One question I get every now and then is how to implement a test sequence in TestTrack TCM. The concept of “before you test Y, you must test X first”.
There isn’t a specific feature in TestTrack to address this but there are actually several ways to implement test sequences. Following is one way.
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We recently released version 2010.1 of TestTrack, which contains many new exciting new features. One new feature that I would like to give some love to is Item Mapping Rules. This feature will benefit users who have more than one TestTrack applications, as it allows you to configure how field values are mapped from one application to another.
Share on Technorati . del.icio.us . Digg . Reddit . Slashdot . Facebook . StumbleUpon As a consultant, I have been exposed to many different development methodologies and processes. In most cases, assignments are performed by a person that is aware of staff resources and distributes tasks according to the availability of these resources.
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Labels have always been a part of Surround SCM, however, they were originally provided mainly to support conversions from legacy systems that used labels. The following is an overview of the new labels.
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One of the things I do is look at competitive products. I do this both to understand their strengths and weaknesses as well as our own. Looking at someone else’s solution to a similar problem can often give you a fresh perspective.
As I looked at several of these, a few trends showed up. The first is that security in other products seems to be left as an exercise for the customer. I’ve talked about that before. Another area where other products take a very different approach is around triggers and alerts. This is another part of an application that either isn’t shown in a demo, or if shown the trigger is already installed and working. The user sees that emails are being generated or actions are being triggered with an aside of “all this and more can be yours with just a little script writing.”
Share on Technorati . del.icio.us . Digg . Reddit . Slashdot . Facebook . StumbleUponAs a Macintosh user it’s easy to feel left out by cross platform application vendors. Microsoft is too easy a target (though I can’t miss the chance to say I use Entourage every day and it never ceases to make me angry), so I’ll pick on someone my own size. Seapine. Although we have a fully native (that means not Java, you cheaters. You know who you are) client and servers on Linux, Solaris, Mac and Windows we don’t always make them, well, native enough. Make all the command keys match common conventions on that platform. Take advantage of platform specific technology, or the latest UI craze.
Share on Technorati . del.icio.us . Digg . Reddit . Slashdot . Facebook . StumbleUponIt’s not unusual for someone to suggest a feature which, in fact, we already have. It’s not even all that unusual for that person to be using the version of the software that has that feature. So I thought I would take a few minutes to point out some features in Surround that you may have forgotten, or missed during an upgrade.
This was mentioned in our last newsletter but I think it’s worth pointing out again. The Repository Differences window shows the difference between the server repository and your local working directory. This includes files that are missing from your working directory as well as files in your working directory not in Surround. It can even do this recursively. Check out the newsletter or the user documentation.
Share on Technorati . del.icio.us . Digg . Reddit . Slashdot . Facebook . StumbleUponConversion can be a tricky business. No one wants to convert from one thing to another. It assumes you were wrong in some way. And you know it’s going to be hard. And what if the new thing isn’t really any better than the old thing? Then all that work was for nothing.
Share on Technorati . del.icio.us . Digg . Reddit . Slashdot . Facebook . StumbleUponWe’re investigating adding an annotate/blame feature in Surround SCM. If your not familiar with this concept, it allows you to mark every line in a file with the date, version and person who last changed it. For example, if the current version of your file looks something like this
int bar;
bar=7;
bar++;
if (bar>7)
printf(“Big bar”);
File sharing in Surround SCM allows a single copy of a file to exist in multiple repository locations. Since the file is shared, if it is ever updated all locations will reflect those updates simultaneously. There are several best practice suggestions and caveats associated with file sharing. It is important to understand how the Surround SCM architecture facilitates file sharing so that best practice strategies can be devised early on to help you get the most out of file sharing with the least amount of effort.
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