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+===================================================+
+======= Quality Techniques Newsletter =======+
+======= June 2004 =======+
+===================================================+
QUALITY TECHNIQUES NEWSLETTER (QTN) is E-mailed monthly to
subscribers worldwide to support the Software Research, Inc. (SR),
eValid, and TestWorks user communities and to other interested
parties to provide information of general use to the worldwide
internet and software quality and testing community.
Permission to copy and/or re-distribute is granted, and secondary
circulation is encouraged, provided that the entire QTN
document/file is kept intact and this complete copyright notice
appears in all copies. Information on how to subscribe or
unsubscribe is at the end of this issue. (c) Copyright 2004 by
Software Research, Inc.
========================================================================
Contents of This Issue
o eValid: Latest News and Updates
o Retrospective on Software, by Boris Beizer (Part 1/2)
o Update about Musa's Book
o Six Facts About Web Application Testing You Ought To Know
o Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer
Science (FSTTCS'04)
o Selling Paint: An Allegorical Satire
o International Symposium on Sofwtare Testing and Analysis (ISST
A2004)
o International Semantic Web Conference (ICSWC2003)
o eValid: A Quick Summary
o QTN Article Submittal, Subscription Information
========================================================================
eValid: Latest News and Information
eValid is the premier WebSite Quality Testing Suite.
eValid solutions help organizations maintain
e-Business presence, improve website quality and performance, reduce
down time, prevent customer loss, and control your costs.
eValid's Web Analysis and Testing Suite is comprehensive, yet
scalable and easy to use, and applies to a wide range of web
applications. Built entirely inside an IE-compatible browser,
realistic viewer experience results are 100% guaranteed.
New CookBook Instructions for First-Time Users
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
If you're new to eValid and want to get a good feel for how to use
the technology, we've prepared a set of four step by step
"cookbooks" for the most common kinds of applications:
o Functional Testing: Shows how to record a functional test that
includes validation of selected objects.
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Support/CookBook/ft.cookbook.html
o Site Analysis: Shows how to scan part of a website and
automatically identify slow loading pages.
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Support/CookBook/sa.cookbook.html
o Page Tuning: Explains how to use eValid to find large, slow-
loading components in a page.
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Support/CookBook/pt.cookbook.html
o Load Testing/Server Loading: Shows how to set up and run a
simple, multi-browser server loading test.
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Support/CookBook/lt.cookbook.html
Six Facts About Testing [That You Ought To Know]
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Here are six key facts about web application testing that you ought
to know, Important note: most software vendors probably won't [or
surely don't want to] tell you about these gems!
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Promotion/Blurbs/six.facts.html
New eValid Dashboard Features
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
To increase user convenience we have added direct connections from
eValid's Dashboard to the eValid settings, to the on-line
documentation, and to eValid's cache manager. These new features
save steps and save time! Take a look at the expanded dashboard at:
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.40/GUI/dashboard.html
Interactive Mode Interface
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
We get a lot of questions about how to amplify the power of eValid's
command language with scripting. Our approach to scripting is to
make the full eValid command language available to ANY scripting
environment, e.g. PERL or C/C++ or Java or tcl or VB or ???
The idea is simple: eValid's interactive mode avoids all the
confusion about scripting language syntax and semantics by adapting
INTO the scripting language that you're most familiar with.
Here are descriptions of the interactive mode, along with an example
in C++:
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.40/Interactive/interactive.mode.html
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.40/Interactive/example.C++.html
Supporting interactive mode operation, eValid has several commands
that save versions of the current page. For example, the
SaveFullHTML Command exposes the complete HTML used internally by
eValid to render a page.
German Version of "WebSite Quality Challenge" Available
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
We are pleased to offer a translation of WebSite Quality Challenge
into German: Qualitat von Webprasenzen -- Eine Herausforderung,
translated by our eValid business partner Dr. Jurgen Pitschke, BCS,
Germany. Read the German-language version at:
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Technology/White.Papers/WebSiteQualityChallenge_German.pdf
Product Download Location, Details
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Here is the URL for downloading eValid if you want to start [re-
start] your evaluation:
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Download.40/down.evalid.40.phtml?status=FORM
Contact Us With Your Questions
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
We welcome your questions about eValid and its applications. We
promise a response to every question in one business day if you use
the WebSite request form:
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Information/info.request.html
========================================================================
Retrospective on Software
From the Year 2011
(Part 1 of 2)
Note: This article is taken from a collection of Dr.
Boris Beizer's essays "Software Quality Reflections" and
is reprinted with permission of the author. We plan to
include additional items from this collection in future
months.
Copies of "Software Quality Reflections," "Software
Testing Techniques (2nd Edition)," and "Software System
Testing and Quality Assurance," can be purchased
directly from the author by contacting him at
.
Prediction is extremely difficult. Especially about the
future. (Neils Bohr)
I wrote this piece in 1993 and the title year was 2001" rather than
2011. I disagree with Bohrs pithy aphorism: it isnt what will
happen in the future thats hard to predict, its the timing. The
biggest glitch in my timing was to not take the impact of Y2K into
account. Ive modified some predictions, changed dates, and pushed
the date forward another ten years; but the thrust of the original
remains.
1. Fact Finding in 2011
I'm in a Palo Alto hotel room after a grueling fact finding trip to
the Far East. I don't like government junkets because:
1. The discovered facts are always years out of date and known to
anyone who kept their eyes open for the last three decades.
2. Their real purpose is to provide exposure for incumbent
politicians seeking reelection instead of finding solutions to
problems: fix the blame, not the problem.
3. Government-sponsored tours are a pain: staying in marginal
Western style hotels and flying Western Class instead of Eastern
Class.
4. I'm lucky if I only lose a few thousand dollars on the deal.
But duty calls and you can't turn down arm-twisting by a Deputy
Secretary of Commerce. My colleagues on the other team, the one
sent to Europe, have much the same mission and will undoubtedly come
up with comparable conclusions. What facts were sought on these
infinitely redundant junkets? What happened to the American
software industry?, of course. The official conclusions (not mine),
after much massaging by the politicians, will probably be:
1. We need protectionist legislation to save our software
industry.
2. They (China, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Malaysia,
Russia, Taiwan,..) haven't played fair.
3. We need a crash program to create more programming jobs.
4. We just must regain our technological edge!
5. We need a new emphasis on software quality, etc.
Which is hogwash, because:
1. The software industry is smaller, healthier, but changed.
Software is so internationalized that protectionism is shooting
yourself in the foot.
2. If playing it realistically is unfair, then we've a naive
notion of fairness. Besides, the problem is the same for all
developed countries, Japan and Germany included.
3. We don't need more programming jobs: we have too many
unemployed and under-employed programmers as it is.
4. The time to exploit that edge was twenty years ago.
5. It's too late to discover the importance of software quality.
I'm sitting here, as I said, in my Palo Alto hotel room trying to
compose my report to include in the senator's brief to congress, but
I'm blocked. Not just because it's a waste of time and taxpayer
money, but because the issues must be compressed into a dozen sound
bytes: it's tough to describe the transformation of an industry in a
few sentences.
I suppose that we could blame it on Y2K. Not really. The important
trends had been in place long before Y2K was significant. At first,
Y2K delayed the demise by four years prior to 2000 and then
accelerated it. As early as 1995, then far-seeing, data processing
organizations started rehiring the same COBOL dinosaurs that they
had laid off as redundant and obsolete only a few years before. The
panic really hit hard in 1998 when COBOL programmer salaries went
through the roofdespite the incontrovertible fact that Y2K problems
were just as prevalent in the latest distributed client-server
applications written in C++ by gung-ho teenagers as in that COBOL
junk written by the dirty old men. Consulting houses world-wide
bought COBOL programming futuressome were even traded on the
commodity exchange at the end of the century. Those were the glory
days all right: we hadnt seen such optimism in the software industry
since the mid-70's. And the Department of Commerce projected rosy
pictures of an ever-expanding software industrypredictions that by
now there would be 10,000,000 programmers in the American industry
alone.
So how did Y2K accelerate the job market to collapse? Simple. Once
the chewing-gum and bailing wire patch-up job that let us limp
through the first few months of 2000 was done, corporate America
decided to get out of the data processing business and back into
their core business (making or selling widgets). Mergers and
acquisitions in the finance industry just to consolidate their data
processing led the demise. Then it became easy and efficient to
outsource all processing to adept, flexible, willing, and very
available general and specialized service bureaus. Hell, more than
half of the programmers of the in-house staff were temps anyhow.
But the most important factor in the board rooms was their grim
determination that never again would they allow their corporation to
be held hostage by a bunch of incompetent, long-haired, hippy-freak,
techno-nerds.
Now look out the hotel window to the right, up University Avenue,
past the closed chichi stores to the unemployment center and the
long line of overqualified but obsolete programmers hoping for a
shot at a scarce installation or configuration management jobthey
tell a story, don't they? But not the whole story. Look the other
way, to the left, toward Stanford's Computer Science Building where
fluent Japanese is a prerequisite to graduate courses (Tokyo
University took Stanford over last year when it went financially
belly-up, remember)that's another incomplete story.
2. Computing 2011, The Users' View
2.1. The Total Service
An hour's walk does wonders for writers' block. Back in the room,
turned the computer on and then it hit me. The way to tell you what
happened is to go back three days. I had a layover at Narita, so I
plugged my laptop into the network. There was an email from DAIS
that said that my system needed upgrading and that I could do it
while eating dinner because there was a local DAIS service center
next to a restaurant that I was sure to likeaddress, telephone, and
local map with route enclosed. I agreed and let them make a
reservation. Then DAIS displayed a dinner menu from which I made my
choices. As promised, the service center and restaurant were only a
few doors apart. I dropped the laptop off and went to eat.
Back to DAIS after dinner to retrieve the laptop. They gave me a
new one. It was a few ounces lighter and had an extra hour of
battery life. Both RAM and disc had been upgraded. My old one's
512 meg RAM and twenty-gigabyte disc were cramped. It still had the
CD and floppy slot (I'm old fashioned) besides the flash-card slot.
An hour's exploration that evening confirmed that all applications
had been downloaded and/or reconfigured. The What's New index told
me what had changed: upgraded grammar analyzer; improved writing
anticipator (it works better than ever, but it's still unnerving to
use a program that knows your writing style so well that it finishes
sentences before you start them!); more accuracy for the Japanese,
German, French, etc. translators ; updated world telephone
directory; a list of new books to read if I want to pay the
royalties; improvements to graphics, spreadsheets, communications,
and other applications that will make me more productive; voice
input improvedthey keep urging me to dump the keyboard, but as I
said, Im old fashioned and one hell-of-a-fast typist. And the bill.
The service's cost will go up from the previous $197.50/month to
$206.67/month.
Like most of you, I don't own a computer or buy software. I
subscribe to DAIS, an all-inclusive service that gives me the
hardware and software I need when and where I need it. I don't care
what operating system I run these days. The decrepit old
Pentium/EISA Tower-of-Power is in the corner of my office. I don't
have the heart to throw it away although it is an orphan several
times over because the kids like to play the games when they come
over; but that's about all it can run.
I subscribe to DAIS (the service conglomerate formed from by merger
of Compaq, Apple, HP, and IBM) instead of a bigger multinational
such as SONYATT or FUJISIEM because I'm loyal to the remnants of the
American computer industry with which I grew up. Besides, DAIS
gives me better service stateside and they're cheaper than the
multinationals.
100% personalized services. There's no other user like me and
there's no other configuration like mine. DAIS rents the hardware,
the software, tests everything in sight, does copious backups and
archiving, gathers my usage statistics, tunes everything to match my
quirks for a flat, ever-rising, monthly fee. It sounds expensive
but it isn't because of the many hours I dont waste futzing around
with my computers. Sure its complicated but that's what terabytes,
mainframes, and high-speed modems are for.
2.2. System Architecture and How It Happened
It's easiest to explain the current system architecture by telling
you about the things that no longer concern me: hardware, operating
system, applications, installation, uninstall, upgrades, tuning,
personalizing, and configuration debugging, because:
Hardware: completely commoditized. There might be an INTEL
Inside, but it might also be an AMD or HP something. What's inside
is of no more concern to me than who made the resistors on the
boards or the connectors on the back. The service companies run the
show and get the best deal from the computer builders they can get.
China, India, Indonesia, Malasia, and Mexico dominate hardware
production.
Operating System: Im not sure and I dont really care. Some
kind of UNIX? JAVA+? WIN2000? It doesnt matter to me as long as I
have the same touch-feel and screens I first set-up with WIN95. DAIS
promised me that when I first signed-up and theyve kept that
promise.
HardwareThere was no practical difference between the mid/high
end of the PC market and the low/mid end of the workstation market.
Severe price cutting in the late 90's left the operating system as
the sole significant difference between PCs and workstations.
Software Gouging StoppedUsers revolted against software pricing
that charged $98 for a word processor on a PC but $998 for the same
package on a workstation. Lotus led the price war in early '94. The
other vendors soon fell in line.
WIN ShellCompeting (i.e., not Microsoft) operating systems
vendors offered full WIN compatibility through robust shells running
under their OSs. Users could now have their cake and eat it and the
transition was almost painless. Corporate buyers led the way but
individual users soon followed.
The outcome of the Microsoft anti-trust suit didnt hurt their cause
either.
Really Open (almost) SystemsOpen systems became open in '02.
Microsoft GoofsWho can forget the incredible zigzag and the
self-destruct of NT 6.0 in '02.
IBM Drops OutIBM threw in the towel on OS-3, and that was the
end of operating systems as we know it.
The operating system is back at the bottom of the electronic box and
about as uninteresting to users as the hardware. Don't cry for Bill
Gates and Microsoft, though. You know how Gates inherited H. Ross
Perot's populist mantle and his United We Stand America
organization. His presidential bid went bust in 08, as expected,
but polling 31% of the popular vote as a third party candidate was
no mean feat. Look for a stronger push in '12 and a possible
President Gates in the White House: its inevitable that someone with
a personal worth of 400 billion dollars would eventually turn to
politics for his kicks.
As for Microsoft, it's a software house in name only now. When they
divested their applications business last year (the operating
system, as you know, was long gone by then), all that remained was
thousands of financial types and lawyers. I can't complain about
the stock though. Every month when I see that big dividend deposit
into my account, I raise my wine glass in a toast and say Thanks,
Bill. There's over 400 million PCs out there and Microsoft collects
a royalty from most of them.
+ Applications: where are the application software vendors?
That's more complicated, as I'll review below, but for now, let's
just say that they don't sell software to civilians any more. They
sell through the service companies. Sure you can still specify that
you'd rather spreadsheet with 1-2-3 (or EXCEL or Tokaido) than
anything else, but technically, you'll get a 1-2-3 shell over a
generic spreadsheet.
+ Support and Service: that's the biggest innovation. Automated
installation, deinstallation, downloaded upgrades, effective cross-
product compatibility testing, on-line user profile statistics
gathering. Someplace, in a mainframe buried in Oklahoma, there's a
few gigabyte of my personal data. When my usage changes, or when new
product twists are released that affect what I do, by magic that
software is sent to me and installed without hassle or effort on my
part.
The trend to third-party maintenance and service companies was
already strong in the late 80's. Then in the early 90's IBM and
SONY made a push to provide this total service to big corporate
buyers. Startup companies such as PC-Direct Support Inc. offered
the service to the smaller corporate buyers. From the other end,
both hardware and software vendors started using 900 lines for
service while improving the quality. By the late 90's downloaded
upgrades over the Internet were ubiquitous. Actually, the trend had
been in the computer industry from the start. H. Ross Perot's EDS
was built on providing the same kind of total service for
mainframes. Fast PCs, terabyte file servers, fiber-optics, high-
speed modems, automated testing, and open systems made it possible
to extend total service to individual PC users.
2.3. The Industry Structure
2.3.1. Overview
Now that we've seen the user's view of the industry, we can
understand how it looks from the inside. There are four tiers:
authors, publishers, distribu-tors, and service companies.
+ Authors. Individual authors and authoring groups originate most
software and enhancements. I'll call them all authors in the
sequel. Authors don't write working software. That's done by the
publishers.
+ Publishers. Publishers take prototype software created by
authors and convert it to working software for a variety of
platforms. Publishers market their software almost exclusively
through distributors.
+ Distributors. Distributors assemble software created by the
publishers and configure them into compatible sets aimed at specific
market segments such as: home computing and entertainment, general
office, small retailer, programmer, scientist, etc.
User‑specific tailoring (i.e., tuning) is done by the
distributors. Distributors provide the second line of user support
if it can't be handled by the service company.
+ Service Companies. Service companies provide the direct service
to the user based on configurations obtained from distributors that
best match that user's operational profile. Service companies
handle first-line (usually nontechnical) support.
2.4. Authors
2.4.1. What They Do.
Authors originate most new software or enhancements to existing
software. Authors work in small groups of one to thirty persons.
There are two kinds of authors: general authors and infrastructure
authors. General authors write mostly application software and are
usually freelancers. Infrastruc-ture authors do technical stuff
such as operating systems, algorithms and drivers. Most
infrastructure authors work for publishers, but that's changing as
even this highly technical work is going to small, independent,
innovative authors and authorship groups. Authors may create
anything from a word processing macro to a complete application.
2.4.2. Who They Are
Authors may be application specialists, software engineers,
novelists, poets, teachers, songwriters, or come from any other
discipline that's now entangled in computation. Whatever their
application knowledge, they are experts in their field. Although
they don't write software as such, basic programming and authoring
system skills are mandatory.
Software authors are often part-timers who work for publishers; but
there are the usual, publicly visible, superstars. The big
authoring bucks go to the writers of educational programs and
textbooks used in elementary and high schools. Then come the
superstar novelists, the ghost writers, and finally all the rest of
us. Some have become multimillionaires:
George (Buzz) Tanaka: the (tran/retran)* algorithm that made
reliable automated translation between foreign languages practical.
Anna-Liese Gromenko: SUPERSQUEEZE
Chin, T.C. (TeeCee): fractal-based graphics
Maligoparti Amerisingh: Reflexions From a Gilded Eyeball
The loss of Western software leadership is only apparent. Because
most products are now multilingual, the advantage held by English-
Language software authors vanished, opening the way for widespread
distribution of creative works from all over the world. The Western
myth was that all 650,000 programmers in Western Europe and North
America were authors. That was never true. At best, there were
only 3,000 who qualified as software authors by today's standards:
most of them are doing okay. The fall of linguistic barriers
brought another 12,000 software authors to the field from China,
Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Russia, and Taiwan. The
pool has gotten much bigger, the stakes have risen, and the
standards for world-class authorship keep getting tougher.
The lost leadership in creative software has come about because of a
more realistic reclassification of programmers into programmers and
authors. What has been lost is the Western creativity leadership
myth.
2.4.3. How They Sell Their Work
Most software authors, as book authors before them, work with one
publisher at a time; but authors are notoriously fickle and may
switch publishers. The applications' users identify products with
authors rather than with publishers, which gives the high-profile
authors clout. As expected, the line between software authors and
fiction book authors is blurred, what with programmed books and
multimedia applications.
Authors usually sell works to publishers on a royalty basis. There
are royalties by installations, royalties by activations, royalties
based on receipt and all the other variations that creative rights
lawyers and agents have dreamed-up in the past four centuries.
New works are typically sold to publishers before they are
completed. The author creates an initial prototype. Based on this
prototype, they will, if successful, sign an exclusive contract with
the publisher to create a functionally complete prototype.
Sometimes, especially for infrastructure software, the publisher
may commission the work with a known author.
2.4.4. What They Deliver
Authors deliver a fully functional prototype and an associated test
suite. The prototype must be created in, or converted to, the
authoring/prototype system used by the publisher. Publishers also
have rigorous standards which authors must follow.
Publishers demand the complete behavioral (black-box) test suite
because they've learned that the author's intentions are more fully
expressed in a set of tests than in the prototype. Also, because
the publisher writes the working software, the test suite is more
important than the prototype. The biggest problem publishers have
with new authors is the author's reluctance to supply an adequate
test suite. If an author refuses to create the tests, the contract
may be canceled and the work not published.
2.4.5. Support and Service
Authors aren't expected to support users. They are expected to
cooperate with the publishers' programmers who convert their ideas
into working software. They're expected to answer fan mail and hate
mail, act on wish-list items, go to conferences, do publicity tours,
etc. Interaction with users, service companies, and distributors is
channeled through the publisher.
2.4.6. Tools and Technology Usage
Authors use authoring/prototype systems specific to the kind of work
they produce. For example, a song writer uses a MIDI keyboard, I
use a word processor, a programmer uses an object generator.
Similarly, test suite generators are works-specific. A classical
novel has no test suite, but a text book might have a big one.
Capturelayback is ubiquitous because it is part of every authoring
and prototyping system. Because authors have to deliver only
behavioral tests, they will often create part of their test suites
using a final run-through under capturelayback.
Software authors routinely use automatic and semiautomatic test
generators based on domain testing, syntax testing, state-machine
testing, data-flow testing, and other classical behavioral test
techniques. Adequacy of the test suite is checked by the publisher
by running the suite under several different functional coverage
analyzers. 100% coverage is mandatory for every functional coverage
metric applied.
tO BE CONTINUED
========================================================================
Musa Book Availability Advances
From John Musa: Plans to bring my book "Software Reliability
Engineering" back into print and widely available are proceeding on
schedule. You may recall that it went out= of print unexpectedly
this spring, and I explained what I was doing to make=20= it=20
available again in a previous message. McGraw-Hill agreed in
principle to=20 revert the rights to me, they have been doing the
necessary processing, and=20= I=20 expect formal reversion to take
place in the very near future.
I decided to use the new publishing technology of "Print on Demand."
I selected and am working with AuthorHouse, the largest of the print
on demand publishers. They have been in business 5 years and have
now published more than 20,000 different titles, so they must be
doing something right!
All preparation, copy editing, and page layout is complete and the
book is now in pdf format. Author House has estimated that about two
months of work remains. Thus I expect to have the book available
again this fall.
As I explained before, when the book is available, anyone anywhere
in the world will be able to order ONE or more books directly from
AuthorHouse over the internet (also by phone, fax, or snail mail if
you wish) and have it custom printed (approximately two days) and
shipped direct to you. There are presses in20 US and Europe, so
shipping should also be fast.
(You can also order indirectly through internet booksellers and
retail booksellers if you wish, but I don't see any advantage in
involving a middleman.) What really sold me on this approach was
that the cost of individual custom printing will be no more than the
cost of a traditionally published book. The key to this is the
highly automated technology, which gets rid of all the risks and
costs of keeping an inventory. It also makes it possible to keep
the book available economically as long as even a few people want to
buy it.
Best regards,
John
JOHN D. MUSA Software Reliability Engineering and Testing Courses
http://members.aol.com/JohnDMusa/
========================================================================
Six Facts About Web Application Testing
You Ought To Know
Here are six facts about web application testing you ought to know!
* Technology: It's hard to test web applications with client-
server tools.
So true! Client-server tools have to take the long way around to
test what happens when a browser interacts with a web
application. But, unlike client-server solutions, eValid is
built right inside a full-featured browser -- and that makes
eValid the natural way to exercise and analyze how web
applications behave. There so much a browser can do that other
methods can't.
* Ease of Use: Extensive training on how to use a product for
simple basic things is a waste.
eValid is designed to be easy to use. Most of the time you can
accomplish Useful Work In 30 Minutes! It's really true; eValid
is that easy. Give it a try and see for yourself.
* Scripting: It's crazy to develop scripts by hand using a
proprietary scripting language.
eValid's scripts are as simple as possible -- to avoid the
problems of having to differ from know, popular scripting
environments. With eValid you can record, then edit and modify
to meet special needs, with tremendous ease.
If you want to script, no problem! You simply embed eValid power
and flexibility inside any scripting language you want! There is
a direct Interactive Mode interface to eValid that's available
at the system level to any scripting environment you want.
* Multi-Use Scripts: Developing and maintaining different scripts
for functional tests, monitoring tests, and load tests is a
crock.
Any evalid script can be used to monitor, to simulate user load,
or test and validate web application functionality. Here's just
one Simple Script Example of what eValid playback scripts look
like.
* Price/Performance: The solution you choose for testing web
applications shouldn't bust your budget.
eValid's pricing model is flexible, floating, frugal, and
friendly. Check Out Pricing Here!
* Availability: You ought to be able to download and try the
technology out without a lot of hassle.
Our website robot will send you an evaluation key in seconds --
no hassle. Get a Free Evaluation Copy right away.
Oh, and yes, in case you hadn't guessed, you're right: these are
the facts the other guys surely DON'T want you to know!
========================================================================
24th conference on
FOUNDATIONS OF SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY
AND THEORETICAL COMPUTER SCIENCE
(FSTTCS '04)
http://www.fsttcs.org
December 16--18, 2004,
The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, India
The Indian Association for Research in Computing Science, IARCS,
announces the 24th Annual FSTTCS Conference in Chennai.
The FSTTCS conference is a forum for presenting original results in
foundational aspects of Computer Science and Software Technology.
The conference proceedings have been published by Springer-Verlag as
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS).
This year's FSTTCS invited speakers are Javier Esparza, Piotr Indyk,
Pavel Pevzner, John C. Reynolds and Denis Th'erien.
In addition to invited talks and contributed papers, the FSTTCS 2004
programme will have two pre-conference workshops during 13-15
December.
A: Algorithms for dynamic data: coordinated by
S. Muthukrishnan and Pankaj Agarwal.
B: Logic for dynamic data: coordinated by
Uday Reddy.
Authors are invited to submit papers presenting original and
unpublished research in any area of Theoretical Computer Science or
Foundational aspects of Software Technology. Representative areas
include, but are not limited to:
Automata, Languages and Computability
Automated Reasoning, Rewrite Systems, and Applications
Combinatorial Optimization
Computational Biology
Computational Complexity
Computational Geometry
Concurrency Theory
Cryptography and Security Protocols
Database Theory and Information Retrieval
Data Structures
Graph and Network Algorithms
Logic, Proof Theory, Model Theory and Applications
Logics of Programs and Temporal Logics
New Models of Computation
Parallel and Distributed Computing
Programming Language Design and Semantics
Randomized and Approximation Algorithms
Software Specification and Verification
Timed and Hybrid Systems
Type Systems
========================================================================
If Airlines Sold Paint
Customer: Hi. How much is your paint?
Clerk: Our lowest price is $12 a gallon, and we have 60 different
prices, up to $200 a gallon.
Customer: What is the difference in the paint?
Clerk: It's all the same paint.
Customer: Then I would like some of the $12 paint. And I want to
paint tomorrow.
Clerk: Sir, the paint for tomorrow is $200.
Customer: How do I get the $12 paint?
Clerk: You buy the paint now, but agree not to use the paint for
three weeks. And you must paint over a Saturday night.
Customer: You have got to be kidding!
Clerk: Oh, the price just went up to $16.
Customer: The price went up as we were talking?
Clerk: Yes, sir. We change the prices and the rules hundreds of
times a day. So I suggest you purchase your paint as soon as
possible. How many gallons do you want?
Customer: Five gallons. Make that six, so I'll have enough.
Clerk: Well, sir, if you buy paint and don't use it, there are
penalties and possible confiscation of paint you already have.
Customer: Forget it! I'll buy what I need somewhere else.
Clerk: I don't think so, sir. You can buy paint for your bathroom
and your bedrooms from someone else, but you can only buy paint for
the connecting hall from us. That'll be $300 a gallon.
Customer: Your insane!
Clerk: Thank you for painting with us, sir.
========================================================================
The International Symposium on Software Testing
and Analysis: ISSTA 2004
Omni Parker House Hotel
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
July 11-14, 2004
ISSTA 2004 registration is now open, and the advance program is
available. Please visit the ISSTA 2004 web site:
http://eecs.oregonstate.edu/issta2004/
George Avrunin , General Chair
Gregg Rothermel , Program Chair
========================================================================
3rd International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2004)
Sunday, November 7 -- Thursday, November 11, 2004
Hiroshima Prince Hotel, Hiroshima, Japan
http://iswc2004.semanticweb.org/
The vision of the Semantic Web is to make the contents of
the Web unambiguously computer interpretable, enabling automation
of a diversity of tasks currently performed by human beings. The
goal of providing semantics and automated reasoning capabilities
for the Web draws upon research in a broad range of areas including
Artificial Intelligence, Databases, Software Engineering,
Distributed Computing and Information Systems. Contributions to
date have included languages for semantic annotation of Web
documents, automated reasoning capabilities for Web languages,
ontologies, query and view languages, semantic translation of Web
contents, semantic integration middleware, technologies and
principles for building multi-agent and Grid systems, semantic
interoperation of programs and devices, technologies and principles
for describing, searching and composing Web Services, and more.
The 3rd International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2004) follows
on the success of previous conferences and workshops in
Sanibel Island, USA in 2003 (http://iswc2003.semanticweb.org),
Sardinia, Italy in 2002 (http://iswc2002.semanticweb.org), and
Stanford, USA in 2001 (http://www.semanticweb.org/SWWS/).
The conference comprises a research track, an industrial track and a
poster track, as well as exhibitions, demos and other events.
Deadlines for submissions of research and indutrial track papers has
already passed.
The organizing committee now solicits submission for the ISWC2004
poster track. Details of the solicitation can be found at:
http://iswc2004.semanticweb.org/CF/posters.php
========================================================================
eValid: A Quick Summary
http://www.e-valid.com
eValid technology incorporates virtually every quality and testing
functionality in a full-featured browser. Here is a summary of the
main eValid benefits and advantages.
o InBrowser(tm) Technology. All the test functions are built into
the eValid browser. eValid offers total accuracy and natural
access to "all things web." If you can browse it, you can test
it. And, eValid's unique capabilities are used by a growing
number of firms as the basis for their active services
monitoring offerings.
o Mapping and Site Analysis. The built-in WebSite spider travels
through your website and applies a variety of checks and filters
to every accessible page. All done entirely from the users'
perspective -- from a browser -- just as your users will see
your website.
o Functional Testing, Regression Testing. Easy to use GUI based
record and playback with full spectrum of validation functions.
The eV.Manager component provides complete, natural test suite
management.
o LoadTest Server Loading. Multiple eValid's play back multiple
independent user sessions -- unparalleled accuracy and
efficiency. Plus: No Virtual Users! Single and multiple
machine usages with consolidated reporting.
o Performance Tuning Services. Outsourcing your server loading
activity can surely save your budget and might even save your
neck! Realistic scenarios, applied from multiple driver
machines, impose totally realistic -- no virtual users! -- loads
on your server.
o Web Services Testing/Validation. eValid tests of web services
start begin by analyzing the WSDL file and creating a custom
HTML testbed page for the candidate service. Special data
generation and analysis commands thoroughly test the web service
and automatically identify a range of failures.
o Desktop, Enterprise Products. eValid test and analysis engines
are delivered at moderate costs for desktop use, and at very
competitive prices for use throughout your enterprise.
o HealthCheck Subscription. For websites up to 1000 pages, eValid
HealthCheck services provide basic detailed analyses of smaller
websites in a very economical, very efficient way.
o eValidation Managed Service. Being introduced soon. the
eValidation Managed WebSite Quality Service offers comprehensive
user-oriented detailed quality analysis for any size website,
including those with 10,000 or more pages.
Resellers, Consultants, Contractors, OEMers Take Note
We have an active program for product and service resellers. We'd
like to hear from you if you are interested in joining the growing
eValid "quality website" delivery team. We also provide OEM
solutions for internal and/or external monitoring, custom-faced
testing browsers, and a range of other possibilities. Let us hear
from you!
========================================================================
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Software Research, Inc. All other systems are either trademarks or
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