, in the following diagram.

Types of Testing

There's loads of different types of testing that're currently in use. Depending on the criticality of the application, various types of testing is performed on the application. But they can be classified in to 2 different types:

1. Functional Testing

2. Non-Functional Testing

1. Functional Testing: Testing an application or a system per the given requirements. In functional testing, tester would ensure that application behaves as per the requirements set in the requirement documents (System Req. Document, Software Req. Document, Business Req. Document etc). Functional testing comprises the following types of testing

• Unit Testing: Testing a piece of code. Could be a .net method or a java class or cobol/jcl program
• Integration Testing: Testing a set of programs or physical layers of application. or testing whether 2 or more programs work together or not?
• System Testing: Testing a full system. Here a tester would test all the modules of the system. Tester would make sure if all the programs/ application as a WHOLE works fine
• Regression Testing: Every time a new functionality is added, tester would need to make sure it doesn't effect the existing functionality. This type of testing is called Regression testing
• End-to-End Testing: Testing the full system flow. Meaning, testing from system-A thru system-z
• Ad-hoc Testing: Testing a one-off report or a job
• White box Testing: This is nothing but Unit/ Integration Testing. Testing the actual physical code. This is a developers job to perform white box testing
• Black-box Testing: Testing something without knowing what code lies inside it. This is nothing but System testing. This type of testing is done by QA.
• Accessibility Testing: Testing to make sure if your application is accessible by a variety of people with accessibility problems. Such as, visual impairments/ partially blind/ hearing impairments etc
• GUI Testing: Testing the user interface works per the requirements. This is to make sure things like layouts, forms, form controls, grid objects, buttons, text box, check box, labels etc are intact

2. Non-Functional Testing: Testing an application beyond the functionality. This is to test something other than what is written in the functional specification. This type of testing requires a different mind set to think out of the box as well. Non-Functional testing comprises the following types of testing

• Performance Testing: Testing an application to measure the performance by running scripts. Ex: Win-runner scripts can be created to simulate the transactions performed on an application & run to see the performance of the application meets the requirements set by the business.
• Load Testing: Testing an application to measure the maximum load that it can take. Same as performance testing, an automation engineer would create tests/ scripts to simulate the transactions performed on an application up to a certain level set by the business.
• Stress Testing: Testing an application beyond an operational capacity or level/ limit is called stress testing. Stress testing is mostly done until the application crashing point (or breaking point) to verify the stability of the application
• Fault Tolerance Testing: How an application would survive any real-time faults/ failures that could happen in production. Take database server down, network down, application server is down etc and run them back again to see if the application starts responding soon after the resources are available
• Disaster Recovery Testing: Testing an application's disaster recovery measures. A company may be using a system in India. If an earth quake in an ocean disrupted network, everything should be switched to backup/ contingency line to run business as usual. Testing such backup procedures could be called disaster recovery testing. This usually is a part of Operational testing
• Environment Testing: Testing the full environment where a given application runs. Example is testing - Database (creating, updating, deleting), Application servers (get it down, up, restart), Installing this full environmental changes just by looking at the documentation available etc
• Operational Testing: This is often referred to as Operational readiness testing as well. Testing to make sure everything is ready for operations team. This would include Fault tolerance testing, Disaster recovery testing, Environment testing, Installation testing etc
• Installation Testing: Testing the installation instructions set by the development. Just follow the step-by-step process listed in the documentation and make sure it doesn't miss anything. Every work item or step that need to be performed by a user to install a given application should be documented & well tested

QA Involvement in SDLC

Although QA acts & tries to run fast to complete testing at the very end phase of a development life cycle; QA involves from the beginning. As you can see form the below diagram, QA involves almost from the time when the business requirements are written. QA should provide their valuable input so as to improve the quality of the product. Any risks/ concerns/ suggestions should be raised before hand.

Involving QA from the beginning would give the team to prepare with a mind set that is required to test the product - WHICH IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING, that should never be ignored

Monday, October 18, 2010

Testing Concepts - Phases of Development (SDLC)

What is Testing? When & where does testers involve in the whole process of development?

Testing is a verification process where an already developed product will be verified for any defects or faults. Testing is done on a product before its released for use by the customers. Testing is often referred to as "Quality Assurance". Depending on the industry type testing is done in different ways. However I would concentrate only on IT industry, here in this blog.

Tester should have an understanding of what process is followed in the industry & where does QA (Quality Assurance) gets involved in that process. Most industries follow a standard way of development. That standard is called SDLC. It refers to Software Development Life Cycle. You can find many articles on what is SDLC & how it works and so on. I'll try to explain it from a ground level, thinking that the user doesn't have basic understanding of testing process.

In a real world, this is how it works.

1. A shop owner who wants a systemic way of processing transactions in his shop. He knows only the scenarios that he wants to process using a system. Like a customer comes in to a shop, brings in goods, purchases at the till by paying for it using Cash/ CC/ DB/ Account etc

Shop Owner is CLIENT/ CUSTOMER

2. He calls for a tender process for converting these scenarios in to a System. Lets say a Company has been chosen for completing the work

This is Project Initiation - where a budget (estimated), time scale are agreed

3. Business Analysts/ Architects will speak to the customer/ client to get an understanding of all the possible scenarios that would ever occur in the shop. A document is written with all the notes taken from the client.

This is Project Planning

4. This Business requirements document is then used by implementation team to write System (and/or Software) requirements that are low-level requirements, that has information about how does system behave in a scenario given in the business requirements. And also information about how should the programs be written (pseudo programs etc) & how should they communicate to each other, all about integration of different programs/ modules and every little detail about the system

This is Project Design

5. Business, System & Software requirements would become the input for a team of developers, who can write programs to meet the criteria specified in the Design documents

This is called Implementation - as a part of this process developers should also make sure their programs work on their own (by writing unit tests) & work when clubbed together with other programs written by his team members (by writing integration tests)

6. Code is then built in to an exe (or something similar to that) file and given to Q.A. team for further testing & verifying that it works

This is called Verification/ Testing - as a part of this process QA team would test the system in many ways (Ex: End-to-End tests, Functional Tests, Non-Functional Tests, Regression tests, Negative tests, Installation tests, Operational tests etc)

7. If the code is doing what is supposed to do & if QA has certified that by signing off on the developed features of the system, then the system is ready for our shop owner to install & work away

This is called Production/ Release - where the system is handed off to the customer/ client

Below picture gives an understanding of how SDLC is formed from the above scenario.

Domain name used for particular industries which softwares are made

Domain are normally 2 types in IT..

1. Business Domain - different sector (Banking, Health care, etc)

2. Technical Domain - java, .net, etc

Domain is nothing but the subject area in which you project belongs to. It may be banking, finance, sales, health, media, telecom, Insurance, Medical, Advertising, Travel, etc.
This is important for a tester because one should know what are the user requirements say in banking, working procedures, commerce background, exposure to brokerage etc and should test application accordingly, then only you can say that your testing is enough because then you have covered scenarios from user perspective.
BFSI:
BFSI stands for Banking, Financial Services and Insurance. The term BFSI is used very commonly by IT/ITES/BPO Organizations which refers to the services provided by these companies in these domains. Banking includes core banking, retail, corporate and cards. Financial Services include stock-broking, Payment gateways, mutual funds etc. Insurance covers both life and non life.
HealthCare:
Health care as know in American terms includes several sectors which are very much dedicated to provide services and products in order to improve individual health. This includes health care equipment and pharmaceuticals, services, biotechnology and life sciences. According to United Nations standards, the word health care refers to hospital activities, medical and dental services and other activities related to human health.
Utilities:
Utilities industry incorporates companies which offer services like Electric power, Steam supply, natural gas and sewage removal. Utilities sector is now mainly concentrating on a major change by anticipating a world with a much wider range of technologies and where the shape of the industry changes. Companies are seeking to extend their value chain both upward and downward to secure supply and end-markets. The traditional boundaries that define the utilities industry are becoming blurred as the interdependence of different energy sectors and between utility and technology companies are becoming more critical.
Retail:
Goods which are bought and sold to the end users is termed as “Retail”. The scope of Retail in the current market situation is growing high as the organized retail sector has grown from 3% to 25-30% in India. Wal-Mart, Tesco, Germany's Metro AG and many others are the Global retail giants which are ready to enter the retail markets. The main reason for these companies to enter into the retailing business is the increasing demand of branded products and increase in purchasing power has lured these companies.
E-Commerce:
Buying and selling of goods services on the internet is termed as “E-Commerce”. Sometimes, the word “e-Business and e-Commerce” are often used interchangeably.
The main aspects of e-Commerce are
Online retail selling (e-tailing) on websites with online catalogs
Usage of demographic data through web contacts
EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), business to business exchange of data
Reaching customers through email, social networking and instant messaging
Buying and selling through business to business
Maintaining security of business transactions
Telecom:
Telecom (Telecommunication) is a term used for the process of exchange and transmission of messages electronically. Telecom sector is growing at a greater speed by doubling its growth every passing year. At present, there are many new developments happening, one of the most interesting development is the ingress to 3G technology. MTNL, BSNL, VSNL are the public players involved in the country along with the private players such as Airtel, Vodafone, Idea , Tata, Reliance entering into foreign markets as well.
Thanks

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