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+===================================================+
+======= Quality Techniques Newsletter =======+
+======= March 2005 =======+
+===================================================+
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 International Symposium on Trustworthy Global Systems
o eValid: Latest News and Updates
o Web Information Systems Modeling (WISM 2005)
o Special Issue on Software Reliability
o International Workshop on Formal Aspects of Security & Trust
(FAST2005)
o Special Issue of IEEE Software on Software Architecture
o eValid: V5 New Feature Summary
o 17th IFIP International Conference on Testing of Communicating
Systems
o QTN Article Submittal, Subscription Information
========================================================================
TGC: International Symposium on Trustworthy Global Computing
Edinburgh, UK, April 7-9, 2005
http://www.cs.unibo.it/~sangio/TGC05/
TGC 05 is co-located with ETAPS 2005
(http://www.etaps05.inf.ed.ac.uk/).
We recall that the initiative stems from the IFIP Working Group 2.2.
The symposium also takes place in conjunction with the final event
of the first IST/FET proactive initiative of the European Community
on GLOBAL COMPUTING. Half of the presentations are invited talks,
which will be an occasion to show what the initiative has achieved,
and to see what is being done related to this theme outside the
initiative.
The proceedings of the symposium will be published by Springer
Verlag.
========================================================================
eValid: Latest News, New Featurs, Updates
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
eValid is the premier WebSite Quality Testing & Analysis Suite.
eValid solutions help organizations maintain e-Business presence,
improve WebSite quality and performance, reduce down time, prevent
customer loss, and control 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 full-featured
browser, 100% realistic user experience results are guaranteed.
New LoadTest Scenario Editor Available
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The latest revisions of eValid V5 include a new feature that
simplifies composition and management of a LoadTest scenario. This
new feature includes these key capabilities:
* Ability to create a server loading scenario that focuses
attention on how users and user types are allocated.
* Ability edit and re-edit existing or new loadtest scenarios.
* Capability to automatically generate the underlying *evl page.
Complete details on the scenario editor can be found at:
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Loading/scenario.edit.html
Other New Features Available
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
* Improved processing for "onkeydown" event handling.
* Addition of OnWarningGoScript and WindowPos to the extrinsic
command insertion pulldown available from the Script Dialog.
* Expansion of the currently available set of Reserved Variables
that allow instantiating important fixed local values into an
eValid test script at playback time.
* A new exit watchdog function to make sure eValid closes down
even if the script playback fails in a way that eValid can't
close in the normal mode.
New Log Filtering Option Support Monitoring
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^i^^^^
The latest builds of the eValid website test engine include two
capabilities that will be of interest to users who are using eValid
in monitoring mode. There are two changes now available:
* Selectable options via a new Message Log Filter that will let
you select which messages are put in the Message Log. For
details see:
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Settings/project.log.filters.html
* A capability to create a Custom Log as a subset of the Event
Log, based on a set of string matches that are user specified.
For details see:
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Settings/project.log.filters.html
HTTP Error Reporting
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A new capability for monitoring HTTP errors has been added to the
eValid playback engine. Users can select to have HTTP errors
reported as WARNINGs or ERRORs. In addition, detailed timing logs
generated by eValid now include the specific byte size and download
time of each page component separately. For complete details see:
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Settings/project.log.filters.html
Product Download Location, Details
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Here is the URL for downloading eValid if you want to start [or re-
start] your evaluation:
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Download.5/down.evalid.5.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
========================================================================
International Workshop on
Web Information Systems Modeling (WISM 2005)
(Held in conjunction with ICWE 2005)
July 24, 2005
Sydney, Australia
URL: http://wwwis.win.tue.nl/~flaviusf/wism2005
Theme of the Workshop
Web Information Systems (WIS) use the Web paradigm (and
technologies) to retrieve information from data sources and deliver
it to the users. Due to their complex requirements the design of
WIS is not a trivial task. Design methodologies provide guidelines
for the creation of WIS so that the complexity of this process
becomes manageable. Based on the separation-of-concerns principle
some of these methodologies propose models to specify different
aspects of WIS design like data integration, navigation structure,
user interface, user interaction, presentation personalization, etc.
Model-driven WIS design methodologies have been recently influenced
by emerging technologies like the Semantic Web, (Semantic) Web
Services, and (Semantic) Web Rule Languages, which foster
application interoperability. Semantic Web languages (like RDF(S),
OWL) facilitate the description of WIS models. In the past WIS have
been modeled as monolithic applications. Today we see a tendency of
building WIS by composing (Semantic) Web Services that fulfill a
certain WIS functionality. The business rules that govern WIS
business logic can be naturally expressed using (Semantic) Web Rule
Languages. Realizing the benefits that Semantic Web technologies
offer, many traditional WIS design methodologies as well as newly
proposed WIS design methodologies do use Semantic Web technologies
for modeling WIS.
Goal of the Workshop
The aim of the workshop is to provide a platform for bringing
together researchers, practitioners, designers, and users of WIS to
enable a fruitful exchange of ideas in the state-of-the-art of WIS
modeling.
Topics of Interest
The workshop topics include but are not limited to:
* WIS Architectures
* Semistructured Data in WIS
* Methodologies for WIS Design
* Semantic Web Information Systems
* Data Models in WIS
* Web Metadata in WIS
* Query Languages in WIS
* Integration of WIS
* Ontologies in WIS
* Optimization Techniques for WIS
* Business rules in WIS
Organizing Committee & Workshop Co-chairs
Flavius Frasincar (flaviusf@win.tue.nl)
Geert-Jan Houben (houben@win.tue.nl)
Richard Vdovjak (richardv@win.tue.nl)
Information Systems Group Department of Computer Science Eindhoven
University of Technology PO Box 513 NL-5600 MB Eindhoven The
Netherlands
Tel: +31402472733 Fax: +31402463992 Email: wism2005@win.tue.nl
========================================================================
Special Issue on Software Reliability
http://www.softwaretechnews.com.
The SRE special issue of the Department of Defense's software
magazine "Software Tech News" is out. It is particularly oriented
to what SRE is and how SRE is used in practice. I am the guest
editor and wrote an overview piece on what SRE is. There were 4
other articles, each on a different aspect of applying SRE. Other
authors include Bill Everett, Jim Widmaier, Brendan Murphy, Mario
Garzia, and Norm Schneidewind.
Topics include SRE for mass market products at Microsoft,
operational-profile-driven test automation at a leading US financial
exchange, SRE application to the ultrareliable Space Shuttle, and
security applications of SRE.The magazine artist created a great
cover.=20 There are both print and online versions. The magazine
circulates extensively throughout the government and government
contractors.
========================================================================
3rd International Workshop on
Formal Aspects in Security & Trust (FAST2005)
Newcastle, UK, 18-19 July 2005.
FAST 2005 is affiliated with 13th Formal Methods Symposium
(FM05: http://www.csr.ncl.ac.uk/fm05/)
and under the auspices of IFIP WG 1.7
"Theoretical Foundations of Security Analysis and Design"
www.iit.cnr.it/FAST2005
Overview
The third international Workshop on Formal Aspects in Security and
Trust (FAST2005) aims at continuing the successful efforts of the
first two FAST workshops for fostering the cooperation among
researchers in the areas of security and trust. The new challenges
offered by the so-called ambient intelligence space as a future
paradigm in the information society demand for a coherent framework
of concepts, tools and methodologies to enable user's trust and
confidence on the underlying computing infrastructure. These need to
address issues relating to both guaranteeing security of the
infrastructure and the perception of the infrastructure being
secure. In addition, user confidence on what is happening must be
enhanced by developing trust models effective but also easily
comprehensible and manageable by users.
The complexity and scale of deployment of emerging ICT systems based
on web service and grid computing concepts also necessitates the
investigation
of new, scalable and more flexible foundational models of enforcing
pervasive security across organizational borders and in situations
where there is high uncertainty
about the identity and trustworthiness of the participating
networked entities
(including users, services and resources). The increasing need of
building activities
sharing different resources managed with different policies demands
for new and business enabling models of trust between members of
virtual communities including virtual organizations that span across
the boundaries of physical enterprises and loosely structured
communities of individuals.
Suggested Topics
Formal models for security, trust and reputation
Security protocol design and analysis
Formal methods for secure software architectures
Logics for security and trust
Trust-based reasoning
Distributed Trust Management Systems
Digital Assets Protection
Data protection
Privacy and ID management issues
Information flow analysis
Language-based security
Security and Trust aspects in ubiquitous computing
Validation/Analysis tools
Web/Grid Services Security/Trust/Privacy
Security and Risk Assessment
Case studies
========================================================================
Special Issue of IEEE Software on Software Architecture:
State of Practice and Future Directions for Software Architecture
March 2006
In celebration of ten years of conferences and workshops devoted to
the topic of software architecture and the tenth anniversary of the
first IEEE Software Special Issue on Software Architecture, this
special issue of IEEE Software will capture innovative methods and
techniques emerging from research to support the practice of
software architecture and new insights from leading practitioners
suggesting avenues for research likely to significantly improve the
state of practice in the architecting of software intensive systems.
Deadline for submissions is 1 September 2005. Please see the
March/April 2006 issue announcement in the IEEE Software Editorial
Calendar ( http://www.computer.org/software/edcal.htm ) for more
information
Guest Editors:
Judith A. Stafford, Tufts University, USA
jas@cs.tufts.edu
Henk Obbink, Philips Research Laboratory, the Netherlands
Henk.Obbink@philips.com
========================================================================
eValid V5 New Feature Summary
Summary: eValid Version 5 (V5) includes many changes
and additions relative to the prior eValid release. In
V5 the product suite has been expanded to include a
variety of new commands, new features for access and
processing of the current page, bidirectional interfaces
to JavaScript, additional metrics, and a range of other
analytic support features. Here are recent additions to
eValid V5 along with description of important new
features in V5 compared with V4.
Record/Play Features
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The basic architecture of eValid, nearly automatic recording
amplified by a rich collection of extrinsic (edit only) commands.
Processing of parent-child relationships, modal dialogs, and other
kinds of user interaction are compact and efficient. The
InBrowser(tm) approach continues to lead the technology for website
testing because of the natural advantage eValid has as an actual
browser. Enhancements and additions include:
o PageMap Display (Recording Advisor). The powerful PageMap
feature shows what's where an helps in setting up advanced test
scripts. It shows the structure of the current page or frame or
iframe and identifies elements for reference or script editing
convenience. Two way feedback to/form the page and the pagemap.
Recording advisor signals type of recording mode to use.
o Revised Dashboard. The eValid dashboard now has additional
displays, better control, and more details.
o Mouse-Event Recording. There is now complete support for all
JavaScript mouse events. This support includes a number of new
commands and options. It is now possible to record excursion
actions with mouseover events with complete fidelity. Complete
iframes Support. The new release includes complete support for
iframes and also includes a new frame naming and/or numbering
system.
o Data Synthesis Feature. Operating from a user-supplied file of
$NAME=value pairs, eValid now can rerun a single script multiple
times with different value substitutions in each run.
o JavaScript Interface. A built-in 2-direction interface -- to
and from the eValid script file to the internal JavaScript
interpreter -- offers a powerful new option to give commands to
the JavaScript interpreter from a playback script and to issue
commands from within the eValid browser via a special JavaScript
method.
o Interactive Mode Enhancements. This eValid release includes new
C/C++ and Java interface versions, and provides exposure of the
current page, frame, iframe source files for secondary analysis
through and from the DOM (Document Object Model).
o New Data Saving Commands. These commands allow a user to save
the current contents of the original HTML page, the complete
HTML page, or the visible text of the page, to a local file for
detailed processing.
o Other New Script Commands. A variety of new editable playback
commands to permit manipulation of browser behavior during
playback, control of cursor and screen, manipulation of files,
and setting playback-time parameters.
LoadTest Features
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The architecture of eValid's server loading capability uses multiple
coordinated playbacks of scripts from multiple instances of eValid.
This is a superior solution in terms of accuracy and general
flexibility. Enhancements and additions include: Test
Synchronization. There are several new LoadTest methods for
synchronizing tests among multiple machine playbacks. These methods
include the WaitMod... commands.
o Report Consolidation. There are new procedures for integrating
Load Test reports from multiple machines into a single,
consolidated multi-machine report.
o Browser Re-Spawn Capability. In long eValid LoadTest runs that
involve long playbacks the footprint of each eValid instance can
grow substantially. There is now an option to automatically
re-spawn [restart] eValid after a specified number of playbacks.
Using this option has the effect of minimizing the total RAM
requirements for a given total number of simulated users.
o New Playback Delay Commands. There is a new Delay msec command
that holds the playback in a frozen state for a specified time.
The wait time multiplier does not affect the Delay command.
Site Analysis
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The built-in site analysis engine (the eValid "spider") is the basis
for powerful methods of detailed quality assurance of websites.
Enhancements and additions include: Enhanced 3D-SiteMap. Changes
and extensions to the 3D-SiteMap include more display choices,
more-flexible choice of displays, more powerful access to page
details.
o Simplified Reporting. New site analysis results menus permit
choosing site analysis reports easily, quickly.
o Simplified Report Format. The formats for site analysis reports
have been improved through use of a special structure that lets
the site analysis reports be fully expandable and contractable.
o Report Selection Face Lift. Here is the newly formatted Multi
Report Selection Page that makes it easy to see all of the
reports after they are done.
o Complete Scan Data Table. This new report tracks a complete
scan. The complete scan data table is available in HTML and in
spreadsheet or SQL-ready CSV format.
Monitoring.
New support for eValid in monitoring mode includes these additions
and improvements: Enhanced Modal/Popup Control. Recording and
playback of modal dialogs and popups has been enhanced, and there
are new methods in place that can be used to suppress unwanted
popups during playback.
o Expanded Command Line Options. New command line (batch mode)
switches have been added to provide batch mode control of log
files, preferences, profiles, and other important options.
o New Error Codes. New error codes have been added to eValid and
to eV.Manager to simplify batch mode operation.
o New Timer Controls. New timer controls including Pause and
Resume allow more accurate timing of events. Also, optional
messages are now allowd on the ResetTimer and Elapsed Time
commands.
o Improved Standard Test Report (STR). The information in the
standard test report has been revised and reordered for greater
convenience. There is a new batch-mode only option to record
STR records in CSV format for direct use by SQL.
o Script Validity Checking. New commands have been added to
permit a script to confirm version number and operational dates
(date ranges). These commands help prevent scripts that are out
of date from being applied by mistake.
Additional Changes
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Major rework and reorganization of the ~300-page on-line User Manual
has improved access and readability.
o Simplified Version Numbering. Beginning with V5 eValid build
numbers will be used to show the current revision number. Build
sequence numbers will continue from V4 for which the final
released build is #115.
o New QuickStart Manual. The quickstart manual -- the material
intended for first time eValid users -- has been revised and
simplified.
o New Quick Step Solution Descriptions. There are now several
"quick step" solution descriptions for some of the most-common
testing situations. These descriptions help user to learn
eValid operation in an orderly and didactically efficient way.
o Script Catalog Introduced. Sample scripts, including the
training material that is implemented as AUTOPLAY scripts, are
now available in a script catalog.
o Completely Revised Settings Descriptions. The material
describing all of the eValid settings and preferences has been
completely revised.
o Worked Examples. There are many revised and simplified,
completely worked examples of eValid usages.
o Screenshots. All images and screenshots in the documentation
and other material have been redone in a uniform modern style.
Licensing and Other Matters
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Other changes to eVlaid include:
o Product Licensing Changes of several kinds have been made to the
licensing structure available with eValid.
o Regular Product Licenses. Prices for basic licenses have been
adjusted to reflect certain product changes. Some new special-
price feature bundles are available.
o Enterprise Floating Licenses. HostName based multiple-user
enterprise licenses (EPRISEnn) are now available.
o "Pay Per Play" Licensing. A new "pay-per-play" commercial
pricing option is now available for limited-capacity record/play
applications or for commercial monitoring applications.
o AUTOPLAY Script Creation. This option provides an AUTOPLAY
version of a script for a moderate fee based on script length.
eValid AUTOPLAY scripts play back on any eValid browser anywhere
and at any time without further licensing required.
o Required OS/Browser Alert V5 of eValid relies on certain
properties of the IE DLLs that are only available in IE Ver.
5.50 or IE Ver. 6.0+. Similarly, certain features of the
technology require use of Windows operating system features that
are only present in Windows NT 4.0 SP6a, Windows 2000/SP4, or
Windows XP. At launch eValid provides an advisory notice in
case the minimum required operating capabilities are not
present.
o Revised Pricing. To simplify licensing and provide the greatest
flexibility in selecting eValid features, we have made revisions
to the V5 Suggested Retail Price List. V5 is available to
customers with a current maintenance subscription.
o Supported Platforms. eValid V5 is build on .NET 2003 (or later)
and supports .NET operation. eValid V5 is aimed for use on
Windows NT/2000/XP platforms. For NT at least SP6 is required.
eValid does not formally support Windows 95, 98 or ME. In some
cases scripts that work perfectly well on the supported
platforms may have problems if you are running Windows 98 or ME
(even when including the latest SP's) and will very likely have
severe problems or complete failure, if you are running Windows
95.
o Required Software. Even though eValid is a free-standing
browser, its operation is based on and is standardized to
interoperate correctly with a co-installed Internet Explorer.
We highly recommend you have IE 5.50, IE 6.0 or later on your
machine (Download Internet Explorer).
Complete Information:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Get complete information about eValid using this simple form:
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Information/question.request.html
========================================================================
The 17th IFIP International Conference on Testing of Communicating Systems
"Meeting Software Testing"
Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
May 30th -- June 2d, 2005
http://testcom2005.encs.concordia.ca/
SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES
TestCom is a series of international working conferences on testing
communicating systems, including communication protocols, services,
distributed platforms, middlware , etc. Application domains include,
but are not limited to, the automobile industry, avionics, banking,
e-commerce, health, military, and telecommunications systems.
Communicating systems testing and general-purpose software testing
research streams have evolved in parallel over the last two decades.
Different methods have been proposed taking into account the
specificities of respective domains. The time has come to seek for
cross- fertilization between these two streams of research. On the
other hand, communicating systems have evolved from traditional
communication protocols to more advanced architectures, and new
paradigms and architectures such as, Applications Programming
Interfaces (APIs), Web services, Ad-Hoc networks, etc. TestCom will
provide a forum for researchers, vendors and users to review,
discuss and learn about new approaches, concepts and experiences in
the field of testing of communicating systems, reactive systems and
general-purpose software.
Contacts
Rachida Dssouli (dssouli@ciise.concordia.ca)
Ferhat Khendek (khendek@ece.concordia.ca)
========================================================================
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TRADEMARKS: eValid, HealthCheck, eValidation, InBrowser TestWorks,
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eValid, and TestWorks logo are trademarks or registered trademarks
of Software Research, Inc. All other systems are either trademarks
or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
========================================================================
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