The Seapine View

There were many updates to the blog  in June. Here is our monthly recap:

Eight Years in a Row – This is the eighth year in a row that Seapine Software is one of the SD Times Top 100 companies that “write the code that makes the whole software-development industry succeed.”

Limiting TestTrack Field Choices with Field Relationships –Discusses how to use field relationships in TestTrack to help improve organization and efficiency.

{Press Release} Seapine ALM 2011.1 Now Available for Software Developers, Testers – Announces the newest release of Seapine ALM 2011.1.

Why are most life science companies still using 1990s technology? – Discusses the results of the our recent life sciences product development artifacts survey, and provides more information about the FDA’s intended meaning of “documentation.”

Video: Syncing Working Directories with Surround SCM Repositories – Demonstrates how to sync your working directories with local changes.

Continue reading…

Thanks to everyone who joined us for the first event in our TDD 101 Learning Series. If you missed the event, take 20 minutes to watch the Intro to TDD recording. We had some great attendees who asked several interesting conversations, all of which we weren’t able to address during the event. To follow up, and invite others to participate, we’ve included a complete Q&A below.

Intro to TDD Q&A

Who writes and owns unit tests—the development team or the test/QA team?

TDD is a programming technique, so the development team writes and owns the unit tests.

How can I measure the quality of unit tests?

The real quality of the unit tests can only be observed over time. Do the tests uncover issues during development instead of during testing? Do the unit tests define the correct behavior? Are there unit tests that test good data, bad data, and invalid/null data? Make sure you attend our next TDD webinar, Writing Good Unit Tests, on July 13 for more information.

Can we use TDD for code coverage? Or does the test team need to invest time in automation for code coverage?

The goal of TDD is clean code that works. A side effect of TDD is a high percentage of code coverage. Theoretically, if you write a unit test for every change, then you should have 100% code coverage, even though that’s not the goal of TDD. If you have a code coverage goal, you’ll still need a tool to examine the code coverage. If code coverage isn’t at your goal then you will need to add additional tests or work with development to determine why there are changes without unit tests.

Continue reading…

If you’re new to TestTrack TCM or already use it, and want to learn better ways to manage your testing process, check out the TestTrack TCM Best Practices. This document covers:

• How TestTrack TCM items map to items from your manual test case management process.
• Suggestions for creating test suites and test run sets for better organization and meaningful reporting.
• When to create test cases and generate test runs.
• How to rerun failed tests.
• How to prepare for testing future releases.
• Which reports and live charts can help you accurately measure the progress of your testing effort.

Additional best practices were recently added for enhancements introduced in TestTrack TCM 2011.1, including new project options that can help you ensure tests meet compliance requirements or that your testing process is followed, and the ability share test case steps to maximize reuse.

This video takes a look at branching in Surround SCM, including the benefits of branching, a review of branch types, and how to create branches. The video also covers promoting and rebasing, which enables code to be sent up or down your branch tree while keeping track of how the code moved between branches.

A few months ago we published a Sample Scrum Project that uses the entire TestTrack suite. Unfortunately, if you don’t have licenses for all three TestTrack products, you weren’t able to use the project.

I decided to create another version of the sample project that only uses TestTrack Pro features. If you only have a TestTrack Pro license, download the TestTrack Pro Scrum Sample Project instead. Continue reading…

Last chance to join—Seapine’s TDD 101 webinar series starts on Wednesday! In case you haven’t heard, our latest webinar series is targeted at helping you improve your test-driven development skills. The series is being led by Katie Dwyer, who is an Agile Services Consultant in Seapine’s Agile Services group.

Katie is going to cover the following core topics over the course of three classes.

1. Intro to Test-Driven Development
2. Writing Good Unit Tests
3. Beginning TDD in a Legacy System

BONUS: If you’re not able to commit time to attending the free classes, download our new TDD Reference Card to help you start using TDD effectively.

Perforce introduced the concepts of streams in their upcoming release, and we’ve had a few folks ask us how they compare with Surround SCM‘s implementation of branches.

I gathered some highlights on streams from their blog posts, and I’d like to compare these highlights to existing Surround SCM features. As you’ll see, many of the new features that Perforce streams provide have been part of Surround SCM branches for years.

Continue reading…

We added some cool new features to QA Wizard Pro 2011.1—from a new Keyword view for scripts to more supported technologies, this is a very exciting release. But the thing I am the most excited about is the new QA Wizard Pro Server.

Truthfully, the QA Wizard Pro Server is not completely new. If you’ve used QA Wizard Pro, you might be familiar with the Global Repository Server. The QA Wizard Pro Server is a mix of the Global Repository and new enhancements for reporting and monitoring script status. Just like the Global Repository, its use is optional.

Every time a QA Wizard Pro script or batch file runs, the results can be stored in the QA Wizard Pro Server. The run results are stored in an RDBMS database, which now provides a permanent home for run results. The default RDBMS is SQLite. You can also use Microsoft SQL and Oracle.

Continue reading…

There is a new addition to Seapine ALM product suite—Seapine ALM Reporting Platform (Seapine ALM RP). Seapine ALM RP is a database warehouse that can contain data from the entire Seapine ALM suite. This means you can have data from the Seapine License Server, TestTrack, Surround SCM, and QA Wizard Pro in a single, normalized database.

Seapine ALM Reporting Platform

Seapine ALM RP is not for everyone. If you are already getting the reports you need from the products, then Seapine ALM RP is not for you. For those of you who need custom reports that may span different projects in TestTrack, different mainlines in Surround SCM, or different product databases, Seapine ALM RP is right for you.

Continue reading…

You may need to occasionally perform date calculations in your QA Wizard Pro scripts, depending on what your application does. QA Wizard Pro includes a built-in date function, but you may want to use Microsoft Excel’s built-in macros if you need to calculate specific dates for validation.

Continue reading…