Release of XStudio 1.6sp2

In case you missed it, XStudio 1.6sp2 has been released on http://www.xqual.com

Change log:

   * New certificate (valid until 2015)
   * Read-only fields more readable
   * Bug-fixes:
     - Merge rules updated (not executed status never taken in consideration)
     - Couldn't execute XAgent with an Oracle database (Exception while
       retrieving the schedule candidates)
     - XAgent don't execute the tests!  
     - Exception possibly thrown if requirements retrieved from JIRA while:
       . generating some specifications from requirements
       . generating some tests from requirements (if specs are disabled)
       . selecting requirements associated with a specification
       . selecting requirements associated with a test (if specs are disabled)
     - Scheduling of sessions not working with Oracle DB
     - xls2xml_reqs_specs_tests.xls does not support UTF-8 characters

Release of XStudio 1.6a6

This has been released yesterday.

It includes many bug fixes as well as the major new feature that add to your SUT and campaign tree a "Quality" column indicating an index of quality of the SUT.

Details of the 1.6a6 add'ins:

   * Quality metrics on the SUT tree
   * Quality metrics on the campaign tree
   * New unified colors for progress bars
   * New areas selector on the left-hand side
   * Agent not responding timeout set to 30 seconds
   * Bug-fixes:
     - Incorrect UI indicators when a session is queued too long on
       an agent
     - Session not starting when queued more than 15 minutes on a remote
       agent busy with some other sessions
     - Refresh the progress at the end of a session execution
     - Too many stats recorded: XStudio frozen when selecting the integrated
       bug-tracking root node
     - Wrong color returned for the graph in the iPhone/iPad app.
     - Incorrect statistics reported in email notifications when re-executing
       a manual session
     - Exception while selecting some folder in the Campaign's content tab in
       the upper test tree
     - Main tree refresh issues (ordering) if defect tree is not in the user
       profile
     - Exception and inconsistent behaviour when modifying sprints and backlogs
       (due to velocity chart refresh)
     - Incorrect Bamboo report generated in case of test failure with messages
       (typo in the CDATA opening tag)
     - No more timeout on the sessions that have been queued for a long time.
       The 30s timeout for "not responding agents" now applies only starting
       from the point where the session has really been started by (at least)
       one agent.
     - Wrong background in the campaign tree in some cells
     - Force the stop even when a session did not really started (in ARMED
       state)
     - setCampaignSessionAgentStatus() called only the first time
     - Error while trying t get the ascending/descending icons
     - "generate spec" vs "generate test" button depending on if the
       specifications are enabled in the PLC
     - Coverage label different in the form depending on if the specifications
       are enabled in the PLC
     - Generate specifications does not update coverage on the requirement if
       necessary
     - Generate tests does not update coverage on the requirement if necessary
     - Same width on progress bars in the same tree
     - Wrong new SQL query to retrieve latest results (for quality)

Enjoy!

XStudio 1.6: New outstanding quality metrics!

When it's about test management, you're looking for some simple ways to know the "quality" of the system under test. It's often something impossible to obtain easily.

You can get it without a single click with XStudio Business or XStudio Enterprise 1.6a6.

The new indicators appear first on the SUT tree so that you have for each SUT its quality. The quality is computed from:

- its functional coverage percentage

- the latest results of each meaningful test cases (test cases covering the SUT):

Mixed with the recently added Coverage column, this is just amazingly powerful. You can also get the details of the meaningful test cases results on the next column on the right.

You will also get the same indicators on the campaign tree. In this case for each session, the quality is computed from the test case results obtained (only test cases functionally covering the SUT are retained) vs the total number of test cases covering the SUT (associated with the session):

Simple isn't it?

XStudio 1.6: New progress metrics

One of the most important question you need to figure out when you're a test manager is "when my test campaigns execution will be completed".

You can get the answer to this question without a single click starting with XStudio 1.6a5.

There are 2 different types of progress metric you can get:

• Progress in terms of test cases executed versus test cases left
• Progress in terms of timing: how much time has already been spent but more importantly how much time will be necessar to complete the execution. When you create a test in XStudio you will be asked to give an estimated time for execution. But each time this test is executed, XStudio measures the effective time spent and correct the original estimation. The time necessary to execute a test is calculated from the ten last execution and allows estimating the time necessary to complete the session execution.

The metrics are available directly from the general campaign tree.

When you select "Test cases executed" in the selector at the top of the tree you 'll get the progress in terms of test cases executed:

If you select "Estimated time" in the selector at the top of the tree you 'll get the progress in terms of time spent vs time still needed to complte the session:

The even better news is that If you organize your campaigns in folders that represent something (a functional area, a complete release, a package etc.), the system will consolidate the progress and recursively propagate the metric to parent folders.

This way you know how much time is necessary to finish all the sessions included within a folder for instance.

This feature is available in XStudio Professional, XStudio Business and XStudio Enterprise.

 

Release of XStudio 1.5sp4

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!

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

... 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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: