Featured Sessions--Automation Experiences

Based on real-world experiences of successful industry implementations, these featured sessions present the keys to successfully incorporate automated testing into the development process. Learn from experienced test automation users as they share a wide range of automation experiences—both good and bad—to provide you with your own “how to” road map for successful software test automation. Gain valuable insight from lessons learned— illustrated by a wide range of presentation topics including high-end load testing tool selection and evaluation, coverage analysis tool usage, automated regression testing, and Web application performance testing.

Indicates a presentation focused on Web/eBusiness.

E1  Wednesday, August 29, 10:45 a.m -- 11:30 a.m.

Failure of a Dot Com--A Case Study Theresa Lanowitz, Gartner, Inc. In the new economy, cliches such as “Internet time” can be disastrous. As the market emphasis shifts from first-to-market to first-to-profit, Internet start-ups are forced to scrutinize decisions which directly impact their business model. Learn the steps to failure taken by one “dot com” company and the lessons learned from this failed endeavor. Explore the executive decisions made to speed time-to-market and customer acquisition, and discover how product schedules are adversely affected by attempts to retrofit an architecture and introduce tools.

E2  Wednesday, August 29, 11:45 a.m -- 12:30 p.m.

Adventures in Web Application Performance Testing Nancy Landau, ALLTEL Examine the challenges and successes experienced by a test team analyzing application and systems performance for applications moving from distributed Client/Server solutions to centralized,Web-based designs. In this presentation, Nancy Landau presents case studies to address the changes made in automated testing methods to handle compressed delivery schedules, new architectures, new test tools requirements, and changing customer expectations.These case studies encompass principles such as managing iterative test development, creating reusable tests, standardizing application metrics, migrating from simple to complex networking environments, and predicting performance bottlenecks.

E3 Wednesday, August 29, 2:00 p.m -- 2:45 p.m.

Implementing an Automated Regression Test Suite Lloyd Roden, Grove Consultants Many efforts to automate regression testing have failed or not met expectations—resulting in “shelfware.” Lloyd Roden presents a real-world case study based on the success of implementing a regression test tool within a software company. Learn the steps taken in evaluating and deploying the tool. Discover the key benefits and successes achieved over a three-year period as well as the challenges faced while using the tool.

E4  Thursday, August 30, 10:45 a.m -- 11:30 a.m.

Scripts on My Toolbelt Danny R. Faught, Tejas Software Consulting Danny Faught will discuss how he has used scripting languages as the grease to ease the testing process and the glue to hold parts of the automation together. He will introduce participants to scripting languages such as perl, expect/tcl, and shell scripts, and how he has used them in auxiliary roles in several testing projects. Hear how to make automated testing work better, and also how to take advantage of scripting languages even if the test execution is not automated. Learn how Danny has sandwiched automation tools between helper scripts in order to enhance the tools and make them fit better into the tester's environment.

E5  Thursday, August 30, 11:45 a.m -- 12:30 a.m.

Data-Driven Automated Testing Using XML Rutesh Shah, Arsin Corporation Test automation is an unavoidable entity for testing Web-based applications where reduced time-to-market is the name of the game. Data-driven test cases allow the test automation engineer to automate/develop once and run many times with different conditions to test the system. Learn why XML—the markup language for documents containing structured information—is the best way to present the test data for automated testing. Explore the advantages and disadvantages of XML-based test data. An example of data-driven automated testing using XML as storage will be provided.

E6 Thursday, August 30, 2:00 p.m -- 2:45 p.m.

Developing an Automated Regression Test Set Patricia George, Sunquest Info Systems, Inc. Automating a regression test is a tremendous effort, but the payoff is big in situations where continuous, repeatable, repetitive testing is required.This presentation describes a real-world example of a successful team effort toward developing a reusable automated regression test set for legacy medical software products in a client/server environment. Learn the principles of team building and test case design, and the tools and utilities you need to get the job done. Patricia George also discusses how test data management, the breakdown of programming tasks, and date-driven project milestones increase efficiency to keep the team on track.

E7 Thursday, August 30, 3:30 p.m -- 4:15 p.m.

Test Automation with Action Words: A Practical Experience Hans Buwalda, CMG Action Word Testing.This concept illuminates testing as an action, a process, an art. Learn how Action Word Testing can be applied to deal with critical test issues such as lack of functional knowledge of a system under test; instability of the design during test development; and automation of 100% of the functional or technical tests. Hans Buwalda uses a financial exchange that’s introduced a new electronic trading system to demonstrate Action Word Testing (approximately 15,000 tests). In this example, automation of the entire test was essential, but it was difficult to achieve. Explore this real-world situation as it reveals the issues encountered in the process, and the lessons learned from them.

E8 Thursday, August 30, 4:30 p.m -- 5:15 p.m.

Selecting Re-Tests for Corrected Defects Using Coverage Analysis Data Pat Berryman, SAS Institute, Inc. Source code coverage data is often useful in determining that enough tests have been written and in identifying lines of code that have no test coverage. In this presentation, Pat Berryman explores ways to use her organization’s “homegrown” Coverage Analysis System (CAS) data to determine the best set of automated tests to execute to re-test a corrected defect. Discover the point in the development lifecycle where optimizing test sets with coverage analysis is most advantageous. Learn the three methods that are useful to select test sets, and the pros and cons of each.

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