Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Continuous changes in Requirements...

A common problem and a major headache.
• Work with the project’s stakeholders early on to understand how requirements might change so that alternate test plans and strategies can be worked out in advance, if possible.
• It’s helpful if the application’s initial design allows for some adaptability so that later changes do not require redoing the application from scratch.
• If the code is well-commented and well-documented this makes changes easier for the developers.
• Use rapid prototyping whenever possible to help customers feel sure of their requirements and minimize changes.
• The project’s initial schedule should allow for some extra time commensurate with the possibility of changes.
• Try to move new requirements to a ‘Phase 2′ version of an application, while using the original requirements for the ‘Phase 1′ version.
• Negotiate to allow only easily-implemented new requirements into the project, while moving more difficult new requirements into future versions of the application.
• Be sure that customers and management understand the scheduling impacts, inherent risks, and costs of significant requirements changes. Then let management or the customers (not the developers or testers) decide if the changes are warranted – after all, that’s their job.
• Balance the effort put into setting up automated testing with the expected effort required to re-do them to deal with changes.
• Try to design some flexibility into automated test scripts.
• Focus initial automated testing on application aspects that are most likely to remain unchanged.
• Devote appropriate effort to risk analysis of changes to minimize regression testing needs.
• Design some flexibility into test cases (this is not easily done; the best bet might be to minimize the detail in the test cases, or set up only higher-level generic-type test plans)
• Focus less on detailed test plans and test cases and more on ad hoc testing (with an understanding of the added risk that this entails)

Software Product or Software Application does it make any difference while Testing.....

Is there a difference in testing a product and testing an application, from Testing standpoint. Testing fundamentally means determining if the object under test operates in a way that meets specifications.

Software is software and its there is no difference if its a Software Product or Software Application . It doesn’t matter whether it is a simple “hello world” program, or an operating system. The fundamental process for testing is to break down the functionality into testable components with well defined behaviors, and then work your way “up” testing component interactions as a system. Knowing the target users or the “business” is used to determine if the product is actually going to solve a user’s problem or meet their need in a way that they will actually want to use it. That is Usability testing, which is very distinct from functional correctness testing.

If the designers are not sure what users will do with their “product” or not sure how they will use it, then they are most likely going to design the wrong thing, or, at best, design something that only a fraction of their target base will want. If any software does not have clear specifications, then testing is more problematic because it isn’t clear what is right and what is wrong, what is a bug and what is not a bug. But this is true of “application” designers too. So this does not clarify the distinction between an application and a product.

If the argument is that products are more complex than applications, then it is a subjective an arbitrary distinction. Who gets to say when complexity crosses the line from application to product?

Is it that products are sold, and applications are used internally? Does that make any difference from test-process point of view? It certainly has a bearing on what “quality” means (paying customers are much less forgiving of minor bugs), but it should have no bearing on how testing is approached. The software still needs to be proven to work as intended.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

SQL query to find Table And column in selected Database

SELECT
SysObjects.Name as Table_Name,
SysColumns.Name as Column_Name,
SysTypes.Name As DataType,
SysColumns.[length] As [Length]
FROM
SysObjects INNER JOIN SysColumns
ON SysObjects.Id = SysColumns.Id
INNER JOIN SysTypes
ON SysTypes.xtype = SysColumns.xtype
WHERE
SysObjects.[type] = 'U'
/*condtion to retrieve particular coulmn */
and SysColumns.[name] like '%Column_Name%'
ORDER BY
SysObjects.Name

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Census of 2011: Himachal Pradesh

Himachal Pradesh has registered 12.81 per cent growth in population during the past decade while the female sex ratio marginally improved from 968 to 974.

The state, which was bracketed with Gujarat, Punjab and Haryana for very low female sex ratio in 0-6 year age group, partially reversed the trend and recorded improved sex ratio of 906 in 2011 census against 896 in 2001.

Balbir Egta, Director Census Operation, Himachal Pradesh, who presented the 2011 census report to Governor Urmilla Singh said Himachal had done well on all indicators.

The population increased by 7,78,609 to 68,56,509 with male and female population enumerated at 34,73,892 and 33,82,617 respectively.

The literacy rate increased from 76.48 per cent in 2001 to 83.78 per cent in 2011 while the male and female literacy increased to 90.83 per cent and 76.60 per cent. There has been a marked increase in female literacy rate which was 67.42 in the last census.

Ten out of twelve districts have literacy rate of nearly 80 per cent with Hamirpur topping the chart with literacy rate of 89.01 per cent while Chamba distict had literacy rate of 73.19 per cent.

Source: http://www.economictimes.com/

Investing in mutual funds

There are quite of hosts of mutual fund companies out there. So, one might tend to get a bit lost as to which fund to choose, how to invest, what is a portfolio, how often do you check it.

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Anish Kumar, southern regional head, Canara Robeco and Hemant Rustagi, head, Wise Invest Advisor, speak about investing in mutual funds.

Here is a verbatim transcript of the exclusive interview on CNBC-TV18.

Q: One of the foremost question that comes up regarding mutual funds is that they are less riskier, but the returns, when it comes to equities, might not match up. What do you have to say to that?

Kumar: Mutual fund as an asset class is definitely less risky. It is one of the most transparent asset classes that we have today in the financial industry. Definitely when we talk about return, we should also take into account post taxation return. Based on all this, definitely mutual fund as an asset class has been less risky, well diversified. Instead of choosing from a few stocks, you have a choice, where fund manager works for you, he gets to invest and the stocks are selected after due process.

A lot of research is done, when the stocks are selected, it is a full basket. What we are going to choose, typically which all sectors or it is a general overall economy, everything is told upfront. Overall, it is less risky. But when it comes to reward, basically what we say is reward doesn’t come from the timing the market, but the time you stay invested in the market. And that is when the reward definitely comes and it is pretty rewarding.

Q: Diversification of assets, that seems to be the main reasons why mutual funds are considered safe, but what is your view point on the returns part of it?

Rustagi: Mutual funds offer you variety of funds, you have debt funds, and you have equity funds. Within debt funds, you have lot many options; within equity funds you have lot many other options. Now, 85-90% of an investment success comes from the kind of funds you choose because that is the key.

If you have invested in the debt related fund, obviously the returns are going to be comparable with traditional instruments, traditional debt instruments. If you have invested in equity funds, obviously you are going to compare it with the market. Every fund has a benchmark, which it tries to beat and it is clearly mentioned in the offer document of any fund.

Historically, if you see, I think equity funds have done quite well. There are a whole lot of equity funds in the market. There are 35-36 mutual funds, there are 100s of equity funds. Like any other industry, this industry also has funds where which have done below average, there are funds which have done average and above average. As an investor, we have had a mixed experience. But that could be because of the fund that we chose or the strategy that we adopted for investing. But I think as a category, it has done pretty well.

Q: As a financial advisor what do you look at when a client comes to you? What do you look at before you recommend a mutual fund?

Rustagi: Basically, we look at investment objective, we look at time horizon, what kind of risk an investor can take, that actually becomes a basis of deciding which fund to invest. More importantly, before you look at any fund, we need to decide what kind of asset allocation should be there.

Now, what is asset allocation? It is basically a distribution of the portfolio between different asset classes, like you have equities, you have debt, you have gold, and you have other options like real-estate and a couple of other options.

How do you decide on the asset allocation? Time horizon is very important factor here. Why it is important? Suppose you want to invest for ten years, now the bigger risk is inflation, not the capital loss. It can’t happen you invest for ten years and you lose your capital. So, there the risk is inflation, which means you have to invest in those asset classes where you can beat inflation.

Now, if you look at asset classes which can beat inflation in the long run, it is equity. In the short-term, it can be volatile, but in the long run, it has historically proved that it can beat inflation. If I am investing for two years, then the risk for me is the loss of capital, not inflation. Then my portfolio has to design in the manner where I do not take risk of loosing capital. Which is this asset class? This is debt. Within that, of course you have different options of looking at it. Based on that asset allocation, then the question of fund selection comes.

If you are an equity investor investing for the first time, you should focus on diversified fund. You should focus on funds which are pure largecap funds. Focus on index kind of funds. What is an index fund? What it does? It gives you the market return, which means if the market goes down by 10%, it is supposed to go down by 10%, if the market goes up by 10%, it is supposed to go up by 10%.

So, there are different kinds of variety of products. But before looking at products, important thing is to decide what should be the asset allocation and then look at products. Like I said criteria is very simple, go for consistent fund, fund that has done well, past performance of course is important.


Source: http://www.moneycontrol.com

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Recording Window Application with the mercury sample application FLIGHT

1) First of all click on Record toolbar button ( or Automation menu --> Record or press F3). when we click on Record, "Record and Run Settings" window opens up. Go to "Windows Applications" tab and choose from option "Record and run test on any open windows based application." OR "Record and run only" application Sample application Mercury FLIGHT, select any given 3 option and add default app from mention in "Application detail:" and click on ok



Dialog("Login").WinEdit("Agent Name:").Set "mercury"
Dialog("Login").WinEdit("Password:").SetSecure "4d8a3ec8728e56766bf2a431b50592d86319f5ab"
Dialog("Login").WinButton("OK").Click
Window("Flight Reservation").ActiveX("MaskEdBox").Type "050512"
Window("Flight Reservation").WinComboBox("Fly From:").Select "London"
Window("Flight Reservation").WinComboBox("Fly To:").Select "Los Angeles"
Window("Flight Reservation").WinEdit("Name:").Set "nitinlakhanpalname"
Window("Flight Reservation").WinButton("FLIGHT").Click
Window("Flight Reservation").Dialog("Flights Table").WinList("From").Select "19138 LON 08:00 AM LAX 08:45 AM AA $102.00"
Window("Flight Reservation").Dialog("Flights Table").WinButton("OK").Click
Window("Flight Reservation").WinEdit("Name:").Set "askingnameagain"
Window("Flight Reservation").WinRadioButton("First").Set
Window("Flight Reservation").WinEdit("Tickets:").SetSelection 0,1
Window("Flight Reservation").WinEdit("Tickets:").Set "6"
Window("Flight Reservation").WinButton("Insert Order").Click
Window("Flight Reservation").WinButton("Update Order").Click
Window("Flight Reservation").WinButton("FLIGHT").Click
Window("Flight Reservation").Dialog("Flights Table").WinList("From").Select "18789 LON 05:45 PM LAX 06:29 PM QF $179.47"
Window("Flight Reservation").Dialog("Flights Table").WinButton("OK").Click
Window("Flight Reservation").WinRadioButton("Business").Set
Window("Flight Reservation").WinEdit("Tickets:").Set "12"
Window("Flight Reservation").WinButton("Update Order").Click
Window("Flight Reservation").Dialog("Flight Reservations").WinButton("OK").Click
Window("Flight Reservation").WinEdit("Tickets:").Set "9"
Window("Flight Reservation").WinButton("Update Order").Click


'Stop and Run recording

Monday, July 26, 2010

Calculate your age with SQL server functions

--Declare variables with datatypes--
DECLARE @birthdate datetime,
@tmpdate datetime,
@years int,
@months int,
@days int

--Set values for variables on the basis caluclation will be done--
--MM-DD-YYYY format
SET @birthdate ='02-24-1984'
SET @tmpdate = @birthdate

--calulation of years--
SELECT @years = DATEDIFF(yy, @tmpdate, GETDATE()) - CASE WHEN MONTH(@tmpdate) >= MONTH(GETDATE()) THEN 1 ELSE 0 END
--26years=(date of current day - 02/29/1984)

--@Tempdate store current date,month of current year --
SELECT @tmpdate = DATEADD(yy, @years, @tmpdate)
--2010-02-28=(year 26 + 02/29/1984)

--Calulation of months--
SELECT @months = DATEDIFF(mm, @tmpdate, GETDATE())- CASE WHEN DAY(@tmpdate) > DAY(GETDATE()) THEN 1 ELSE 0 END
--11months=(02/29/1984 - 2010-02-28)


--@Tempdate store current date,month of current year --
SELECT @tmpdate = DATEADD(mm, @months, @tmpdate)
--2011-01-28=(months 4 + 2010-10-27)


--Caluclaton of days --
SELECT @days = DATEDIFF(dd, @tmpdate,GETDATE())
--22 days=(2010-07-04 - 2010-07-26)


--Combined output with Declared variables--
SELECT @years as Years, @months as Months, @days [Days]

Friday, July 9, 2010

Useful Addon with firefox

Useful Addon with firefox whichs lets you enable or disable different extensions while testing or varied reasons.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1237/


Flash switcher for windows and MAC OSX

http://www.sephiroth.it/firefox/flash_switcher/

Convert web page to PDF

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/636/

Want to know about your Firefox Profile :-
Open Firefox Browser:-
Go to Help in toolbar
Click Troubleshooting information

or Type in %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ in Start of Window


if you Want to Create new ,Delete or Rename existing Profile.
just type in start of window

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -ProfileManager

Here you can Crate new profile or delete or rename existing profiles. firefox lets you manage multiple profile so all the

profiles works separetly. But you have to choose manually from ( "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -

ProfileManager ) open this folder from start or RUN window and choose any one from multiple profiles if you have.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Translate function in XSLT

Firstly lets place all the letters of the alphabet, lower case and upper case in variables:-

<xsl:variable name="lcletters"> abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz </xsl:variable >

<xsl:variable name="ucletters"> ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ </xsl:variable>

To then convert our data to upper case we use the translate method, which replaces all the lower case characters with upper case.
<xsl:value-of select="translate($toconvert,$lcletters,$ucletters)"/>