The Seapine View

From time to time the question comes up about how to move the defects from one TestTrack project to another. The answer depends on how different the projects are.

TestTrack has XML export/import and that is the preferred method. There are some key advantages to this method, namely the ability to move attachments and multiple instances of report by records and workflow events. The disadvantage is that, if fields or workflow events do not match, they are not imported. This is likely to be the case if the projects are different in field layout and workflow configuration.

Text export/import may be preferred if you have different projects because you can map fields. For example, you can import the value from the “Project” field in the source project into the “Component” field in the destination project. You have greater control over which fields are exported/imported.
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Works with TestTrack 2008.1.x and later

This is an example of a SOAP script that moves a defect or defects from one project to another. One use case for this example is for archiving old defects.
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Today is an exciting day at Seapine. TestTrack 2010 is entering public beta, and with it TestTrack RM. The TestTrack 2010 product family includes TestTrack Pro for issue management, TestTrack TCM for test case management, and TestTrack RM for requirements management. For cradle-to-grave traceability, you’ll find the TestTrack product family is a unique and complete solution.

So what can you do with TestTrack RM? Here are some of the key features:

Requirements Management

• Whether you use functional requirements, technical specifications, or user stories, you can configure requirement types to match your methodology.
• Ensure the information you need to properly define, evaluate, and prioritize your requirements is captured with custom fields.
• Organize requirements by release, by functional area, by project, by team. You get to decide.
• Reuse requirements by sharing them between requirement documents.
• Get started quickly with the ability to import existing requirement documents from Microsoft Word. You can also export to Microsoft Word to share requirements with users who will not or should not log in.
• View traceability information, status information, project volatility, and more with built-in reports.

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Every so often we are asked for performance metrics on the TestTrack SDK, but unfortunately we don’t have any standard metrics as far as timing and footprint. Performance is also critical for most of the integrations we do and, while we test that on an individual project basis, it would be helpful if we also knew baseline numbers for the SDK itself. JMeter is a tool I’ve been meaning to look at for awhile and I finally found time to take it for a spin. My goal was to compile some statistics on TestTrack SOAP SDK performance and scalability. Quite a lot of possibilities to test but I’m going to look at just record query performance in two posts I’ll publish over the next couple of weeks.

Getting Started

First I had to learn JMeter, and luckily they have quite a bit of quality documentation so the learning curve was minor. It only took me an hour or so to get a simple test plan up and working to pull the project list, login and logoff. Once that was up, it was just a matter of defining the test scenario.
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As a member of the services team, I find myself using the SOAP-based TestTrack SDK quite often. In the process, I have learned very valuable lessons that I want to share with you.

My goal is to post helpful hints like the ones below, and then incorporate them into the best practices article on the Seapine labs.

So let’s start at the beginning.

Before you start programming, there are some things to think about.

What are you trying to accomplish?

While the SDK is very robust, it cannot do everything. The SDK is mainly for working with items, like defects, test cases, and test runs. It is not for configuration. For example, you cannot create a project, set project options, configure the workflow, etc. with the SDK. The most configuration you will be able to do with the SDK is add values to a pop-up menu.

Language of choice?

Since the SDK is SOAP-based, you have a lot of choices for the language. Choose wisely! You will be tempted to choose a language that you are comfortable with, but it may be one that requires more work. Let’s take Python, for example. You can write SOAP with Python, but it requires you to create the XML files to submit a request and then read the XML file to get the response. With something like Java, you only need a couple of lines to accomplish what would take you tens of lines. Sometimes, however, depending on the specific situation, you do not have a choice.
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TestTrack excels in tracking issues, test cases, and test runs but have you considered using it for processes completely unrelated to software or product development? Easy configuration of fields and workflow allows TestTrack to be used for almost every business process.
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Pentaho offers an open source reporting server that you can use to create reports.

They have an Enterprise edition and a Community Edition. The Enterprise edition has several benefits, like extra features, more documentation and customer support.

Please visit their web site for details on how licensing works for each edition.

For my reports I used the community edition.

The reports suite includes many components. I used the Report Designer to create the reports, and then used the Business Inteligence Server to share them with other users.

Please note that this should not be considered a review of the Pentaho toolset as I only looked at a limited portion of them with a limited goal in mind.

Report Designer

The Report Designer is a java based GUI interface that you can use to create and design your reports. If you have worked with any other reporting tools, it is pretty easy to figure out how to use it.

Bussiness Intelligence Server

Allows web access to report creation and viewing. Reports created with the Report Designer can be published to the Server to share it with other users.

It’s well known that Surround SCM is a pretty flexible and forgiving source control tool from a developer’s perspective. What is less well known is how flexible and forgiving it is for administrators.

The technical publications team here uses MadCap Flare to produce our user guides and help files. We also use Surround SCM for versioning and managing the doc review process. Since Flare is Windows-only and I’m a on a Mac, I frequently run it in VMware Fusion.
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SD Times recognized Seapine in the application lifecycle management and software configuration management categories of their annual SD Times 100. Of 78 vendors spread across 14 categories, we were one of only 12 vendors recognized in more than one category.

Thank you Seapine customers for helping us achieve six consecutive years of success in the SD Times 100!

As Fernando wrote, switching computers is not so much fun.  If you ever need to export/import your Surround SCM settings to another PC this might help out some. Of course these are Windows only instructions, as Grant will point out, I use pico, so I’m not much help in *nix world.
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