XQual Blog

Release of XStudio 1.5sp4

2011-12-31T13:34:00.000+01:00

XStudio 1.5sp4 has been released and is available for download here: http://www.xqual.com/support/download.html

This is a minor maintenance release.

No schema update or configuration changes are necessary.

Changes:

   New web package html home page
   Bug-fixes:
     - CReqTreeModel used in specification's traceability matrix
     - Cannot delete bug attachments
     - Test cases are not automatically created
     - User can assign user group's member only when he has the relevant rights
     - Typos in rights management tree
     - Do not truncate the test and test case path in the tabular manual launcher
     - Auto-wrap long test and testcase names in the right panel
     - When a test name is very long, running the test directly can produce sql failure
     - Params: additional checks on the number of combinations
     - Pairwise algo: negative number of combinations displayed in the preview panel
     - Specification priority and status not imported

XStudio 1.6a2: Oracle support completed!

2011-12-24T01:17:00.001+01:00

It has been tough! very tough!!!

Much more time-consuming than we planned.

We saw here the limits of SQL standard ;)

But anyway, here we are :)

XStudio now supports Oracle 11g.

A new "Database server type" setting has been added where the user can select either MySql or Oracle from the drop-down menu. Then, the user needs to provide appropriate information to connect to the Oracle instance:

That's the only change visible...
This will be available with XStudio 1.6a2+ (as a plugin)

Atom feed created

2011-12-08T14:03:00.001+01:00

... so that it should be easier to automatically import feeds in LinkedIn groups etc.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/xqualblog

XStudio 1.6a1: Requirement coverage on sessions

2011-12-07T16:45:00.001+01:00

Some new coverage metrics will be added in XStudio 1.6a1 including probably the most interesting one everybody is looking for: requirements and specifications coverage.

Here is how it looks like:

What you can observe in this new "Requirements" tab design:

- individual results of requirements/specifications (not covered, success, failure, unknown)

- for each container, the nb of requirement with a specific result

- for each container, some visual indication on the percentage of each

Hope you like it!

XStudio 1.6a1: Mixed test campaigns

2011-12-01T00:03:00.001+01:00

Mixed campaign is a long story. This feature has been requested for long but it was technically requiring so many changes in the code architecture that it had been delayed several times.

But now it's done!

In terms of GUI, the changes are minimal though. you will notice only a couple of new radio buttons in the campaign's "Order" panel:

When you create a new test campaign, just select all the tests you want to be part of that campaign. These tests can be of different kinds (i.e. 3 Selenium scripts + 2 JUnit tests + 4 manual tests). You can reorder those tests manually by using the order toolbar but you can also use one of the two automatic ordering buttons (this will reorder automatically your tests by dependencies or by priorities).

Here comes the news: you have now 2 new options:

1) execute tests from different categories in parallel

In this case, tests from each category will be gathered and executed in a separate and independant thread. Within a single category/thread, all the tests will be executed following the order globally defined but each category will be running on its own and only its set of tests. In this case, there is NO synchronization between categories/launchers.

2) execute tests from different categories in sequence exactly as defined in the order you just set

In this case, the system will execute the tests exactly in the order you defined. At one time there will be only one launcher working.

This second option makes it possible to create sequences of tests mixing completely automated tests with manual tests. For instance, this could allow to manually configure a system then run all the automated tests and complete the campaign by performing some additional manual cleaning operations. This also allows mixing different types of automated tests in one single sequence.

I Cannot think yet about all this brings but it definitely brings a lot of opportunities in your way to test!

XStudio 1.5: New tools on Tabular Manual Launcher

2011-09-05T22:15:00.003+02:00

As planned some new tools have been implemented in the Tabular Manual Launcher.

They include:

Reset all testcases with success/failure/relative/not_executed status. On pressing the Submit button a dialog pops up and asks if it is needed to clear all the comments as well
List & open the attachments for tests and test cases
List & edit bugs (integrated, generic, mantis, bugzilla, jira trac) associated to tests
Auto-submission of the comments on focus lost (at least ! :)). In addition, it's now easy to identify the comments being edited (not yet submitted) and those already submitted

What may be done only for 1.6:

Edit/delete tests
Edit/delete test case

What will have to wait for sure for 1.6:

Create new test
Create new test case

XStudio 1.5: User Profiles

2011-07-20T23:40:00.005+02:00

Starting with XStudio 1.5a5, instead of setting the rights to the users, it will be possible to create some custom user profiles and for each user select one in the list.

By default, 6 user profiles will be present. It will be possible to delete all of them except the "Administrator" one and of course it will be possible to add some new ones. User profiles can be created, copied, edited and deleted. If the user profile associated to one or several users is deleted, the users will loose all their rights until they are associated to another user profile.

The good thing is that if at one point you edit a user profile, the changes will apply to all users associated to this profile. When you create a new user, it will also be easier to set his rights as he will probably need some rights that you already defined in one user profile.

WARNING: By default, when migrating to 1.5a5 all the users will be associated to the "Administrator" user profile. You'll have to associate your users to either the default profiles that fit or create you own user profiles and individually associate your users to appropriate ones.

XStudio 1.5: Custom fields

2011-04-29T00:53:00.005+02:00

One of the major addition to 1.5 will be the abilty to customize the details forms for the requirements, specifications, test cases and bugs.

If you have the appropriate rights, adding a new custom field will be easy enough:

Different types of fields will be available:

integer (text field)
string (text field)
boolean (checkbox)
formatted tring (wiki-style field) - see example above
drop-down menu (combo box)

The user will have the possibility to

select a position where to insert its custom field
specify if the field is mandatory or not
specify a default value
list all of the possible values (in case of the drop-down menu)

The list of custom fields for one type of object will be available on the root node of its corresponding tree and it will look like:

With those example settings, the details tab of a bug would look like:

Note: this feature will be probably delivered through a commercial plugin (very cheap - around 30€ per user). It will be also delivered freely to all the users who have formerly (or are going to) contracted a support license.

XStudio 1.5: Images and URLs in formatted text widgets

2011-04-24T14:16:00.004+02:00

One feature that has been requested by many customers was the possibility to embed images and anchors in formatted text fields. This will be possible in 1.5.
Images are physically stored in the database so that the user does not have to worry about maintaining an external repository.

The GUI is very simple and is as presented below:

To embed an image, just click the "image" button and select an image on your hard-disk:

The wiki tags for Images and anchors are the following:

For images, the name of the image is automatically prefixed with a unique id corresponding to the id of the image file in the database.

When previewing a formatted text embedding an image, the image will be of course rendered. The image is also rendered in reports.

XStudio 1.5: IDs in trees

2011-03-13T01:04:00.004+01:00

Certain people prefer to see the Ids of any object in the trees.

In XStudio 1.5, an option in the settings will allow to activate this feature.
Hence the display can look like:

XStudio 1.5: Customizable email notifications

2011-03-13T00:55:00.007+01:00

Starting with XStudio 1.5, email notification will be generated using the same mechanism than for reports. This means that the content of the email will be the results of an XML (generated by XStudio and including all the required data) transformed through an XSLT.

Since you can edit and modify the XSLT, you can customize your email notification presentation (for instance the logo but also the data you want to include, their orders, the colors etc. etc.).

In addition to this, the number of data included in the bug notification are bigger. With the default transform provided, the results is:

XStudio 1.5: New settings to better control notifications

2011-03-13T00:34:00.005+01:00

In XStudio 1.5, new settings will appear to better control email notification mechanisms:

Send additional notification per failed test case:
When you're running non-regression campaigns, this option can be useful as it will send you a specific notification as soon as one test case is failing (regression). The notification is sent immediately while the session is still running. One notification per failed test case is sent.

Send bug notification only on status change:
This option will limit the email notification to the case where the status of the bug has been changed.

Also, for the integrated bug-tracking database, a new butto allows sending a reminder to all people involved in the bug:

XStudio 1.5: User-groups, projects and access-rights

2011-03-13T00:05:00.007+01:00

XStudio already has a great set of options to authorize users to execute certain actions or not depending on their profile. This is what we call "Actions rights".

With XStudio 1.5, a new feature will allow restricting users to view only a subset of the objects in the Data-Model. For instance, you will want some people to work on a specific project and you want them to be isolated from the rest (you don't want them to see what the others are working on).

To do so, you will be able to create groups of users. Each user group will be granted to access certain folders in ANY XStudio tree. This is what we call "Access rights". If a user is member of several groups, all the rights will be cumulated and given to the user.

Here are a few screenshots:

Members of a user group

Selection of Access Rights for a user group

User group members

XStudio 1.5: Microsoft Word document parser

2011-03-12T23:50:00.007+01:00

Before using a real Test Management system, people often use Microsoft Word to write their requirements or specifications.

With XStudio 1.5, a tool allowing to read all your Word documents and generate an XML file will be delivered. Hence, you will be able to import very simply all your requirements/specifications in XStudio:

Install and run Export from Word v2.0

Indicate a type of export (Flat or Deep)
Indicate the root folder containing all the Word documents
Press "Generate XML"
Open XStudio and import the generated file

1) the "Deep" mode reads the Word document and will interpret any "leaf" tree node as a requirement. All its parent chapters will be imported as folders in the requirement tree
2) the "Flat" mode reads on the summary of the Word document and import any entry (inluding the head numbering)

XStudio 1.5: Import requirements from Word documents

2011-02-21T01:10:00.007+01:00

We are working at the moment on a Word exporter.
The goal is to be able to read/parse some Word document to export requirements in an XML file that XStudio can import.

2 modes are available:
1) the "deep" mode reads the Word document and will interpret any "leaf" tree node as a requirement. All its parent chapters will be imported as folders in the requirement tree
2) the "flat" mode reads on the summary of the Word document and import any entry (inluding the head numbering)

The programs takes 2 arguments:
ExportFromWord.exe inputFolder outputXML

All the Word documents in the input folder are parsed but only one single output XML is generated.

Example:
ExportFromWord.exe "C:\Documents and Settings\egavaldo\Desktop" "C:\exportFromWord.xml"

Study: Risk-based design

2011-02-21T00:52:00.012+01:00

I'm seeing many ways to "implement" risk-based concepts but I have the following requirements and constraints:

- make it simple enough so that people actually use it

- provide a certain level of customization

- must be mapped on XStudio's data-model which is basically:

Now, here is what I’m thinking of:

Business Requirements:

For each requirement, the user will have to provide:

a) a "probability/frequency" P value (between 1 and 5)

b) a "consequence/cost" C value (between 1 and 5)

Then each requirement have a computed "business risk" Br=P*C (between 1 and 25)

Technical Specifications:

For each specification, the user will have to provide:

a) a "technical risk/complexity" R value (between 1 and 10)

Tests:

The system will parse the graph linking each test to its related specifications then its related requirements and will compute a "criticality" Cr value based on some calculation:

Not sure what is the best formula yet though.

(A and B are user-customizable constants.)

Formula#1: no requirement duplicate

This is the simple formula where there is no duplicate.

Formula#2: all path

We could also recursively parse the graph and authorize duplicate requirements:

Output for the user:

This will allow providing many metrics to the user including 2 major ones:

1) a graph showing the distribution of tests (risk / number of test cases)

This is useful to check the correlation between risk and nb of test cases implemented per test (you do want that the more risky tests are tested the more in details so have the more test cases).

2) more importantly, some "risk-weighted-coverage" statistics

The normal coverage metrics give basic information about how much the requirements are covered but it does consider any requirement/specification with the same “weigth”. the "risk-weighted-coverage" would introduce in the calculation the criticality notion. If a highly critical test is succeeding and a low-criticity test is failing, the risk-weighted-coverage will be much better that the opposite way even though there are only 2 test.

Presentation will be as the standard coverage currently displayed.

Many other metrics might be deliverable to the user (need to think more about it).

Release of XStudio 1.4sp5

2011-02-21T00:49:00.003+01:00

XStudio 1.4sp5 has been released today.
This is a maintenane version fixing a couple of bugs releated to JIRA and TRAC connection.

Website: User's Manual being converted to online version

2010-06-30T02:00:00.002+02:00

Good news! Manon started working on the online documentation. This will avoid including a large PDF (more than 100 pages and a few MBytes) in the distribution package. But more importantly, this will allow keeping the documentation maintained/updated much easily and often!
The complete User's Manual should be available in 3 weeks.

Release of XStudio 1.3b2

2010-06-30T01:57:00.001+02:00

Beta 2 of XStudio 1.3 has been released today !

Release of XStudio 1.3b1

2010-06-21T17:00:00.002+02:00

Beta 1 of XStudio 1.3 has been released today !

XStudio 1.3: New test dependencies graph

2010-06-19T01:41:00.006+02:00

In XStudio 1.3, a new test dependencies graph will be released. This is using a new hierarchical layout much clearer than the former circular layout:

When some cycles do exist they are indicated in red/orange so that you can fix them. And again the new layout does a tremendous job:

XStudio 1.3: New manual launcher

2010-06-08T23:04:00.008+02:00

One comment that many people made about the 2 manual launchers already available was: "It's nice but how can I execute some tests, then stop, close XStudio and continue the same session the day after?".
Another question was: "what if I want to run again one individual test already executed a long time ago in a campaign session?".

In XStudio 1.3, we would like to introduce a new manual launcher and a new feature to answer these 2 questions.

1) A third manual launcher
This launcher will be aimed at giving the more flexibility as possible to the operator so that:

he can execute the tests in the order he wants
he can re-run the same tests several times
it's trivial and fast to run the tests

The goal being: "as simple as executing an Excel/Word test plan writing down the result manually with a pen"

2 options:

Option1:
Here is a mock-up of what could be the design of the new launcher:

This solution is pretty elegant and provides a good overview of the current status to the test operator but it's not exactly as simple as running test cases "on paper": The test operator has to:

select a test in the test tree (A)
select a test case in the sub tree (B)
description of the test and test case are updated
click on Succeeded or Failed buttons
use the Previous test case and Next test case buttons
optionally submit a bug or link to an already existing bug, post a comment on the fly

At any time the test operator can select a specific test (A) and test case (B) to execute it (even if already executed). The clock and progress bar are still triggered only if the test has the timeout attribute (no change from the current launchers).

Option2:
The launcher would just display tests and test cases in a table.
Columns would be:

Id
Path
Name
Priority
Result
Comment

The Result column of test case rows would contain a combo-box to manually select the results. This is much simpler but the test operator would have to rely on a printed copy of the test plan. All the results would be updated when the test operator clicks on the Submit button.

Option3:
Maybe something in the middle?

I'm interested in your views about it...

2) An option to re-execute stopped campaign session.
This is a delicate point as cheating must be avoided. Indeed, who never got to the following situation:
A tester runs a very time consuming test campaign (several days) on a product, getting all tests succeeding... except one. Really unfortunate isn't it? Hopefully the day after the tester receives a new version of the SUT and (because he's running out of time) re-runs only the failed test overwriting a failure with a success (hence ignoring all potential risk of regression included in the new version o the SUT) :( It is very common unfortunately and should be authorized only in very specific cases.

So, a new right will be introduced so that the users who are granted with this right are the only ones having the ability to re-run a stopped campaign session.

In a next version, the ability the select a specific version of the test to run will be added. This will be part of the flagging system.

XStudio 1.3: Accelerated startup

2010-05-18T00:47:00.004+02:00

In XStudio 1.3, a new innovative system is implemented to pre-fetch icons and compute (using the Java 2D API) derived icons (based on the following algorithms: concatenation, HSB filter, opacity, grey-out, overlay, rescale etc.) much faster (3 times faster than downloading them individually).

This will drastically increase start-up time (especially in Java Web Start mode).

XStudio 1.3: Proxy launcher

2010-05-18T00:26:00.002+02:00

One big issue in testing distributed environment is how to publish scripts execution on each component.

Let's imagine you have to test a VoIP framework that comprises 3 different machines: a Client, a Gateway and a Server. To test the data flow, you will need to deploy for each test (at least) 3 scripts on each of those and run them at the same time. And that's were Test Management systems (even very expensive ones!) generally fails.

XStudio 1.3 includes a new launcher called the proxy launcher and a new kind of agent called the XSubAgent. An XSubAgent is basically a kind of XAgent instance embedding an XML-RPC server and which communicates only through this media.

Here is the flow:

You create your test campaign from XStudio and start it
The tests in this campaign are associated to the proxy launcher which can be running on any host
The proxy launcher is configured with a list of individual XSubAgents, launchers and configurations
The proxy launcher will just contact individually all the XSubAgents and will forward the requests to execute extracted sub-tests
Each XSubAgent will execute its specific script and will return results to the proxy
The proxy consolidates results and logs and returns it to XStudio.

Hence, one single test is split by the proxy launcher in different scripts that are executed simultaneously on different XSubAgents located on the Client, the Gateway and the Server of our VoIP Framework.

XStudio 1.3: Tests and test cases versioning

2010-05-18T00:08:00.005+02:00

One feature requested for long was the test and test cases versioning. Indeed, it was possible to track the progression and regression of test campaigns in time but there were not yet any way to manage the versions of the tests/test cases in parallel. Hence, if you are looking at an old campaign session and see that the test A did fail, you were not able to know what was the test A at this time since it may have changed afterward.

Starting in XStudio 1.3, all changes in tests and test cases are tracked and versioned so that you can get their states at any point in time.

Information versioned are:

Tests:

Description
Priority
Canonical path
Prerequisites
Additional information

Test cases:

Procedure tree
Description
Use description as testplan flag
Additional information

Currently, the system associate to each revision a date of submission and an revision (an automatically incremented number). Here is how the GUI looks like:

In the future, a flagging system will be added so that the user can flag ALL test at a T time with a personalized label. It will also be possible to run a campaign session with the tests as they were defined in the past.

XStudio 1.3: TRAC integrated

2010-05-17T23:56:00.003+02:00

In XStudio 1.3, a new third-party bug-tracking database is integrated: the very popular TRAC.

This integration has been done using TRAC's XML-RPC API.

Many other bug-tracking system provide XML-RPC interface (i.e. JIRA) so this will ease very much of those in the future as well.

XStudio 1.3: UTF-8 Support

2010-04-28T13:16:00.003+02:00

Starting from XStudio 1.3a3, support of UTF-8 character set and encoding is supported. This means that any kind of accentuated character or symbol can be used (French, German, Chinese, Arab, Hebrew etc.).

The only remaining forbidden characters are now: " $ * \ and `

Any textual element on any item in XStudio is now utf-8 supported excepted usernames and paswwords that still need to use only alphanumeric characters (for security reasons).
Enjoy,

XStudio 1.3: New refactored progress details window

2010-04-24T22:54:00.005+02:00

It's a long time that I did not post a new thread in my blog (was pretty busy working on some dev. for a customer)!

Anyway, I'm glad to be back and with a pretty exciting new feature: I completely re-designed the way tests are executed (especially the threading part). This will allow in the future to support execution of tests from several agents at the same time. In addition, we should be able to run several instances of the same tests on each of those agents.

Anyway, the first step to get to this point was to redesign the progress details window so that it's much easier to get information on the current state of the execution.

Here is the new design:

As you can see, information are now much more readable than before and this new layout will make it easy to integrate several agents and several instances in the future.
So, what has changed exactly?

Tabbing
Each category is now displayed in an independent tab.
The same way, each agent executing some tests are displayed in a separate tab (for now, you can have only 1 agent though)

Stats consolidation
Specific tabs contains specific information. But you may want to get only "the big picture". With this new design, you can get exactly the information you want:

global stats of the campaign session (at the very bottom of the window)
stats related to one category of tests (all results of the tests belonging to the same category)
stats related to one category and executed from one specific agent
stats related to one category, executed from one specific agent and from one specific instance

In the future, there will be several rows in the instances table showing the details of each instance execution. Some additional settings will also be available in the future to synchronize all the instances together which will make XStudio a great tool for stressing SUTs.

Adaptive scale
In XStudio 1.2, the graph was showing a sliding window of the results. So, you were able to see only the results of the last 5 minutes of execution. Now, the graph is displaying ALL the results, and the scale is constantly adapting to do that. Much more practical (and there is still the zooming function available in case your campaign sessions last hours or days and you want to see a specific region of the results).

Offline display of the progress details window
This was something I wanted to do for a long time and it will be in XStudio 1.3a1: it is now possible to redraw this progress details information of any campaign session at any time (even if you executed the session two month ago).

Trends are now appropriately colored
- Green = success
- Red = failure
- Blue = relative
- Grey = not executed/skipped

XStudio 1.2: GUI for the execution options

2010-02-16T01:07:00.003+01:00

One of the latest features I added was the possibility to reorder the tests by dependency. One thing was missing though: the logic to apply in case one parent test has failed or has not been executed (even if you did not ordered you tests by dependencies, you may want to take advantage of this information).

This is done now through this GUI (available in "create a session", "copy a session" and "create a schedule" operations):

XStudio 1.2: Automatic generation of specifications and tests

2010-02-08T00:50:00.007+01:00

The right process in the lifecycle of a product is to start writing requirements. Then, a list of specifications can be refined from these requirements. Then, the testers write their tests from the specifications.

In XStudio, the process is exactly the same and it can be quite time-consuming to create all these items in the requirements, specifications and tests tree.

Requirements MUST be entered anyway. This is an absolute prerequisite. But then, a new feature will help in creating the specifications and tests repositories. Here is how it works:

1) Select a folder (that is parent of a full tree of sub-folders and requirements) in the requirements tree

2) Click on the "Generate specifications" button

3) Pick a destination folder in the specifications tree

4) Optionally change the default set of options:

4) Submit

The selected tree of requirements is "duplicated" in the specifications tree. Names and descriptions will be identical and the requirement and its peer generated specification will be linked together. Hence, each requirement has one "default" specification associated. The user has now just to edit/modify the specification (name, description, status etc.) and add some additional ones if necessary.

The equivalent feature will be available to generate default tests from the specifications.

XStudio 1.2: Refined reordering of tests within a campaign

2010-01-15T23:17:00.004+01:00

One of the most complex but valuable interest in using a test manager is to be flexible enough to execute tests in a specific order.

When you create a campaign, the wizard asks you to select some tests in a tree, hence, there is no concept of order at this point. However, after the campaign is created you can select the "Order" tab and enjoy two new buttons:

1) Reorder using dependencies
If you press this button, tests will be ordered so that a test is always executed after ALL his parents. The algorithm is pretty complex and obviously supposes there is no cycle in the dependencies. In case you left some cycling dependencies, XStudio will show you exactly what's wrong by displaying all the cycling dependencies:

Then, you can easily correct your dependencies (in the test tree) and reorder your campaign.

Before pressing the "Reorder using dependencies" button, ensure the checkbox "Execute tests with dependencies first" is correctly set. If this checkbox is not selected, tests without any dependencies will be executed after all the tests having dependencies.

2) Reorder using priorities
If you press this button, tests will be ordered so that tests with higher priorities will be executed before tests with lower priorities. Note that a "priority" column has been added so that it's visually easier to check the priorities of all the tests in the list.

Manual ordering:
Once the system has reordered your tests using one of the 2 methods, you still have the flexibility to manually reorder some of the tests using the usual manual reordering toolbar. As before, multiple selection is available so that you can move several tests at the same time.

Column width persistence:
A recently added feature is the fact that after this table is refreshed, the columns are left at the exact same position. This was a pretty annoying restriction.

XStudio 1.2: More detailed SUT report

2010-01-10T00:03:00.003+01:00

The SUT report has been improved to include much more information including:

In the folder summary
- for each SUT, the number of defects found on this SUT
- for each SUT, the number of defects fixed on this SUT
- for each SUT, the number of sessions executed on this SUT

In the SUT Details section:
- the details of the defects found on this SUT
- the details of the defects fixed on this SUT
- some basic information (name, start date and stop date) on the sessions executed on this SUT

Of course, by clicking on the links, the users gets to the details of the selected item (requirement, specification, test or defect

XStudio 1.2: Copy a testcase

2010-01-09T23:54:00.003+01:00

When some testcases of a tests are complex to describe but very similar it's good to be able to copy a reference and just modifying what's strictly necessary to be changed.

This will be possible in XStudio 1.2 through this interface (allowing to modify on the fly the testplan):

XStudio 1.2: Copy a campaign session

2009-12-29T23:12:00.003+01:00

It's now possible (in XStudio 1.2) to copy a campaign session. The use cases are pretty simple:

1) You already executed a campaign session and need to execute it again exactly the same way
Just select the campaign session, press the "copy campaign session" button and validate by pressing "Submit". A new session identical to the original one is created with the exact same parameters (operator, agent, SUT, launcher configurations) and is ready to be executed.

2) You already executed (or not) a campaign session and need to duplicate it with slightly different settings
Just select the campaign session, press the "copy campaign session" button, change the settings you want to be changed and validate by pressing "Submit". A new session identical to the original one but including your changes is created and is ready to be executed.

XStudio 1.2: Copy a campaign

2009-12-28T15:43:00.006+01:00

XStudio 1.2 includes a "Copy Campaign" feature. This is available through a new button in the task bar and this allows duplicating a campaign in just a couple of clicks. You have just to select the destination folder and submit.

Optionally, the user can also modify the content (add or remove some tests) on the fly - filter and import features are obviously available during this process.

If the user select the original folder as destination folder, then the new campaign will be renamed "Copy of XXX". If you do several copies in the same folder, a number will be appended to the name of the new copies.

Of course, once the copy has been done, the user can rename the campaign from the "Details" tab.

XStudio 1.2: Better search in tree

2009-12-28T14:58:00.006+01:00

The contextual search in trees (through the search bar) is now more flexible as it will pop up all the similar items (and not only items which names start with the searched string). Hence, ANY node having the search string (what the user type in the text field) in its name, whatever the position and case insensitive, will be popuped.

However, to have the exact match indicator it will have to be exactly the same (case sensitive).

XStudio 1.2: Page selector

2009-12-27T23:54:00.003+01:00

The page selector is now implemented. It completes the feature included in XStudio 1.1 introducing two new buttons "Previous" and "Next" allowing to return to one of the previously browsed object etc.

The page selector is a small icon located on the right to the two existing buttons and allows showing the exact list of the lately browsed objects. A cursor is highlighting the currently viewed object.

The use can use his mouse to manually select any of the item in the list or use the arrow keys and validate by ENTER.

It basically provides comparable flexibility than users get on their favorite browser (i.e. Firefox).

XStudio 1.2: New form layout

2009-12-27T00:07:00.002+01:00

Starting from XStudio 1.2, the forms will all use a new layout (basically, align to the top-left instead of center). In addition, the HTML editors/viewers widgets are now sizable by configuration which allow to better fit the circumstance.

XStudio 1.2: Mandatory fields distinguishable

2009-12-26T23:59:00.002+01:00

In all the forms included in XStudio 1.2, mandatory fields are distinguishable (different color and an asterisk).
Just a detail, but quite useful sometimes.

XStudio 1.2: Submit defects while executing manual test campaigns

2009-12-21T23:31:00.006+01:00

I've just finished developing the new feature allowing to submit defect (integrated defects only as there is no way to call synchronously equivalent processes from a Bugzilla or Mantis page in a browser) while executing some manual test campaigns. This will work with both the manual.jar and simple_manual.jar launchers.

If the feature is enabled (through a parameter in the usual configuration file), 2 new buttons will appear in the popup box:

One to create a new defect
another one to link the test that has just failed with an already existing defect

Clicking any of those buttons will result in the test to be set as "Failed" (as when clicking on "Failed")
however, when the user clicks on "Create a new defect", he is prompted with the standard form:

While when he clicks on "Link to an existing defect", he's asked to just pick a defect in the tree:

Release of XStudio 1.1b3

2009-12-15T23:54:00.001+01:00

XStudio 1.1b3 is available at the usual location: http://www.xqual.com/support/download.html

Here is the change log:

* Add the testcaseName to the SDK API
* Add the Selenium Python launcher
* Update the following launchers:
- Autoit 1.5
- Beanshell 1.0
- Exe 1.1
- JUnit 1.3
- Marathon 1.2
- Nunit 1.2
- PyUnit 1.0
- Selenium .NEt 1.1, html 1.1, java 1.1 and Python 1.0:
. give some time to the selenium server to start
. incorrect default values for selenium server path
. incorrect default values for junit path
- Squish 1.3
- TCL 1.2
- testComplete 1.3
- TestNG 1.2
- TestPartner 1.2
- VisualStudio 1.5
* Update jarbuilder
* Remove all the limitation about open a document under MacOSX
* Disabling sandbox in JNLP mode to:
- Remove security warnings
- Accelerate the connection to a third-party MySQL server
* Bug-fix:
- MacOS release fixed and tested
- Campaign session reports corrupted
- Do not try to save the last logged user in JNLP
- Delete attachment in the document tree
- Status wrongly retrieved (for email notification) from integrated defect details
- crash under MacOSX when editing an document
* Improve notification mechanism fir the integrated BTD

Release of XStudio 1.1b2

2009-12-09T12:14:00.003+01:00

XStudio 1.1b2 is available at the usual location: http://www.xqual.com/support/download.html

XStudio recommended at NFJS (No Fluff Just Stuff) conference

2009-12-09T11:47:00.003+01:00

During the excellent NFJS Conference (http://www.nofluffjuststuff.com) XStudio has been strongly recommended :)

GUI Test Automation: XStudio with Squish Integration Released

2009-12-08T23:52:00.001+01:00

Official announcement: http://www.linuxpr.com/releases/11786.html

Nice, France and Hamburg, Germany—2009-12-08 XQual and froglogic GmbH today announced that XStudio 1.0, a free, cross-platform test management solution has been released, along with an integration for the popular automated GUI testing framework, Squish.

XQual Studio (XStudio) is a free GUI-based test management application that handles the complete life-cycle of QA/testing projects from end to end—users, requirements, specifications, development projects (scrum oriented), SUTs, tests, test plans, test reports, and test campaigns. XStudio uses a modular design to make it easy to extend with additional components.

Squish is the leading functional GUI and regression testing tool that enables the creation and execution of automated functional tests for GUI applications on Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and on embedded platforms. Squish supports several GUI technologies including Nokia's Qt, Java Swing/AWT/Eclipse RCP, Web/HTML/Ajax, and many more.

Squish offers a versatile testing framework for GUI applications with a choice of popular test scripting languages (Python, JavaScript, Perl, and Tcl), extended by Squish's own library of testing-specific functionalities. Squish also provides open interfaces, several add-ons, integration with a variety of test management tools, a powerful IDE supporting the creation and debugging of tests, and a complete set of command line tools that can be used to create fully automated test runs.

With XStudio's Squish integration it is possible to plan, schedule, execute, and analyze Squish GUI tests from within XStudio, as part of the complete automated test campaign managed by XStudio.

"XStudio proved itself to be one of the major actors in the Test Management world. XStudio handles not only the test plan, but also the requirements, specifications and defects associated to each test. This allows producing high quality reports and graphics. Thanks to its open-source SDK (LGPL), integrating with any kind of tests, including proprietary tests, is as simple as just writing a Java class. Mixing the strength of Squish and XStudio builds one of the most powerful integration ever!", —Eric Gavaldo, founder of XQual.

"Squish is designed to provide the most reliable and robust functional GUI and regression testing for test automation—and to be as easy as possible to integrate with third-party test management and ALM solutions. This means that our customers have the freedom to create their ideal testing environments using the tools they like best. We congratulate XQual on producing this first release of XStudio, a free test management solution that works well with Squish, and that is a very attractive tool in its own right, in particular thanks to its cross-platform support.", —Reginald Stadlbauer, froglogic's CEO.

If you are interested in evaluating or purchasing Squish or any other Squish edition, please contact squish@froglogic.com or visit www.froglogic.com/squish.

For more information about XStudio, please visit www.xqual.com

About froglogic

froglogic GmbH is a software company based in Hamburg, Germany. Their flagship product is Squish, the market-leading automated testing tool for GUI applications based on Qt, Java AWT/Swing and SWT/RCP, Mac OS X Carbon/Cocoa and for HTML/Ajax-based web applications running in various web browsers. froglogic also offers services in the areas QA/automated testing and C++/Qt programming and consulting. More about froglogic at http://www.froglogic.com.

About XQual

XQual is based in Nice, France and has been founded to promote a free, efficient, and professional-quality test management solution. XQual also offers a variety of consulting services through "XQual Services". Read more about XQual at http://www.xqual.com.

"froglogic" and "Squish" are registered trademarks of froglogic GmbH. All other trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.

Release of XStudio 1.0 and 1.1b1

2009-12-08T22:14:00.002+01:00

The final version of XStudio 1.0 has been released and is available at the usual location:
http://www.xqual.com/support/download.html.

Since I had already started the development of 1.1 in parallel, I can deliver 1.1b1 simulataneously.

Version 1.1 introduces mainly 3 major new features:

1) The Document Management System allowing to handle your documents (actually any kind of files) collaboratively. Documents are versionned and must be locked by one user to be modified and committed to the repository. While a document is locked, no modification are authorized from the other users. After the installation of 1.1b1, all your previously attached documents/files (in any of your trees) will be automatically converted and handled through this new fresh module. A new Document tree is also appearing (to store all the documents that don't make sense to be put in any of the other trees).

2) In addition, a serie of new launchers are introduced that will please a LOT of people: SELENIUM ! 3 launchers have been added to execute Selenium Scripts written in HTML, Java or C#. Is someone interested in the Ruby, Perl, Groovy, etc. implementation?

3) The Bugzilla integration has also been productized and is now officially supported (not "experimental" anymore).

XStudio 1.1: Working on the new Document Management System

2009-11-22T16:06:00.005+01:00

While the version 1.0 is almost there, I'm working in parallel to the version 1.1.

XStudio 1.1 will be a "mini-release" including only one (but great) new feature: the Document Management System. This basically allows to several people to work collaboratively on some documents (such as Requirements, Specifications, Architecture or Design documents). The documents can be in any format (Word, Excel, Pdf, Images etc.) and are versionned so that you can checkout older versions any time.

All the attachments formerly added in XStudio 1.0 (or less) will be automatically converted to the new system.

As a preview, here is how the new interface will look like:

Release of XStudio 1.0b3

2009-11-22T16:03:00.004+01:00

Only some minor bugs fixed in that version. Check the details out on
This version can be downloaded at this URL: http://www.xqual.com/support/download.html
There is also a http://www.xqual.com/support/changelog.html.

Next week: final version 1.0 !

Release of XStudio 1.0b1

2009-11-03T22:23:00.001+01:00

The version 1.0b1 of XStudio has been released and is available for download at the usual location: http://www.xqual.com/support/download.html.

Main changes from 1.0a4 are:

* Several minor bug-fixes
* History buttons previous/next (browser-like)
* Attachments on requirements and specifications
* Attachments inheritance on req, spec and tests
* Charset for country_id in table_absence
* Updated User's Guide

XStudio 1.0: Browser-like Previous/Next buttons

2009-10-21T22:08:00.003+02:00

With the introduction of some anchors in different parts of XStudio, the user is often redirected to one specific node of one specific tree. It was then becoming to be able to go back and forth through the history and navigate like within a browser.

Hence, I implemented this feature. This will be available in XStudio 1.0b1.

XStudio 1.0: Inheritance of the attachments

2009-10-21T21:57:00.005+02:00

Starting from XStudio 1.0b1, attachments are inherited through their whole hierarchy. For instance, if you attach a file (i.e. a mockup design) to a requirement, you will be able to see in this requirement's "attachments" tab not only this attachment but ALL the attachments associated to his ancestors (parent folders and category).

Of course, you can directly open or download the attachment from any of the ancestor nodes but you can also move directly to one of these parent by clicking on the anchors:

Website updated

2009-10-21T21:43:00.006+02:00

The website (http://www.xqual.com) has been updated to support all the popular browser:

Firefox 3+
IE7+
Safari
Opera

I also included a "share toolbar" including:

RSS
Blog
Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
MySpace
Digg
Delicious
Reddit
Google Bookmarks
Reddit

Release of XStudio 1.0a4

2009-10-14T22:19:00.001+02:00

The version 1.0a4 of XStudio has been released and is available for download at the usual location: http://www.xqual.com/support/download.html.

Main changes from 1.0a3 are:

* Coverage metrix on campaigns (full and partial)
* Coverage metrix on campaign sessions (full and partial)
* Coverage metrix on category (req + spec + test)
* Coverage metrix on folders (req + spec + test)
* Automatically create testcases if the launcher is requesting it
* Progression/Regression metrix on campaign
* Bug-fix:
- Percentage rounding in coverages
- Dependency graph modality problems
- VisualStudio launcher results parsing finally implemented

I also worked on:
* New website (http://www.xqual.com) supporting perfectly IE7+, Firefox3+, Chrome and Safari
* New open-source section (GPL3) on the website containing all the launchers
* Initiation of teh development of automated functional tests on:
- the XStudio NSIS installer (using the AutoIt launcher)
- the XStudio Java unit testing (using the JUnit4 launcher)

In addition, I developed a bunch of new launchers for XStudio:
* Froglogic Squish for Qt
* Froglogic Squish for the web application
* Microsoft Visual Studio Team System
* Jalian Marathon
* Beanshell
* JUnit v3
* JUnit v4
* PyUnit
* NUnit (.NET)
* TestNG

XStudio 1.0: Automatically create the default testcase

2009-10-07T22:04:00.003+02:00

In some specific cases, the notion of testcase is useless. For instance a JUnit test will match one test class. This test class can run several methods which could be identified to testcases. The problem is that it is impossible to run only one single method within a JUnit class (using the console runner JUnitCore).

However, without testcase, XStudio will not execute anything. So, the user would need to create one fake testcase for each test. Hence, the launcher would ignore the testcase index, would execute the test including all its methods, retrieve the results, traces etc. and store all this in the fake testcase. But creating a default testcase manually for each test is a bit painful and unnecessary from a user point of view.

In these cases, the launcher can now call (i.e. in the initialize() method) the method setDefaultTestcaseMustBeCreated(true). This will automatically create a default testcase at runtime if no testcase exist.

XStudio 1.0: New famous launchers are ready

2009-10-06T23:16:00.004+02:00

Since I'm almost ready with the features of XStudio v1.0, I started working on some famous launchers people will like:
- Beanshell
- Froglogic Squish for Qt
- Froglogic Squish for Web
- JUnit v4
- JUnit v3

All are implemented and just need a little bit more of testing.

An example of integration with JUnit v4:

All the results/messages are detailed enough and include the major information from the JUnit console messages.

In addition, the complete output from JUnit is stored as an attachment to the testcase, so that the user can get the complete log if necessary:

I'll also work on a launcher for SQL and possibly CUnit this week.

XStudio 1.0: New progressions/regressions statistics

2009-10-03T23:05:00.004+02:00

A new "Statistics" tab will be present on any campaign on XStudio 1.0a4.

The information are taken from all the sessions executed belonging to the campaign. All the results are put in a graph so that the evolution (progression or regression) in time is clearly visible. The last session's results are also displayed.The new tab is split in 2 tabbed panes: one that shows the evolution of tests results and another one going deeper at the testcase level.

This feature will be available in XStudio 1.0a4 at the usual location http://www.xqual.com/support/download.html (probably in just a few days).

XStudio 1.0: New coverage metrics

2009-10-01T22:41:00.013+02:00

XStudio 1.0a4 (that was not planned but hey I'm a bit ahead of time so...) will include a new great feature that I've just finished to develop: in addition to all the already existing coverage metrics provided, some new ones will appear in the next version. Coverage from ANY folder in the requirement or specification trees (this allows to refine metrics on one particular node in the tree) and detailed coverage on campaigns and campaign sessions.

Specification tree:
How many specifications under the selected folder are covered by some tests.
Of course, you can get the details of which specifications are covered and which are not.

Requirement tree:
How many requirements under the selected folder are covered by some specifications.
How many requirements under the selected folder are covered by some tests (through specifications).
Of course, you can get the details of which requirements are covered by some specifications and which are not but also which requirements are covered by some tests.

Coverage of a campaign:
Since a test campaign is by definition a group of test, we can now also get the following metrics:
- Specifications fully covered by the campaign
- Specifications partially covered by the campaign
- Specifications not covered by the campaign
- Requirements fully covered by the campaign
- Requirements partially covered by the campaign
- Requirements not covered by the campaign

Coverage of a campaign session:
On the campaigns, all the data data were global (based the complete set of requirements and specifications). We can get some even more interesting data on campaign sessions since the session is associated to a SUT (and an SUT is associated to a list of requirements).

Hence, we can again refine the information and get the following metrics:
- Specifications associated to the SUT fully covered by the campaign
- Specifications associated to the SUT partially covered by the campaign
- Specifications associated to the SUT not covered by the campaign
- Requirements associated to the SUT fully covered by the campaign
- Requirements associated to the SUT partially covered by the campaign
- Requirements associated to the SUT not covered by the campaign

This allows to know precisely if some tests are missing in the campaign, or if some associations between requirements, specifications and tests are missing.

I think those new features are great tools to help analyzing what you're testing and more importantly what you're missing. They will be available in XStudio 1.0a4 at the usual location: http://www.xqual.com/support/download.html.

Release of XStudio 1.0a3

2009-09-27T23:04:00.007+02:00

The version 1.0a3 of XStudio has been released and is available for download at the usual location: http://www.xqual.com/support/download.html.

Main changes from 1.0a2 are:

* Countries management
* Absences management (per user)
* Holidays management (per country)
* Week-ends management (per country)
* Better presentation of the calendars (new colors, legend,
borders etc.)
* Remember scale + expended nodes when moving in time in the calendars
* Full implementation of calendars with absences, holidays,
personalized week-ends (depending on the country)
* Add several new user profiles:
- HR Manager
- Developer
- Test Operator
* Add windows7 and snow leopard in OS list
* Print stack traces each time a "SQL lost error" is thrown
* For sprint velocity, use the most used week-end settings among
all users
* WeekDaySelect formitems using now Standard identification for days
of the week (former schedules to review!)
* Add SUT-Requirement association including:
- Inheritance of requirements (from SUT)
- Inheritance of tests (from SUT)
* Factorization of a LOT of SQL functions (LIST and FIRSTRESULT)
* Add parameter feature.not_implemented_testcase_notification.enabled
* Added a couple of launchers:
- AutomatedQA TestComplete 7
- TCL
* Improved security of CRunner class
* Open-source section on the website including SDK and all sources
* Bug-fix:
- Tree retrieval when one single element belongs to the root node
- Forbid points outside the sprint dates in the velocity charts
- Localization fixing
- Update global hashtables when updating user's country
- Remove useless logs

XStudio 1.0: New configuration parameter

2009-09-20T23:18:00.002+02:00

When you run a campaign session and that the campaign included some testcases marked as not-implemented, they are skipped and a message is popup at the end of the complete execution to remind the user so. It may be annoying in some cases (it blocks further automatic campaign executions until the user presses OK), so I added a new configuration parameter in xstudio.conf and xagent.conf:

feature.not_implemented_testcase_notification.enabled

If you set this parameter to 0, this warning message will never show up.
By default, this parameter is set to 1.

XStudio 1.0: SUT to requirements association

2009-09-20T22:46:00.004+02:00

One of the features lots of people asked me for a while was the ability to associate a SUT with a set of requirements so that the complete flow looks like:

SUT <--> Requirements <--> Specifications <--> Tests <--> Campaign <--> Session

To do so, when creating a SUT, a new Requirements tab allows to select a list of requirements in the requirement tree.

However, creating a new SUT is a task that happens quite often, so re-selecting all the appropriate requirements at each new version would be fastidious. To fix this problem, I implemented a simple way to "import" all requirements associated with another SUT (i.e. the previous version).

Hence, imagine you formerly created a SUT "myProduct v1.0" and associated it with a hundred of requirements. You've run a number of test campaigns successfully on this SUT but now a "myProduct v1.1" is released with a few new features (so new requirements).

The process is quite simple: on the Requirements tab: press the "Preset import settings" button, you will be prompted to select a source SUT, then press the "Preset import" button: all importable requirements from the SUT you selected will be highlighted with a specific flags on the right column and automatically checked by default. However, you can still manually remove or add manual new requirements (i.e. the new requirements of "myProduct v1.1"):

That's it! Of course, all these features are also available while editing a SUT.
This will allow me to add new interesting information in the campaign for a better coverage analysis (I will do this a little bit later).

This new feature will be available in XStudio 1.0a3.

XStudio 1.0: Absences and Holidays management implemented

2009-09-17T13:40:00.012+02:00

I've just finished implementing the absences and holidays management system. Each user is now associated to one location/country (I'm using ISO convention).

Each country can be easily configured: public holidays can be added, edited and deleted. In addition, each country is associated to some week-ends settings. Hence, most of the countries in the world are using Saturday and Sunday for the week-ends but some others (such as Israel, Qatar, Algeria etc.) are using Friday and Saturday and again some others (such as Saudi Arabia) Thursday and Friday.

The default settings are supposed to be correct but it's good to let the administrator of the system customizes it if necessary. These settings are accessible through the Settings menu entry.

Hence, all the calendars are affected by this change as each user may have different week-ends.

Absences are also included in the calendars so you have a complete picture of the projects or the staff workload. Status are then easier to figure out.

Half-yearly scale

Monthly scale

Note that the calendar tree is still expandable as usual. This greatly facilitates the reading i.e. when you want to know the details about why a user is overloaded in a certain time frame.

A legend (including some gradient colors for the workload) has been added to help the reading .
These features will be availabe in XStudio 1.0a3 at the usual location: http://www.xqual.com/support/download.html.

Release of XStudio 1.0a2

2009-09-04T09:15:00.004+02:00

The version 1.0a2 of XStudio has been released and is available for download at the usual location: http://www.xqual.com/support/download.html.

Main changes from 1.0a1 are:

* Report with test ordered like during the execution

* Complete control over manual tests execution through a control bar:

- Previous Test

- Previous Testcase

- Rewind Testcase

- Pause execution

- Resume execution

- Next Testcase

- Next Test

* Timeout setting per test while executing manually (using attributes)

* Bug-fix:

- Sometimes some elements were hidden in the trees when they were the only child of their container

XStudio 1.0: Timing constraints set per test for manual testing

2009-09-02T22:42:00.012+02:00

As you already know, while executing manual testing, the launcher provides instructions to the operator to execute actions (and do verifications). The launcher is also configurable so that some timing restrictions can be added. For instance, it is possible to give 10 minutes maximum for the operator to execute the actions/verifications (i.e. you need to test that a message appears on the screen of the SUT in less than 10 minutes; if the operator doesn't validate that he saw that message within the 10 minutes then the test is automatically set as failed).

The issue is that this configuration was at the launcher level - which means that all the tests had necessarily the same timing constraints. This was a huge drawback and I've just corrected it.

There is no more timing configuration to set for the whole campaign session when creating it. However, there is now a much more flexible way to handle timeout for manual tests: by default all the tests belonging to a category associated to manual or simple_manual launchers have no timeout. If you want to set some specific timeouts to a test you just need to associate to this test one or several of the following attributes (with a value for the timeout):

timeout test description (ms): maximum delay to validate the test description
timeout test prerequisites (ms): maximum delay to validate the test prerequisites
timeout testcases execution (ms): maximum delay to execute any actions or verifications implied by the testcases in this test

When manually executed, each test will be applied with their specific timeout values.

Without timeout

With timeout

Note also, that all these attributes are dynamic. This means that when creating the campaign session, you can overwrite any of these default values (on each test if necessary) to customize one campaign session execution:

This new feature will be available in XStudio 1.0a2 that will be delivered around the 13th of September at this location: http://www.xqual.com/support/download.html.

XStudio 1.0: Capability to Pause/Resume manual test campaigns

2009-08-31T23:41:00.005+02:00

The control bar in the manual and simple_manual launchers has been improved again with a Pause/Resume feature. Hence, at any time when executing manual tests you can now pause and resume the session:

This can be particularly useful when you configured some tests/testcases to be executed with some timeout limits. Indeed, in this case it's now possible to stop the timer (and the progress bar) until you're ready to resume the campaign (after a good night sleep for example).

This feature will be available as part of XStudio 1.0a2 that will be delivered around the 13th of September at this location: http://www.xqual.com/support/download.html.

XStudio 1.0: Complete control on manual tests execution

2009-08-24T23:42:00.004+02:00

I'm now working on a control bar in the manual launchers (standard and simplified) provided along with XStudio:

Practically, this is an additional control bar in the manual launcher's dialog box. The control bar includes so far 5 buttons:

Previous Test
Previous Testcase
Rewind Testcase
Next Testcase
Next Test

At any time during manual test execution, you can use these buttons to "move" into the campaign session. This will be available in XStudio 1.0a2 that will be delivered around the 13th of September at this location: http://www.xqual.com/support/download.html.

XStudio 1.0: Reports matching execution order

2009-08-16T01:41:00.004+02:00

I just finished the development of additional XSLT transforms allowing to generate HTML reports:
- campaign session reports matching the test execution order
- testplan of the tests included in a campaign matching the execution order
- traceability matrix reports for specifications

In addition, the campaign session reports now display only relevant (not empty) categories.

This feature will be included in XStudio v1.0a2.

Release of XStudio 1.0a1

2009-08-12T22:59:00.003+02:00

The version 1.0a1 of XStudio & Xagent is available for download at the usual location: http://www.xqual.com/support/download.html

Main changes from the stable 0.7 release are:
  * Huge performances improvements
  * Custom XSLT
  * Traceability Matrix
  * Closed items filtering
  * User's profiles
  * User's Guide update
  * Executable launcher
  * Bug-fix:
    - Cannot export to a shared folder including dollar sign in its path
    - Could not create a project
    - Could not create a task
    - Could not create SUT
    - Problem with SUT tree
    - NullPointerException when executing a manual test locally in
      web mode
    - Extra spaces in exported XML files
    - Use temporary folder to store export resources in JNLP
     (to be able to filter only the necessary ones)

Encouraging

2009-08-08T01:45:00.005+02:00

Back from vacation I was happily surprised to finally get a first donation for XStudio!
Thanks Tharma for this. It's really encouraging...

Getting back to work now, there's a release at the end of this week-end and I still have to finish implementing user profiles.

XStudio 1.0: Support of custom HTML reports

2009-07-20T00:55:00.017+02:00

The feature allowing the users to develop their own reports is complete.

The idea is pretty simple: default reports are generated using XLST transforms applied to a raw XML document. The user can now simply develop his own XSLT and copy it into the export/xsl folder (either locally if using only standalone installs or on the Apache/Tomcat server to share this report with everybody connecting to this server).

The only constraint is to use a specific naming convention: <type>HTML_<name>.xslt
where:

<type> can be:

"requirement"
"specification"
"task"
"testplan"
"report"
"defect"

<name> can be any name including alphanumeric characters.

When generating a report, the user will be prompted with all XLST names that have been found for the corresponding type (i.e. if you're generating a testplan, the system will look at all the testplanHTML_*.xslt files and will populate the combo box will all the names found).

XQual Forum: 100th user subscribed!

2009-07-09T14:00:00.003+02:00

The XQual Forum has seen his 100th participant Today. And the winner is... "ZOmbie".

Tools list updated

2009-07-08T23:26:00.001+02:00

Again, I updated the test tools list with some new ones. I also added 2 specific sections for Bug-tracking systems.

Tools list updated

2009-07-05T12:22:00.004+02:00

I've updated the test tools list on XQual website.

This is available here: http://www.xqual.com/qa/tools.html and includes software related to:

Test management
Test automation
Unit and functional testing
GUI testing
Load/Stress testing
Performance testing
Manual Testing

XStudio 1.0: Traceability Matrix

2009-07-05T12:18:00.009+02:00

I just finished implementing the Traceability Matrix feature. Of course, XStudio was already implementing some detailed status on coverage allowing to get:

How much one specific requirement is covered by some specifications and some tests
How much one specific specification is covered by some tests

However, what was missing was a global view on all the requirements and specifications in terms of coverage. This is now feasible by just selecting the root node of the requirements (or specifications) tree and selecting the Traceability Matrix tab.
Here are some screenshots of how it looks like...

in the reports:

in XStudio:

This feature is included in XStudio v1.0a0 that has been released tonight.

XStudio 1.0: A new search tab for tests and testcases

2009-06-27T23:48:00.004+02:00

XStudio 1.0 will include a new search feature for tests and testcases. This completes the set of search features already available on tasks, specifications, requirements and defects.

So to clarify a little bit the different search functions available on XStudio:

1) Search by name (textfield/combobox available on the top of each tree): if you know the name of the item you're looking for but you don't don't where it is located or you don't want to manually expand all parents node, that's the right way to go. Just type the beginning of the name of the item, the rest will be auto-completed, you can scroll within the list of suggestions and select the right item. Very fast and effective - if you know what you're looking for.

2) Search by Id (global texfield on the main frame): when you have the unique identifier of the item you're looking for (included in the HTML tesplan, reports etc.) that's the right way to go: just type the ID in the textfield and you'll be redirected directly to the right tab, tree and node.

3) Plain text search: select the parent node from which to search and go to the search tab.

Here are the parent node to select depending on what kind of item you're looking for:

Requirement: Category node
Specifications: Category node
Tasks: Root node
Tests: Root node
Integrated defects: Category node

Different options will be available to precise the search. The options anyway always include a textfield to enter a text to look for. Generally, this text is searched in properties like name, description, prerequisites, steps to reproduce, testplan (any textual field - formatted or not) and display results along with anchors so that you can just click on one item to open it.

XStudio 1.0: Generic executable launcher

2009-06-23T23:59:00.007+02:00

I've just implemented a small launcher that will allow to run executable files (tests).

It takes 3 parameters as a configuration:

the test root path. This must indicate where are located all the executable files.
This is a root path. Each test in XStudio has a "canonical path" that will be appended to
this path. This path MUST not include a ending slash.
if the executable must be launched synchronously (if the tests returns when they are terminated) or asynchronously (when the test returns immediately but keep on running in background). If the synchronous option is checked, then the launcher will run the executable synchronously (waiting infinitely for the executable to return). If the Synchronous option is not checked, then the launcher will run the executable in background and will regularly check the presence of a file "test_completed.txt". A configurable timeout is granted to the executable to complete. If the executable did not create the "test_completed.txt" file within this timeout, then the launcher considers the test has crashed and skip it.
the timeout value in case the tests are asynchronous. This is the maximum time the system will wait for the test to complete.

As usual, the launchers (exe.jar) comes with its configuration file (exe.xml) file. It allows to pre-configure the launcher with some default values. Of course, the user can always overwrite them at run time of the campaign session in XStudio through the GUI..

Requirements:

Each test in XStudio must have his dedicated .exe file. The name of the executable MUST be equal to the name of the test.
The .exe file MAY be able to parse some arguments passed during interpretation. In particular testcaseIndex (optional). This allows to execute different routines depending on the testcase index.

The test is executed by the launcher using this syntax:
<testRootPath>/<testPath>/<testName>.exe /debug /testcaseIndex=<testcaseIndex>

As usual, the source code, the SDK and the script to build this launcher will be provided. This feature will be made public end of June in the version 1.0 pre-alpha here: http://www.xqual.com/support/download.html

Tools section update

2009-06-21T17:12:00.001+02:00

I've added a couple of new software references (commercial) in the Tools section of the website: http://www.xqual.com/qa/tools.html

XStudio 1.0: How to filter closed items

2009-06-21T16:41:00.006+02:00

After a few month of usage, people generally get tens (even hundreds) of sprints, tasks (in the project tree) or defects (in the defect tree). Most of the sprints have been completed and are there only for history/archive purposes. The fact to have them in the tree can impact readability of the tree. The same thing applies for closed defects.

For this reason, some predefined filters has been added to the project and defect trees and are available though toggle buttons on the right hand side of the search bar:

Filtering is immediate and very easy to enable/disable through the toggle buttons.
This feature will be made public end of June in the version 1.0 pre-alpha here: http://www.xqual.com/support/download.html

XStudio 1.0: More details about performances improvements

2009-06-17T22:41:00.007+02:00

I've now a complete implementation of the new tree retrieval method that will be available in XStudio 1.0.

As expected, the performances are now much better especially for BIG databases (environments with thousands of requirements, specifications, projects, tests, defects etc.).

I hope I will be able to deliver a first alpha 0 of XStudio 1.0 end of June.

This feature will be made public end of June in the version 1.0 pre-alpha here: http://www.xqual.com/support/download.html

Release of XStudio 0.7

2009-06-10T19:01:00.004+02:00

The final version 0.7 of XStudio & Xagent is available for download at the usual location: http://www.xqual.com/support/download.html

Only one minor bug has been reported on 0.7b3 and has been fixed (about filtering tests while creating a campaign). The user's guide has also been slightly updated (including results about memory consumption).

I already started working on the version 1.0 and it looks quite promising! Hence, my first tests on optimizing the TREE RETRIEVAL METHOD is showing HUGE progress in terms of performances :) 

At the end it will be visible on:
- time to start the application
- time to refresh the tree after a change has been submitted
- usability over VPN or any slow networks

Even using local Database, time to retrieve/refresh ALL the trees has been reduced by 80% (3.8s to 750ms in my case).

But note that...
- the biggest the trees are (the more branches and leaves they contain, the biggest will be the improvements (in percentage)
- the slower the connection to the database is (i.e. if the database is hosted remotely through a VPN), the biggest will be the improvement (in percentage).

I will do more tests but I presume, improvements could reach more than 95% in some very usual environments.