STARWEST 2009 - Software Testing Conference

PRESENTATIONS

Automated Test Design: Its Time Has Come

With model-based test design, you first create a high-level functional model of the system to be tested. The model is the input to an automated test generation tool that creates the test designs and associated test scripts. Recently available commercial, automated test generation tools are making automated test generation a practical and powerful alternative to manual test design.
Antti Huima, Conformiq Inc.
Automating Web Testing with cURL and Perl

With little or no budget to acquire test automation tools for Web applications, many testers think there is nothing they can do to replace manual tests with automated ones. Not true! Paco Hope introduces two free tools-cURL and Perl-and explains how you can use them to design both positive (functional) and negative (security) test cases. cURL is a free program that helps automate HTTP, HTTPS, and other common types of Web commands. Perl is a well-known programming language well-suited for writing test scripts.
Paco Hope, Cigital, Inc.
Choosing the Right Test Cases for Automation

With hopes of reducing testing cost and effort, companies often look to test automation as the cure-all for their problems. However, without clear and practical objectives, a test automation project is bound to fail. One key factor in setting automation objectives is to identify which test cases should be automated and which should remain manual processes. Pradeep G describes a practical methodology to identify the best test cases as candidates for automation.
Pradeep Kumar, Cognizant Technology Solutions
Coloring Outside the Lines: Web Services Interoperability Testing

Web services interoperability testing is complex, subjective, and unlike traditional testing in many ways. The Web Services Interoperability (WS-I) organization provides a wealth of materials and tools about interoperability. With this help, his organization increased the confidence in the interoperability of their Web services-beyond the scope of vendors' testing tools. Christopher describes the WS-I test information that helped justify additional interoperability testing.
Christopher Ferris, IBM Software Group, Standards Strategy
Detective Work for Testers: Finding Workflow-based Defects

Workflow-based Web application security defects are especially difficult on enterprises because they evade traditional simple point-and-scan vulnerability detection techniques. Understanding these defects, and how and why black-box scanners typically miss them, is the key to creating a testing strategy for successful detection and mitigation. Rafal Los describes the critical role that application testers play in assessing application workflows and how business process-based testing techniques uncover these flaws.
Rafal Los, Hewlett-Packard Application Security Center
Effective and Efficient Testing: Reality or Myth?

To management, testing often never formally finishes-it just stops. And even before testing stops, we are asked to ensure that our efforts are providing maximum value. However, can we ever really have both efficient and effective testing? More importantly, can we accurately measure effectiveness and efficiency? In the current economic climate, when many test managers have been told to do even more testing with the same or fewer people and resources, the answer to this question is even more important.
Lloyd Roden, Grove Consultants
Free and Cheap Test Tools

Too often, testers have limited money, time, or both to purchase, learn, and implement the robust commercial test tools available today. However, as a tester, one of the best things you can have is your own personal testing toolkit. Since 2001, Randy Rice has been researching free and inexpensive test tools and has compiled a set of tools that have been a great help to him and many others. Randy presents an overview of these tools that can add power and efficiency to your test planning, execution, and evaluation.
Randy Rice, Rice Consulting Services, Inc.
Improving Software Testing: One Organization's Journey

In the coming years, testers will be placed under ever increasing pressure. Joachim Herschmann describes key future trends including the increasing alignment of development and test with business needs, the integration of traditionally separate disciplines, a shared responsibility for quality, and the increased use of testing technology. Joachim describes the experiences of Borland's Linz development lab as a framework for a broader discussion about these kinds of changes and their cultural impact on the organization.
Joachim Herschmann, Borland Software
Large-scale Exploratory Testing at Microsoft: Let's Take a Tour

Manual testing is the best way to find the bugs most likely to bite users badly after a product ships. However, manual testing remains a very ad hoc, aimless process. At a number of companies across the globe, groups of test innovators gathered in think tank settings to create a better way to do manual testing—a way that is more prescriptive, repeatable, and capable of finding the highest quality bugs. The result is a new methodology for exploratory testing based on the concept of tours through the application under test.
James Whittaker, Google
Make Defects Pay with Root Cause Analysis

Although finding and fixing a defect can improve software quality, often its greatest value is to use the defect as a catalyst for preventing a similar problem in the future. If you identify a defect's preventable cause and permanently correct the issue, your organization can quickly recoup the costs to find, fix, and clean-up a defect. Root cause analysis is a powerful technique that has long been used in manufacturing industries to learn from mistakes.
Randy Rice, Rice Consulting Services, Inc.

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