Sys-con.com have released a great article on Cloud Load Testing.   The article, first of a multi part approach gives users a view of how to choose the right approach.

Titled “Benefits of Loading Test in the Cloud (Part 1)” the Article is written by Steve Weisfeldt

Many companies have moved applications to the cloud as a way to reduce capital expenditure while improving IT focus and effectiveness. End users see the cloud as a way to access their documents and applications remotely from anywhere and from any device. IT managers see the cloud as a means of rapidly adapting their infrastructures as needed via virtualization and a pay-per use-model. But what about load testing engineers? Can they seize the opportunities afforded by the cloud to better test the performance of web applications?

As with past overhyped trends in IT, it is important to see past all the talk and look for concrete ways to take advantage of this new technology’s flexibility and scalability to save time, reduce costs, and improve the way your organization works.

This article describes how the cloud is revolutionizing load testing and the advantages it provides in many situations for ensuring your web applications perform well in production. It also covers key capabilities to look for in a load testing solution. Without the right tools in place, simply moving your testing activities to the cloud will likely not deliver the results necessary to justify the move. Understanding how to apply the right tools and practices to make the most of the cloud is fundamental to cloud-based testing and vital to ultimately going live with total peace of mind.

To read the full article please read http://www.sys-con.com/node/2118613

Sys-con.com havereleased a great article on Mobile Application Testing.   The article touches on why addressing factors  can help users triumph in the “mobile arms race”

Titled “Five Overlooked Factors of Mobile Application Performance” the Article is written by Mark Tomlinson

Too often, little consideration is given to performance testing in the context of mobile application testing. We are reaching a tipping point in how consumers are accessing the Internet, with more than 50% of users expected to access the Web via a mobile device by the end of 2013. With this increase in mobile usage comes the need (really, a requirement) for organizations to meet an increased expectation in application performance.

To read the full article please read: http://www.sys-con.com/node/2116107

Microsoft removed the Data Analysis Toolpak from Excel 2011 for the Macintosh in 2008, eliminating statistical tools such as ANOVA, t test, F Test, and regression analysis. Hypothesis testing using these tools is a key element in advanced problem solving, so the loss of these tools has been a major challenge for practitioners of Six Sigma who use the Macintosh, but not anymore.

The QI Macros Lean Six Sigma SPC software has supported Excel for the Macintosh since 1998. The Analysis Toolpak has been rewritten for Excel 2011 and includes many previously unavailable features like 1-sample t tests, Fishers Exact test, Levene’s test, normality tests, non-normality tests, and proportion tests. There’s even a statistics wizard to simplify hypothesis testing.

The QI Macros are an add-in for Microsoft Excel that automate all of the charts and diagrams required for statistical process control (SPC) and lean Six Sigma. The QI Macros consist of four parts: 30 charts and two “chart wizards” that use existing Excel data to create Pareto, control charts, and histograms; more than 90 fill-in-the-blank templates for lean Six Sigma; a statistics wizard; and data transformation tools such as the PivotTable wizard that automates data analysis.

icrosoft removed the Data Analysis Toolpak from Excel 2011 for the Macintosh in 2008, eliminating statistical tools such as ANOVA, t test, F Test, and regression analysis. Hypothesis testing using these tools is a key element in advanced problem solving, so the loss of these tools has been a major challenge for practitioners of Six Sigma who use the Macintosh, but not anymore.

SmartBear Software , a provider of software development, testing, and monitoring tools, has released LoadComplete 2.0, the latest version of SmartBear’s load-testing tool for web and rich Internet applications (RIAs). Following are highlights of the new features in LoadComplete 2.0:

• Support for load testing RIAs and associated protocols and formats. LoadComplete 2 supports load testing of web applications built with Adobe Flash, Flex, Ajax, and Silverlight, and supports the Action Message Format (AMF), XML (SOAP) and binary XML, and JSON web protocols and data formats. Additionally, LoadComplete can now decode data from server responses and encode values into further requests. Users can view, change, or parameterize traffic test data using the graphical tree view.
• Enhanced point-and-click automation for parameterizing test data in AMF, JSON, SOAP, XML, and Silverlight data formats. An improved Data Selectors feature now lets you insert data not only into URL parameters or into parameters of POST multipart/form-data or form-url encoded requests, but also into an arbitrary place in a body of any subsequent request.
• Higher load-generation capacity, enabling 25 percent more virtual users per node. LoadComplete Remote Agent now supports simulating up to 400 virtual users on a computer node.
• Enhanced reporting capabilities. The new “waterfall” graphs, Slow Pages and Slow Pages (Average) graphs in the Report Top 10 tab, now include detailed execution time of pages’ requests. You can use this information to analyze the order and duration of page requests and find performance bottlenecks. Additionally, you can now export test results to PDF or MHT (HTML) files or send them to the printer directly from the Report panel.
• Logging complete requests and responses. LoadComplete now saves the contents of all simulated requests and the contents of responses to these requests received from the server, displaying this information in two new test log panels: Request Body and Response Body.
• Enhanced support for ASP.NET applications. LoadComplete 2 improves built-in support for .axd file requests to eliminate the need for any manual data manipulation.

SmartBear Software today announced that AlertSite, the company’s Web and mobile performance monitoring solution, will support testing on both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox browsers. Organizations can now test, monitor and improve how their website is performing across both browsers to ensure customers are getting an optimal user experience, no matter their browser preference.

The AlertSite built-into-the-browser transaction recorder captures and plays back user events to measure the end-user experience exactly as it unfolds in the browser. Now users can record any multi-step transaction or click stream and play it back on multiple browsers to simulate user experience. Unlike other Web monitoring tools that require separate recording processes for each browser, AlertSite users can simply record once and monitor from both Firefox and Internet Explorer across multiple locations.

Bojan Simic, President and Principal Analyst at TRAC Research, said, “TRAC’s research shows that the Web browser is the number one “blind spot” in the application delivery chain. As the amount of application component processing in the browser is increasing, organizations are realizing that they need to gain more visibility into how the performance of the Web browser impacts the quality of user experience. AlertSite’s announcement allows organizations to address one of the key challenges for application performance monitoring and enables them to have more control over the quality of Web experience.”

Ken Godskind, Vice President of Monitoring Solutions for SmartBear Software, said, “Today there are more browser options than ever, and each browser has very unique qualities that can impact load times of your application. We realize the importance for online businesses to know exactly how their website is performing no matter which browser their customers prefer, and today, Internet Explorer and Firefox have the largest share of the browser market. Our website monitoring service offers a fast and simple way for users to get a multi-browser snapshot of their website’s performance to help them manage the user experience. We plan to add new browsers in the coming months as we continue to provide our customers with the most comprehensive insight to improve their online performance.”

AlertSite monitors Web and mobile performance from more than 70 data centers located on every major continent. Internet Explorer 8 testing is now available from six global locations. Multi-browser support is also available for AlertSite’s Web Test on Demand, an instant way to get detailed insight into how websites and applications are performing at any moment from a specific monitoring location.

Availability

AlertSite Multi-Browser Support is available immediately. To learn more, or to try free for 30-days, visit smartbear.com/multi-browser-web-performance-monitoring/ .

Webinar Registration

Join SmartBear on Thursday, December 1, 2011, at 1:00 p.m. for our free Webinar, “How to Start Monitoring Your Website with Internet Explorer.”

Neotys, a leader in easy-to-use, cost effective load testing tools for web applications, today announced the Neotys Community, a public platform to share ideas and best practices on load and performance testing.

Participants can ask questions, receive answers and provide feedback directly to Neotys’ R&D team. The community also offers a searchable knowledge base that helps users quickly access tips, tricks and best practices regarding load and performance testing web & mobile applications.

Key features include:

– Integrated interface for asking questions and providing answers

– Searchable knowledgebase for immediate access to technical information

– Customer proposal forum for suggesting and voting on enhancements for NeoLoad, the company’s web & mobile application load testing software solution.

The question and answer sharing posting section is open to the public. Neotys customers also have the ability to ask a question or provide feedback and ideas on NeoLoad, by logging in to the site using their customer credentials.

“The Neotys Community is a great communication forum for people who are interested in sharing experiences about load and performance testing web and mobile applications,” said Benoit Derouet, CTO and cofounder of Neotys. “In addition, this thriving community compliments customer support because members can now learn from their peers and gain greater insight into how they addressed some of the very same testing challenges.

Gorilla Logic,  www.gorillalogic.com , a leader in enterprise application development services and creators of open source test tools for mobile and Rich Internet Applications (RIA), today announced FoneMonkey www.gorillalogic.com/fonemonkey for Android, its latest open source automated testing tool for mobile applications.

The new Android testing capabilities complement the popular FoneMonkey for iOS (iPhone and iPad) automated testing tool and extends Gorilla Logic’s comprehensive open source automated testing solution set by bringing Android developers and QA testers the same recording/playback and test script generation already enjoyed by iOS developers. It benefits developers by providing rapid creation of functional testing scripts; allows testers without in-depth Android Software Developer Kit (SDK) knowledge to easily and quickly create testing scripts; and, offers increased application quality and faster time-to-market.

Specific features contained in FoneMonkey for Android include:

• Records and plays back user interface interactions with native Android applications
• Scripts are readable, maintainable and also can be created from scratch without recording
• An Eclipse-based control console provides easy creation and editing of automation scripts
• Scripts can be created and ran on an emulator or actual device
• Supports virtually all Android SDK UI components and gestures
• Is free and open source
• Provides automatic generation of extensible test scripts in either Java or JavaScript
• Offers ability to run tests in continuous integration environments

“With an explosion of mobile applications in the market and a number of automated software quality offerings existing (and more evolving) for performance testing for mobile applications, the manual effort involved in functional testing remains significant and very costly,” said Melinda Ballou, project director for IDC’s Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) service. “As companies increasingly put their brand out on mobile platforms and as business critical apps ‘go mobile,’ automation of functional testing across mobile platforms – including both iOS and Android – becomes key for business innovation and success.”

Gorilla Logic’s passion for delivering quality software applications for enterprise customers led to the creation of FoneMonkey. It is the only test tool for iOS and now Android that records all actions with the iPhone, iPad and Android phone while in use and plays them back as a test script at any time. It enables the interactive creation, editing and playback of automation scripts that exercise an application’s user interface. Using FoneMonkey, developers and quality assurance team members can create suites of tests that automate and perform user operation sequences, and then verify results. FoneMonkey supports development as well as QA testing, and tests can easily be incorporated into continuous integration environments.

“FoneMonkey for Android addresses a major gap in the Android development tool chain,” said Stu Stern, president and CEO of Gorilla Logic and co-creator of FoneMonkey. “The FoneMonkey family of tools is the only record/playback functional testing tool for iOS and Android. With the addition of FoneMonkey for Android, Gorilla Logic has established its position as the pre-eminent provider of next generation functional testing tools for the mobile market.”

Learn more about FoneMonkey for Android at  www.gorillalogic.com/fonemonkey4android .

The virtualization market offers many choices and develops rapidly. Many companies acknowledge that tests are necessary for making the right decisions for their specific situation, but the complexity of these tests prevents them from doing so. Login VSI provides insight in performance and scalability of VDI and SBC environments by simulating user workloads. The introduction of Login VSI 3.5 offers even more ease of use and enhanced analysis options.

“Login VSI is developed specifically for (vendor) independent benchmarking of virtualized desktop infrastructures and is becoming the worldwide industry standard for testing SBC and VDI environments” said Jeroen van de Kamp, CTO Login Consultants. “Almost every large vendor uses Login VSI for research and development in their laboratory. This encouraged us to enhance Login VSI with more options to gain detailed test results”.

Login VSI now visualizes the differences between results in one chart, helps to recognize trends and provides insight in the RemoteFX performance on virtual machine level and hypervisor level. In addition to more analysis options, Login VSI 3.5 is also easier to setup and use. It is no longer required to install Login VSI on every launcher and test cycles can be fully automated. Other new features include the ability to pause a test and to automatically reset workloads when a session freezes.

Visit www.loginvsi.com for a complete overview of new features and a free trial version of Login VSI 3.5.

QMetry, a leading provider of software quality management solutions, today announced a major update to its advanced test management platform, which will help agile development teams to bring newer efficiencies to their testing processes. The update will also enhance collaboration and reduce the development time, regardless of the SDLC process. In addition, the improved integration capabilities will help QA groups to improve the ROI on their existing ALM tools.

“You don’t need to scrap your existing ALM tools”, emphasized David Silva, Product manager at QMetry “QMetry 5.0 provides seamless integration with almost all popular defect management and test automation tools. Our goal is to help you leverage your existing tool investments”.

QMetry 5.0 adds many new features to give QA groups more flexibility. QMetry’s new drop feature allows QA groups to quickly add a new “drop” at the time of testing. “Many organizations, agile and otherwise, receive many iterations of software weekly and sometimes daily and want to track them as part of one development or test cycle. Our new ‘Drop’ feature allows you to do that,” added Silva “whether you are testing a new code drop, bios version, development build, or patch your QA group can quickly test it and view the results either separately or cumulatively.”

QMetry 5.0 now allows QA groups to test against specific versions of a Test Case. This will enable them to test a patch against an old version of the test case.

The new version also helps QA groups better organize their Test Cases and Requirements by organizing them at a project, release, and cycle level. In addition, groups that use agile methodology can store unscheduled Test Cases and Requirements in the backlog to be quickly accessed and reviewed with the next cycle or sprint.

QMetry 5.0 also includes further improvements on its industry leading bi-directional JIRA integration. This will allow users to create or link existing issues from QMetry as soon as they discover them, or pull issues from JIRA as Test Cases or Requirements through QMetry’s ‘Advanced Search Query’. Users can also view and create Test Cases and Requirements from QMetry directly in JIRA. This will save developer’s time logging in and learning a new tool, and they will be able to view the data they need where they need it.

In addition to QMetry Professional version 5.0 also introduces two new product Editions: QMetry Core for the smaller organizations looking for a powerful streamlined version; and QMetry Enterprise a more robust edition for the larger organizations. QMetry Core is SaaS only and is available for evaluation now with a release date of December 5th. QMetry Enterprise is SaaS as well as On Premise and is in beta for a Q1 of 2012 release.

If you would like to learn more about QMetry 5 and the key features, please contact sales at             408-727-1101       or email sales(at)qmetry(dot)com for free evaluation/ online demo.

Packt Publishing is pleased to report that Software Testing using Visual Studio 2010 is available to Kindle users on Amazon’s Kindle Platform. The Kindle eBook represents a step by step guide to understanding the features and concepts of testing applications using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and is a valuable addition to the bookshelf of Visual Studio professionals.

What is Microsoft Visual Studio? Microsoft Visual Studio is an Integrated Development Environment, from Microsoft, widely used for the development of applications, websites, and web services across a variety of platforms including: Microsoft Windows, the .NET Framework, and Microsoft Silverlight. Software testing represents an important part of the development and implementation process when using VS.

The book starts with a look at different types of tests. It then goes about explaining examples with a step-by-step approach to master concepts and the features needed to help the reader understand testing clearly. Developers, Software testers, and Architects who need to master the range of features offered by the Visual Studio 2010 for testing software applications will find this book to be a worthy addition to their bookshelves.

The book introduces readers to the main types of testing available in Visual Studio for both desktop and web applications, and then walks them through deploying, running, and interpreting the results of tests. Specifics include the utilization of test manager for creating test plans, test suites and requirement based test suites, the creation and customization of code from the action recording, web performance testing, and much more.

Full book details can be found on the Packt Website.

Packt Publishing is a world leader for publishing Microsoft focused titles for IT Professionals. Packt has published several titles into the Microsoft Visual Studio space, including:

1.    Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Development with Visual Studio 2010 Expert Cookbook
2.    Refactoring with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
3.    Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch Business Application Development

About Packt Enterprise. Packt Enterprise is the publishing division of Packt that seeks to serve the informational needs of IT Professionals who live and work with Enterprise software. To date, more than 100 Microsoft books have been announced or published, and the 2012 pipeline promises more than 40 new Microsoft titles.