Software Testing MindMap

Software Testing is not an easy topic, because of mass considerations.

So I just created a mindmap
to cover most perspectives around testing.

big-endian UTF16 or little-endian UTF16?

I was working on generating configuration file for mobile device on PC today.
From the example, I can tell that it is using two bytes Unicode.
Thus I am using 'UTF-16' encoding for InputStreamReader and OutputStreamWriter.

However, it seems that the server running on mobile device doesn't like my configuration file.
By looking into the example and generated files, I notice that it was using little-endian UTF-16.
So I changed to use the following statement to write content in little-endian UTF16 encoding.

OutputStreamWriter out = new OutputStreamWriter(
new FileOutputStream(iniFile), "UTF-16LE");


Here are Unicode table for reference:

Encoding	File initial signature	Java encoding name
UTF 8	FF BB BF	UTF8
UTF 16 Big-Endian	FE FF	UTF16-BE
UTF 16 Little-Endian	FF FE	UTF16-LE

AntSys -- lightweight and powerful system test framwork

AntSys

Why write AntSys

I was looking for a well-know and easy to use open source tool for our system testing.
My requirements are:

Test Model, provides the concept of test suite, test case and test result

Test Method: launch command line application, check the outputs. which means should be easy to
* configure parameters
* setup environment variables
* able to redirect stand input, output, and error
* get back the process exit code

Test Assertions: should built-in with the following assertions:
* check if output file is created as expect
* check the content of output file against expected file.
* check process exit code
* check the content of system.ouput.
* check the content of system.error.

Test Result:It should generate XML and HTML report

Test Language/API: the test language should provide rich API to help users write test case:
such as create/delete directory, copy files, and even xml processing.

Extensibility: the test lanauge can be extended by end users.

Although the requirements are quite generic, I can't find a well-known OSS project. Most companies are
using their own home-grow system test framework.
Let's create a OSS tool to solve this problem then!

What is AntSys

AntSys is a lightweight and powerful system test framwork built on top of Ant.
It is designed to be easy to work and user can create system/function test cases in xml file without writing single line of code.

AntSys Tasks

AntSys provides the following Ant tasks to write a system test:

tastsuite: is used to aggregate tests into groups of test cases that should be run together.

testcase: is a set of conditions under which a tester will determine if a requirement or use case upon an application is partially or fully satisfied.

assertfileexist: check if the output file is exist as expected.

assertfileequal: check the content of output file is the same as expected test result.

assertfilegrep: check the content of output file contains expected string defined in regular expression

assertpropertyequals: check the ant property against expected value. This is offened used after 'exec' task to check the process exit code.

Example test script

Here is one example of test script to test echo command.

<project name="antsys-systemtest" basedir="." default="systemtest">
<target name="systemtest">
<!-- this test suite is using AntSys to test echo shell commands -->
<testsuite name="CommandTestSuite" failonerror="false" todir="./report" htmlreport="true">
<!-- test echo command output -->
<testcase name="echo_test">
<!-- create working dir for testing -->
<mkdir dir="work"/>
<!-- use echo to create a test file -->
<exec vmlauncher="false" executable="echo" output="work/test.dat">
<arg value="testmessage"/>
</exec>
<!-- check the file exists or not -->
<assertfileexist file="./work/test.dat" errormsg="should generate test.dat" />
<assertfilegrep file="./work/test.dat" regexp="^test" errormsg="should start with test" />
<assertfileequal expectedfile="./work/test.dat" actualfile="./work/test.dat"/>
<delete dir="work"/>
</testcase>
</target>
</project>


Something big is right around the corner!

The Symbian Foundation announcement this week will change the business strategy
for mobile space in the following years.

Android from Google is one big part of the reason for Nokia to pay 400M to buy Symbian and donate it to open source.
Thinking about the Symbian/Nokia relation, this is the milestone in the use of open source by large tech companies like Nokia,

Nine years ago, when i worked for Nokia, I found it is a company always ready to big change. I really respect to that.

However, things are not clear to some related parties yet:

• Employee

In such big move to open source, Some teams in Symbian and Nokia will be cut (like what happened for UIQ).
some time will shrink to fit the community driven mobel (How those managers find there position in community
model?). As a symbianer, Do i want to wait for the special bonus?

• Microsoft

M$ will be the only company, who charge $ for mobile phone vendor. Let's see what will happen for them.

• Apple

Will iPhone be the most popular mobile device like iPod did for mp3? Can the company fight with foundation
supported by major vendors and operators?

Symbian Fundation

Big news again today.

Nokia to acquire Symbian Limited to enable evolution of the leading open mobile platform
June 24, 2008


Visionary move embraces openness and accelerates innovation

Config Idle Timeout for openSSH Fedora

With some ssh servers, you can config the time out in /etc/ssh/sshd_config like

IdleTimeOut=10m

However, the openssh shipped with Fedora doesn't support this option.
Two workarounds are:

• Apply openssh watchdog patch

http://www.sc.isc.tohoku.ac.jp/~hgot/sources/openssh-watchdog.html

• use TMOUT for shell

In /etc/profile
#set the idle timeout for ssh to 10minutes
TMOUT=600

readonly TMOUT

export TMOUT


Notice here, need to set the TMOUT to readonly, otherwise users can override it.

On The Road -- Google Map Mashup

Just Created a google map mashup page to show those places i have visited.
The page is hosted on google http://multiroute.googlepages.com/ajaxGoogleMapsMashup.html

The draft version only show the list of places in the right side, and show marker and zoom in once you click the location.

Plan to add more stuff when have time:

polish the site

show to pictures for each trip (Already in Picasa Web Albums)