Speaking in Bangalore about WAAT and Agile Testing

As mentioned in my earlier post, I spoke last week in UNICOM's Next Generation Testing Conference in Bangalore on 13th December. My talk was about the "The What, Why and How of Web Analytics Testing". The slides from the talk are available here on slideshare.net. The audio recording of the talk is available here. (You can download and use a player like VLC to listen to the recording.)

I had a great time speaking in this conference. My talk was probably the only very technical talk in the conference. Another thing I observed from the audience is that not many of them knew about Web Analytics. I managed to finish up my talk in 40 min, and surprisingly, for an audience who didn't know much about Web Analytics, there were no questions. BUT, in the lunch break and networking session, a lot of people came up to me and said they really enjoyed my talk, and will look forward to "seeing" more on how Web Analytics is used in their organisation. 

Also, there was a lot of interest and questions about Agile, and Agile Testing. This is a topic I can talk about for hours at length - and I controlled myself to a great extent to let other esteemed speakers also talk and answer questions about the same from the audience.

I ended up encouraging a lot of fellow speakers and attendees to think with an "open-mind" and be innovative and see how service organisations can provide "a good and true value" to customers, and why it is important to provide "good" solutions and ask the right and tough questions to the same! Also shared the concepts of TaaS with a few folks who potentially would be in similar soup with the "common test framework" concept.

All in all, a very good time in Bangalore. Now looking forward for the same in Mumbai on 18th December, where I will be talking about "Integration Testing in Enterprises - using TaaS (Test as a Service)".

December 2012 conferences - WAAT & TaaS it is!

December seems to be a busy time related to conferences for me.

First, I attended test-ed 2012 conference hosted by moolya where I had the opportunity to meet James Bach and a few other great speakers. 

I was a little let-down by James talk. It seemed like more of a marketing pitch for moolya - and somehow I felt I expected more from a person of his caliber! None-the-less, I am sure he inspired a lot of folks in the auditorium to become a free and innovative tester! 

I also got to talk with him 1-1 about BDD and what situations it works well, and more importantly, when it does not work well. Also spoke with him on how BDT (Behavior Driven Testing) helps in building the "right automated regression suite" and the challenges facing the Testers in India in order to become the "free-spirited, creative and innovative testers" he spoke about.

Next, on 13th December, I am speaking in UNICOM's Next Generation Testing Conference in Bangalore about "The What, Why, and How of Web Analytics Testing". I will be talking about my open-source framework - "WAAT - the Web Analytics Automation Testing", and how that can ease the manual drudge of web analytics testing.

To close the year, I will be speaking on 18th December in another UNICOM's Next Generation Testing Conference in Mumbai. Here I will be talking about "Integration testing in Enterprises using TaaS (Test-as-a-Service)- Via Case Study". This is about another open-source framework I have created - TaaS - Test as a Service.

Hope to see you all in Bangalore / Mumbai.

vodqa - Going Beyond the Usual updates

Our recently concluded vodQA Pune, on 13th October 2012(http://testing.thoughtworks.com/events/going-beyond-the-usual), was a huge success. Your participation, questions, comments and feedback helped us take this event to new heights. We thank you for that.

The first set of videos from this edition of vodQA are now available here: http://bit.ly/YtNwje, and some of thepictures are available here: http://bitly.com/TEWwjQ

Here are the links for the some of the talks that were held at vodQA:

- Opening note by Tarang Baxi 
YouTube: http://bitly.com/VN83v0

- Automated Infrastructure Testing - Ranjib Dey
YouTube: http://bitly.com/QhpYgz
Slides: http://bitly.com/UbSBgD

- The World Without Testing - Vikrant Chauhan and Supriya Pawar 
YouTube: http://bitly.com/TEXL2u

- The Lean Game- Sneha Kadam
YouTube: http://bitly.com/YtSzQO

- What's Accessibility - Vikrant Chauhan
YouTube: http://bitly.com/TtKBmC

Slides: http://bitly.com/Xd96JR
- Firefox Add-ons Use for Software Testers - Sumit Singhal
YouTube: http://bitly.com/RKi0HZ

Slides: http://bitly.com/VNaa1Y

- Redefining Bugs! - Sneha Kadam
YouTube: http://bit.ly/UtGgyR

Closing note: Chaitanya Nadkarny
YouTube: http://bit.ly/SHxZd9

You can join the following groups on Facebook and LinkedIn to stay up-to-date with what’s happening in vodQA,updates, meeting other testing enthusiasts.

LinkedIn group: vodQA
Facebook group: vodQA

WAAT v1.5.0 released to rubygems.org

The newest version of WAAT (Web Analytics Automation Testing framework) for Java and Ruby is now available with a new plugin - JsSniffer.

Following the announcement of the new JsSniffer plugin for WAAT, I have now completed the testing for the same, and released the gem - WAAT-1.5.0.gem to rubygems.org.

Please take a look at the FAQs and the major changes on Ruby / major changes on Java section for some known issues, potential solutions for the same - as some of these changes could break your tests.

WAAT (Java & Ruby) with JS_SNIFFER is out of the box

I have pushed in the latest changes to WAAT to get over the limitation of not working in a pure https environment (http://essenceoftesting.blogspot.in/2011/06/waat-and-https.html).

The solution is creating a new type of plugin - called JS_SNIFFER.

This plugin requires the user of WAAT to do a little more work than before. 

They need (to work with their development team) to figure out what JS script they need to invoke in the browser to get the URL of interest that is sent as a pure https request over the wire. WAAT then takes this request, and does the tag matching for you.

This generation of the JS script is a one-time effort - unless the way the tags are reported changes in the product. Then the test framework can work in a seamless fashion as before to test this is working consistently in an automated fashion. 

Another advantage of this is that with this approach, we do not need to install jpcap or run the tests as a "super-user" - a restriction posed by the network packet capture library.

The WAAT_v1.5.0.jar is available on here (https://github.com/anandbagmar/WAAT/tree/master/dist) on github.

Similarly, I have also updated the WAAT-ruby gem (WAAT-1.5.0.gem). This gem is not yet pushed out to rubygems.org - as I am still testing it out. However, if you are interested, you can download it from here.

As usual, feedback / comments / suggestions most welcome!

Error in building native extensions on mac / ruby?

If you encounter errors when a ruby gem on your mac (error in building native extensions), read more for a solution that worked for me.

I was trying to install ffi on my mac and got the following error:

sudo gem install ffi -v '1.0.7'


Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
ERROR:  Error installing ffi:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby extconf.rb
mkmf.rb can't find header files for ruby at /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/ruby.h


Gem files will remain installed in /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/ffi-1.0.7 for inspection.
Results logged to /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/ffi-1.0.7/ext/ffi_c/gem_make.out


Here is what you need to do resolve the issue:

• Install xcode
• Install the "Command Line Tools" from xcode -> Preferences -> Downloads -> Components

Now you will be able to install the gem and build its native extensions on your mac.

An important UPDATE from my good friend Oscar Reiken:

Oscar Rieken5:52 PM (edited)

good tip ;) but that only works with newer versions of mac OSX where the latest version of Xcode is included, you might also want to add that if you dont have access to the latest xcode you can use brew(http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/38222/how-do-i-install-gcc-via-homebrew) or install GCC directly(https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer) 

New version of WAAT-ruby gem available

I finally got around to pushing out a new version of WAAT-ruby (1.4.1) on rubygems.org. The only change in this version is the removal of a dependency on a particular version of bundler. See the WAAT-ruby project on github for more information.

Watch this space for a new version of WAAT-ruby that overcomes the limitation of doing web analytics automation for https urls.

vodQA Pune - Going Beyond the Usual

The next edition of vodQA is coming up on Saturday, 13th October 2012 in Pune. The theme for this edition is "Going Beyond the Usual". There is going to be focus on functional and cross-functional areas like Security, Usability, Scalability and Performance, within industries such as Manufacturing and Banking, among others.

You can register as a speaker here, or as an attendee here. 

Whats next for WAAT?

It has been quite some time that I updated WAAT. The released version has been working well - but it does have its limitations as listed in the FAQs on github.

The biggest limitation I feel about the current release version of WAAT is that it does not work in a pure https kind of an environment. (http://essenceoftesting.blogspot.in/2011/06/waat-and-https.html)

Of late I have been spiking out different ways to overcome this limitation. I have experimented to create a HttpsSniffer, and hit various different road-blocks in that. That has forced me to look at another strategy. 

So I have changed direction in coming to a solution. I am looking at creating something like a JSInjector / JSSniffer plugin - which executes a javascript in the browser from where the action is invoked. This is not as straight forward to use as the earlier approaches. The user of this plugin will need to understand the DOM and some javascripts better, maybe take help from the development team, but then once the way to retrive the basic information is known, then we are in calm waters again :)

If you are facing this similar issue in a pure https environment for web analytics testing, look out for more information in this space.

My plan is to update WAAT, followed-by WAAT-Ruby and then lastly release a new version of the WAAT-Ruby gem following that.

vodQA - The ABCs of Testing

I am late in writing about this, but if I do not share this, I am sure I will be feeling very bad later on.

I am very happy to write the next vodQA is happening in Bangalore on Saturday, 8th Sept 2012. The theme for this event is "The ABCs of Testing (Automation, Big Data Analytics, Could Testing)". Also look at our vodQA group on facebook for more information.

There are great topics lined up by great speakers. There are going to be sessions across multiple tracks, fish bowl sessions and am sure a lot of thought-provoking interactions.

I will write an update with links to presentations, pictures and videos after the event. See you all there!