Week 7

What if there is just not enough time to test your software?

Well this is something that every company has to deal with and ultimately tough decisions must be made.  The company needs their product launched and the user needs something stable enough for them to keep coming back. As we learned early on in our Software Testing Quality and Assurance course is that your test cases can become exponential. And just down right impossible to test it all, as well as you can address many cases yet the test quality can be lacking making this process even more of a headache. So what do you do?

1. Prepare, and analyze what is important
2. Stand by your thoughts of what your software needs
3. Ensure no critical bugs are released.

This may seem difficult but like I explained in my last blog about web application testing it is about tying up loose ends and ensuring the functionality required is up to par. First ensure your data integrity is bullet proof and that all of your CRUD functions properly. You do not want loose ends in your database because this could become a immediate problem when a field is deleted and makes your application crash. What also is important is input validation!!! I can not stress this enough, if you ensure that your input is valid every time you will reduce the possible causes of your bugs and this can reduce the cost to you and your company down the line.  After reading a couple blogs about this topic it is clear that some social skills is useful when describing what issues could lie in your software and what the risks associated with these potential bugs are. Interface bugs that are just aesthetic is not a priority over your relationships and functionality being hindered. Using Mutation Testing and code coverage tools can give you a better feel for what areas need to be addressed and what other places you need to move on from. This topic of what to do in this crisis is very open ended because it comes down to per situation and requirements for the client. So there is no one cut and dry approach to this yet with many more applications being released yearly we can grow as a community of developers educating each other on what worked best for you and your team.

I really enjoyed the first link I have below because not only does it talk about how to prioritize, but also how to deal with others who may have a different perspective on the product you are producing. Social skills go a long way in these situations and how you present your potential issues is vital to having the situation controlled and keeping your credibility.

Related Reads I used:

http://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/what-if-there-isnt-enough-time-for-thorough-testing/

You can’t test it all

From the blog CS443 – Triforce Code| Exploring and Learning by CS443 – Triforce Code| Exploring and Learning and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Week 6

As I described earlier web frameworks can be amazing, but regardless if you are using one or building a website or web app from scratch. There are a few places to start. After reading a few websites the options are pretty obvious, and from experience designing and building many websites these obvious points will still come to haunt you if you are not thorough. Trust me its the little things!

Lets start from the Obvious to less so:

• Website routes/links
  • Ensure they all work properly and no dead links exist
•  Input form testing
  • Valid input
  • Invalid input and validation handling
  • Ensure your CRUD functions properly
• Secure/Authenticated Route 
  • Ensure you can not access routes that require login
  • Ensure users can not manipulate the url to gain access to other information than what they are give
  • This can include cookie testing for logged in sessions
• Cookie testing
  • It is important to ensure your cookies are properly encrypted
    • This can contain data that the user or yourself as a developer would not want exposed
• In Depth Interface testing
  • This can include anything from usability to the look and feel
  • Is it intuitive? Could a user use this without prior knowledge? Too complex or want a feature Explain it to your user!
    • Many apps now have neat and sleek introduction walkthroughs to guide a user through the new interface
• Web compatibility!
  • Honestly this one should be first! I can not stress enough how unsightly it is to use a unsupported browser and to have a completely different user experience or just have some functionality not work.
  • Image Links in chrome do not show borders, underlines, or history color changes, yet IE does?
    • I know what you are thinking IE is just horrible. YES that it is but you need to ensure your site not only preforms properly but looks great

Website  links may seem like a given yet it could be easy to forget a simple link that could cost you. For example for a friends business venture I for the first week forgot to have the logo redirect you to the home page, yet this is an almost expected feature at this point yet if you are a sole developer its easy to miss.

Input testing is a must, time and time again developers talk about elegant and flexible applications. Allowing invalid input is just unacceptable and should be handled properly for any production application. Not only should you prevent this you must inform the user of what is allowed or why the input was not accepted and what should they change it to. Using a framework such as laravel makes validation a breeze and really leaves no excuse for anything less. The next main point for input forms is your CRUD functionality, does your database handle when a user is connected to many aspects of your design and deletes themselves,  this is when you need to ask yourself is this data important for others or can I cascade on delete. And more importantly does it properly cascade throughout your relationships? This is something that could become a big headache for both you and your users.

Authentication is something I will briefly mention, it should be known that a user should not have access to data they are not associated with or have the ability to access pages without being a validated user.

Cookies are a resource to not be taken lightly, some users don’t allow them and therefore does this make them unable to use important aspects of your application? It shouldn’t. Cookies can hold vital data such as remember tokens that store login sessions and if in the wrong hands can compromise your users data or more.

Testing your interface is important not only for debugging but it can and will also expose cumbersome tasks that could be minimized or eliminated by adding a interface feature.

I don’t think I should need to say much about Web compatibility. A clunky and inconsistent application is not intuitive for users and can be confusing or just ugly. With web design ensuring your web interface looks and feels great or at minimum the same will carry a lot of weight for you and your users.

Now get out there and start perfecting that application your work so hard on!

. Resources:

http://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/web-application-testing/

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/software_testing_dictionary/web_application_testing.htm

From the blog CS443 – Triforce Code| Exploring and Learning by CS443 – Triforce Code| Exploring and Learning and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This is my final post, at least for the foreseeable future, and it is based on Martin Fowler’s article Mocks Aren’t Stubs.  In unit testing, the ability to test a unit is sometimes dependent on other units, which may not have been created yet.  Mocks can be used in this case.  Fowler point out that “the vocabulary for talking about this soon gets messy – all sorts of words are used: stub, mock, fake, dummy.”  So for clarification, here is a quick vocabulary lesson:

• Test Double: A generic term for any kind of pretend object used in place of a real object for testing purposes
• Dummy: An object that is passed around but never actually used. Usually used to fill parameter lists.
• Fake: An object actually have working implementations, but usually take some shortcut which makes it not suitable for production
• Stub: Something that provides a canned answer to calls made during the test, usually not responding at all to anything outside what’s programmed in for the test. A stub may also record information about calls
• Mock: An object pre-programmed with expectations which form a specification of the calls it is expected to receive

From the blog cs443 – TayNock's Blog by taynock and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Week 5

This idea of Mocks are not Stubs is something that in class we have discussed and in a way has kept my head spinning. So today I have setout to answer this question in a simple and concise way. Many site give lengthy explanations with examples of code. I am going to just stick with the ideas here and try and rationalize the difference for my reader and myself.

Lets start simple, what are Mocks and Stubs?

• They are testing dummies or doppelgangers for unit and integration testing
  •  Mocks are supposed to mimic object behavior
    • They have set expectations before the test, and this is how you can set what behavior you are looking for.
  • Stubs are supposed to be predetermined/hard coded objects that are placeholders for unit testing.
    • Martin Fowler referred to this as canned responses. State verification

For me to wrap my mind around this concept I had to cut them down the middle and say Mocks have a expectations that are supposed to reflect the desired behavior. Where Stubs are hard coded methods and objects to ensure you can just test a unit without having a object dependency being dynamically generated. This can add a layer to the tests that take away from the unit test, so having placeholders can make your tests more defined and narrowed in on a specific portion of your design.  Many sites use these words to signify placeholders for dependencies and this is true but in reality these two ideas are two very different approaches to this placeholder need.

I read the following to better understand this concept:

http://martinfowler.com/articles/mocksArentStubs.html

http://www.g9labs.com/2014/06/21/mocks-arent-stubs/

Why not to mock tooo much : -Very cool read!

https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/mockists-are-dead-long-live-classicists

From the blog CS443 – Triforce Code| Exploring and Learning by CS443 – Triforce Code| Exploring and Learning and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This blogpost is focused on Sushma S’s article Understanding The Difference Between Unit, Integration and Functional Testing.  The focus of this article, as one could infer from the title, is to differentiate between Unit Testing, Integration Testing, and Functional Testing.

Unit Testing:

• Unit testing tests the smallest part of the application that is testable
• Unit testing is done before Integration testing by software developers using white box testing techniques.
• Unit testing does not only check the positive behavior, but also the failures that occur with invalid input.
• Finding issues/bugs at an early stage is very useful and it reduces the overall project costs.  Issues found at this stage can be resolved very easily and their impact is minute.
• A unit test tests small pieces of code or individual functions so the issues/errors found in these test cases are independent and do not impact the other test cases.

Integration Testing:

• Integration testing tests the integration of two units in the application
• The aim of integration testing is to check functionality, reliability, and performance of the system
• Integration testing determines whether the the combination of units provides the desired output or not

Functional Testing:

• Functional testing is a black box testing technique, where the functionality of the application is tested to generate desired output by providing certain input
• Functional testing is based on the requirements provided

From the blog cs443 – TayNock's Blog by taynock and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Week 4

Mutation Testing is something that I was not familiar with until the past few months. What is really useful about this form of testing is that is does not test your code, it tests your …TESTS! This is something that may seem dumb to people who do not know how easy it is to create ineffective tests.

Ineffective tests are ones that are supposed to test a certain path or piece of your code, yet although it may seem like you tested the whole method you may have just cover a fraction of your path possibilities. Mutation testing not only modifies your tests to find where they might fail but sees the “Code Coverage” of your tests. This is very useful to know because if you know you covered 99% of your code you can be confident in its output and features. Yet if you only covered 40% or less then this should make you ask, What would the other 60% of my code do if called upon?

Now this is something that can bite you in the butt down the road if ignored. In fact this has bit many people even years after, some developers may think the code they have no tested is unreachable so why remove it or test it? What if you are a bank and this functionality could cost the bank money. When put in this light it only seems to smart to dot your i’s and cross your t’s.

Code coverage is something that we have access to unlike any other time. We can see what lines of code we hit and what we didn’t so use these tools to better your reliability and quality of code. These tools are evolving constantly and give more and more statistics on your code, so go and explore the world of mutation testing!

Mutation Testing sources:

AWS Code Coverage Presentation

From the blog CS443 – Triforce Code| Exploring and Learning by CS443 – Triforce Code| Exploring and Learning and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Week 3

Laravel happens to be a new adventure of mine that I have had the pleasure of cramming all the information I could in about a month. I used this Framework to build a project for my Software Construction course and my eyes have been opened to this great exciting new world.

Lets just cover what I know it can do (I have not even scratched the surface)

• Create user logins in a instant
  • Password resets
  • Password encryption
• Create boilerplate scaffolding
  • Models
  • Database migrations
  • Controllers
• Built in secure routing
  • To create a secure way to traverse your web application/site with out allowing a user to step where they shouldn’t
  • If it is not defined as a valid place to be a link then you get returned to a error page
    • This may seem intuitive yet it is not many hackers can inject SQL or hidden values through your app and laravel does a great job of keeping your app secure with tokens being required for all input forms.
• Html/PHP Blade templating Engine
  • Allows for shorter syntax
  • new ways to interact with your database data
  • So much more that I have yet to learn.

Laravel is a Model-View-Controller Architecture. What this means is that you have your application separated into three pieces. The Model or the Database Entity, this is where you should prefer your logic and relationships to be. A great tip I learned through many tutorials is to keep your Models fat  and your Controller skinny.  We will get to this in a second when I explain controllers. The View is exactly what it sounds like, its the user interface. The views you make are designed in Html and PHP allowing a lot of flexibility to your applications look and feel. The Controller is the part of your application that controls the data being passed to the view and in a way is the bridge between the Model and View. Now in many attempts and tutorials it is tempting to create complex queries and logic in your controller but this is not good practice I have learned. This is because you can design your applications relationships and specific queries in your Model and this allows the database to have more predictable queries from a operational standpoint and much like any other database driven application you can make relationships using joins and other queries yet this is more expensive and unpredictable to your framework, by using the Models to its full potential you leverage the design of the database management system by having predefined relationships and reoccurring queries.

I promise I could talk about laravel for many posts, yet this was just to give you a flavor of what a Framework can do for your development by helping you focus on the details and not a hard parts like tokens and validation etc.

Laravel’s Documentation Page:

https://laravel.com/docs/5.3

Laravel Collective- allows for sleek form generation using simple syntax:

https://laravelcollective.com/

Laravel tutorial experts:

https://laracasts.com/

From the blog CS443 – Triforce Code| Exploring and Learning by CS443 – Triforce Code| Exploring and Learning and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Week 2

So recently Google Inc has released a new library to allow Fuzzing for Open source applications to find various bugs, call OSS-Fuzz. This is useful because as Google mentions on their blog about this tool, Open source software is what runs the internet of things. Having a bug in this sort of system could mean bad things for everyone.

So we have to ask a few questions for noobs like me.

• What is Fuzzing?
• Why would I want to use this?

So lets start by answering the first question, Fuzzing is a method of black box testing that uses injection techniques to find security flaws. The main thing we should focus on is the “injection part”  if we were to send a value that was not supposed to be allowed or not an option than this means we must gracefully handle this issue ,yet not all software can handle all forms of invalid input. Fuzzings aim or in this case Googles Ozz Fuzzing library allows you to automatically run these tests on your software making sure it won’t crash and leave things vulnerable. If even not vulnerable you still can have your application down allowing a hacker to win by implementing a real Denial of Service attack. This is a big issue for many sites, because if they crash who knows what could be exposed to the viewer.

I think I answered both questions in one long winded swoop. Now I read a little bit on how to use this library for chrome componets and they make it seem really quite simple.

https://security.googleblog.com/2016/08/guided-in-process-fuzzing-of-chrome.html

Resource:

https://security.googleblog.com/2016/12/announcing-oss-fuzz-continuous-fuzzing.html

From the blog CS443 – Triforce Code| Exploring and Learning by CS443 – Triforce Code| Exploring and Learning and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This blogpost is focused around Renuka K’s article 9 Ways to Quickly Improve Your Writing Skills as a Software Tester.  She wrote this article in order to help software testers to better communicate through written medium.  If software testers do not think that being able to effectively convey thoughts through writing, Renuka provided a list of examples.

• Various Test Documents – Strategy/plan/test cases/summary
• Status/Progress Reports
• Defect logs
• Presentations
• Job Specifications
• Resumes
• Knowledge Tutorials
• Emails

Now that’s a lot of writing!  Of course testers are not necessarily writing novels, but something as simple as an email still needs to be well written, concise, and direct in order to accomplish its goal.  Here are Renuka’s nine tips to improve your writing.

1. Always keep in mind the purpose of writing
2. Know your audience
3. Reading improves writing
4. Use proper formatting
5. Keep it Simple and easy to understand
6. Passive voice is not always appropriate
7. Correct spelling and precise use of grammar is a must
8. Always review your work
9. Practice!

From the blog cs443 – TayNock's Blog by taynock and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

I was introduced to Slack this past summer.  It is a free messaging application used by development teams around the world that provides many useful features for collaboration.  AST, also known as the Association for Software Testing created a Slack team last month for their members.  If anyone would like to join the team, simply send an email to marketing@associationforsoftwaretesting.org.  AST has promoted this as a forum for testers to get together and discuss past, present and future projects.  As a proponent of the app, I’m happy to see more and more people using it.

From the blog cs443 – TayNock's Blog by taynock and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.