XStudio 1.0: New configuration parameter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

Tools list updated

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

Tools list updated

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

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.