A Publication
Volume 1 I Number 3 Summer 2006
www.eclipsereview.com ForgetForget thethe CrystalCrystal BallBall ManageManage DependenciesDependencies ForFor BetterBetter SoftwareSoftware QualityQuality
PHONE HOME! eRCP Puts Eclipse On Mobile Devices
‘Hello, World!’ Eclipse RCP 101
Best Practices With the Eclipse Process Framework Announcing The “Best concentration of performance testing presentation/professionals I’ve seen.”— Nathan White, Manager, Testing Services, AG Edwards Third Annual
The Software Test & Performance Conference provides technical education for test/QA managers, software developers, software development managers November 7-9, 2006 and senior testers.
The Hyatt Regency The wall between test and development has fallen, and the Software Test & Performance Conference Cambridge, MA brings the whole application life cycle together!
BUT DON’T TAKE OUR WORD FOR IT...
“This is the best conference I have attended. The instructors were extremely knowledgeable and helped me look at testing in a new way.” —Ann Schwerin, QA Analyst Sunrise Senior Living
For Sponsorship and Diamond Sponsor Platinum Sponsors Gold Sponsors Silver Sponsor Media Sponsors Exhibitor Information Contact David Karp at 631-421-4158 x102 or [email protected]
“If you get one impact idea from a conference it pays for itself. I got several at the ST&P Conference.”— Patrick Higgins, Senior Software Test Engineer, SSAI performance testing presentation/professionals I’ve seen.”— Nathan White, Manager, Testing Services, AG Edwards
• OPTIMIZE Your Web Testing Strategies • LEARN How to Apply Proven Software Test Methodologies • NETWORK With Other Test/QA & Development Professionals • ACHIEVE a Better Return on Investment From Your Test Teams • GET the Highest Performance From Your Deployed Applications
“This is a conference to help both testers and “This conference is great for developers, their developers as well as managers and leads. There managers, as well as business-side people.” is enough variety and content for everybody.” —Steve Margenau, Systems Analyst —Michael Farrugia, Software Engineer Great Lakes Educational Loan Services Air Malta “I’ve received volumes of new information and ideas “Great topics – well presented by reputable to share with my team.” presenters. Having attended two years in a row, —Theresa Harmon, Business I have yet to be disappointed.” Applications Developer —Ardan Sharp, QA Manager Pharmacare Specialty Pharmacy SunGard “Reputable speakers and presenters. Great class “Excellent conference – provided a wide range of topics.” topics for a variety of experience levels. It provided —Jung Manson, QA Manager tools and techniques that I could apply when I Webloyalty.com got back, as well as many additional sources of information.” “Very informative and a good chance to network —Carol Rusch, Systems Analyst with others.” Associated Bank —Marty Palma,Technical Consultant Autodesk Inc. Regi ster b “A conference with something for everyone.” Oct. 2 y 0 to t — Scott L. Boudreau, QA Manager, Tribune Interactive ad ake vanta ge of the Early Bird R ates!
REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN e ST&P Conference.”— Patrick Higgins, Senior Software Test Engineer, SSAI www.stpcon.com
Vol. 1 I No. 3 I SUMMER 2006 EDITORIAL Editorial Director Alan Zeichick +1-650-359-4763 [email protected] Cover Illustration: Executive Editor “Golden Eye,” by José Manuel George Walsh [email protected]
Copy Editor Laurie O’Connell
ART & PRODUCTION Art Director LuAnn T. Palazzo FEATURES Art/Production Assistant Erin Broadhurst “Eclipse is more SALES & MARKETING Eclipse on Cell Phones! Publisher 18 Ted Bahr than a development +1-631-421-4158 x101 Chris Aniszczyk, Gorkem Ercan and Mark [email protected] Rogalski shrink applications to pocket size environment—it’s Associate Publisher Charlie Shively with the Embedded Rich Client Platform. +1-508-893-0736 [email protected] an application life- Southwest U.S./Asia A Development Library At Robin Nakamura 25 cycle platform.” +1-408-445-8154 [email protected] Your Fingertips Per Kroll and Kurt Sand show how EPF —Peter Varhol, Northwest U.S./Canada Paula Miller encourages best practices in your “Leaving the +1-925-831-3803 [email protected] organization. Crystal Ball Behind.” Southeast U.S./Europe Jonathan Sawyer +1-603-924-4489 [email protected] 29 Leaving the Crystal Ball Behind Northeast/Central U.S./Canada David Lyman Peter Varhol explains how managing dependencies goes a long way +1-978-465-2351 [email protected] toward preserving quality throughout an application’s evolution.
Advertising Traffic Phyllis Oakes +1-631-421-4158 x115 [email protected] 33 Creating a ‘Hello World’ Eclipse Application Marketing Manager Dan Rubel and Keerti Parthasarathy re-create a classic with Eclipse. Marilyn Daly +1-631-421-4158 x118 [email protected]
List Services Nyla Moshlak DEPARTMENTS +1-631-421-4158 x124 [email protected] Reprints 7 Context 11 Shoptalk Lisa Abelson +1-516-379-7097 Leveling the playing field with The judges for this year’s Eclipse [email protected] Eclipse. Community Awards came from Accounting the community itself. Viena Isaray +1-631-421-4158 x110 [email protected] 9 Launchpad READER SERVICE The latest tools, technologies and 13 Projects Director of Circulation plug-ins for Eclipse developers. The JavaServer Faces Tools Project Agnes Vanek +1-631-421-4158 x111 eases JSF application development. [email protected] Customer Service/Subscriptions 10 Foundation +1-631-421-4158 x124 [email protected] Callisto arrives on schedule with a 38 Perspective whole new bag of tricks for Eclipse Which rules: a Rich Client Platform BZ Media is an Associate developers. or a Rich Internet Application? Member of the Eclipse Foundation, www.eclipse.org
BZ Media LLC | 7 High Street, Suite 407 | Huntington, NY 11743 | +1-631-421-4158 | fax +1-631-421-4130 | www.bzmedia.com | [email protected] President | Ted Bahr Executive Vice President | Alan Zeichick
Eclipse Review is published 4 times a year by BZ Media LLC, 7 High Street, Suite 407, Huntington, NY 11743. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to BZ Media, 7 High Street, Suite 407, Huntington, NY 11743. Ride along is included. Copyright © 2006 BZ Media LLC. All rights reserved. Eclipse Review is a trademark of BZ Media LLC. Eclipse is a trademark of The Eclipse Foundation.
CONTEXT From the Editors of Eclipse Review
Leveling the Playing Field
The term integrated development environment means loads benefit anyone programming in many things to many people. Most IDEs target a single any language that Eclipse supports. platform, an approach that many developers are averse to. Others However, a large part of the IDE’s target a specific language. Few, however, have the flexibility and value goes to those who are selling products. It also opens the door for features of the Eclipse IDE, an environment that can be “integrated” third parties to develop plug-ins for into nearly any development style and provide the development specific niche markets. Another side features that virtually all users agree are important in building effect is that it makes products from applications for just about any platform. individual companies work well together, which leads to a truly inte- grated group of commercial products. On its own, the Eclipse IDE is a COMPETITIVE This month’s issue of Eclipse powerful development tool for a sin- COLLABORATION Review offers a microcosm of the gle reason: It was and will always be The story behind Eclipse’s unique type of effort that goes on when large defined by programmers. It truly lives and collaborative development companies and individuals put aside up to the Eclipse Foundation’s own approach is just as interesting. Why their competitive nature to level the definition: The IDE is a “vendor-neu- do software companies, many of playing field. tral open development platform and whom are direct competitors, work IBM’s Per Kroll and Kurt Sand of application framework for building together to build and evolve Eclipse? Telelogic worked together on an arti- software.” If a certain feature is It’s not an act of charity: Nobody cle about the Eclipse Process deemed necessary by the news- believes that any of these companies Framework (“A Development Library groups, chances are good that inter- are driven by pure altruism. The real at your Fingertips,” p. 25). IBM’s ested companies will gather and put reason? Eclipse helps companies like Chris Aniszczyk and Mark Rogalski together a proposal to implement it. IBM, BEA, SAP, Compuware, Intel, collaborated with Gorkem Ercan of The process of moving a project HP and Borland bring their own prod- Nokia on an article about the embed- from concept to release is well organ- ucts to market faster. ded Rich Client Platform (“Eclipse on ized. Anyone within the Eclipse com- These and other companies—large Cell Phones?” p. 18). Representatives munity—including you and I—can and small—devote their time, effort of other companies, as well as our present a proposal. and resources to Eclipse because it stellar group of writers from the After a proposal is submitted, the saves them from developing similar Eclipse community at large, are also Foundation’s member companies technology by themselves (which represented. All in all, it’s easy to see have an opportunity to bring to light would be expensive) or from licensing the type of collaboration that’s devel- any part of the proposal that may it from someone else (who would then oped as Eclipse has evolved. infringe on their intellectual property. control the license). It’s cheaper, faster When software companies—over- Following that phase, the proposal is and more efficient to work together on seen by other interested parties— checked to be sure that it doesn’t certain common functionality so that work together to lower their bottom conflict with the Eclipse organiza- each company can spend time and line, they can focus on individual tion’s purposes and road map. resources working on the unique and efforts. Rather than looking at the A great deal of care and planning more competitive aspects of their own commercial aspects of co-develop- goes into each project from proposal products. Participating in Eclipse short- ment, take advantage of these compa- to release to ensure that the member- ens their development cycle and focus- nies’ collective strides. The benefits ship, from the developers to the es competition where it counts the of this collaboration reach far beyond reviewers of each project, work most: individual product value. the individual companies involved; together in a cohesive manner— Does this competitive collaboration they enrich the entire community— an almost unheard-of occurrence benefit the entire open-source com- that is, all of us. in the world of open-source software. munity? Certainly. The free down- —George Walsh, Executive Editor
Summer 2006 www.eclipsereview.com | 7 Remember when the sky was the limit?
With Intel® Software Development Products, the Swinburne Center for $VWURSK\VLFVLVVKRZLQJWRGD\·VNLGVDXQLYHUVHÀOOHGZLWKXQOLPLWHGSRVVLELOLWLHV
THREADED APPLICATIONS HELP UNRAVEL THE ORIGINS OF THE UNIVERSE. Take advantage of the power behind multi-core processors by introducing threading to your applications. Threading allows you to use hardware parallelism to improve application speeds. Intel® Software Development Products are on the leading edge of threading technology, giving you the opportunity to discover the performance potential you need. So whether you create applications that model the solar system or enable a gaming system, Intel Software Development Products give your applications the power of parallelism.
Visit www.intel.com/software/products/eclipse for more information.
Copyright Intel Corporation, 2006. All rights reserved. Intel, the Intel logo, are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. *Other names and brands may© be claimed as the property of others. LAUNCHPAD The Latest Tools and Technologies
MyEclipse Tool Suite Focuses also create and edit Eclipse RCP culations to high-end 2D and 3D On Web Services, Callisto ActionBar Advisors, can configure the graphics to data visualization. The The latest edition of Genuitec’s UI palette with a new Palette Manager, makers of Mathematica, Wolfram MyEclipse software—comprising not and has enhanced Swing & SWT Research, have now brought out only the latest “Callisto” version of absolute layout support. Wolfram Workbench, an Eclipse- Eclipse, but a whole slew of integrat- www.instantiations.com based IDE customized and specialized ed packages and components—adds for Mathematica. It provides project extensive support for Web services. SlickEdit Plug-In Lets Editor management to group files, code and MyEclipse 5.0, which came out the Work Inside Eclipse-Based IDEs other Mathematica resources into a first week in August, has a new Web SlickEdit has released a plug-in that single component. It supports services project and project creation lets developers use its eponymous Mathematica code and notebooks, wizard, customizable library contain- popular code edits as the default Java source and classes for J/Link, Remember when ers and tools for deploying Web serv- editor within Eclipse or any Eclipse- DatabaseLink and GUI widgets. It ices applications. It also includes based IDE. The SlickEdit Plug-in also has code editing and debugging editing capabilities for XML files, provides a wide range of features for capabilities, so you can study code as Java code and WSDL, and a Web analyzing, working with and it runs, detect and fix any problems, the sky was the limit? services explorer. To help developers improving the readability of code. set breakpoints to halt and evaluate hit the ground running, Genuitec also Seamlessly integrating with the proj- variables, and track problems with includes quick-start documentation ect and workspace management useful error messages. The IDE sup- With Intel® Software Development Products, the Swinburne Center for and sample projects that show how capabilities, the SlickEdit Plug-in ports profiling and version control. to hook apps into the MyEclipse complies with the Eclipse project Wolfram Workbench is available for $VWURSK\VLFVLVVKRZLQJWRGD\·VNLGVDXQLYHUVHÀOOHGZLWKXQOLPLWHGSRVVLELOLWLHV database and how to use Hibernate data model, debug and build frame- download for the company’s Premiere and Spring for rapid application work. The SlickEdit editor’s features Service customers. design. MyEclipse 5.0 costs US$29 for include automatic syntax expansion www.wolfram.com a one-year subscription with support. and indenting to insert entire con- www.genuitec.com structs and place the cursor at the Short Takes correct line and indent level. A fea- Codign Software has released WindowBuilder Pro Adds ture called Surround With can select CoView 2.0, a US$350 Eclipse plug-in GroupLayout for SWT and Swing a code block and surround it with that automatically creates JUnit tests Instantiations has released version 5.0 language-specific structures. for developers and reports relevant of WindowBuilder Pro, its Eclipse- DIFFzilla provides editable dynamic path and branch coverage results to based tool for creating graphical user differencing and merging for files, managers. Version 2 includes a new interfaces for Linux, Mac OS X and directories and source trees. Other user interface, new test manager and Windows applications. According to features for rapid coding include JUnit editor, and the ability to meas- the company, a key new feature offers aliases, code beautifiers, color cod- ure path and branch coverage. “Better than Matisse” GroupLayout ing, clipboard inheritance and smart www.codign.com capabilities for both the SWT and pasting. Pricing for the SlickEdit THREADED APPLICATIONS HELP UNRAVEL THE ORIGINS OF THE UNIVERSE. Swing Java GUI frameworks. (Matisse Plug-In, which includes the SlickEdit Wirelexsoft unveiled VistaMax Visual Take advantage of the power behind multi-core processors by introducing threading to your is the Swing-only GUI framework that editor, is US$199 for electronic deliv- Express for S60 2.1, an Eclipse-based applications. Threading allows you to use hardware parallelism to improve application speeds. Sun Microsystems includes with its ery for Linux or Windows, or $229 rapid application development environ- Intel® Software Development Products are on the leading edge of threading technology, giving NetBeans IDE.) By creating a layout for physical delivery of a CD-ROM ment for C++ that targets Symbian technology that works with both Swing and documentation. OS, Linux and J2ME. The US$50 visual you the opportunity to discover the performance potential you need. So whether you create and SWT, Instantiations lets developers www.slickedit.com development environment includes applications that model the solar system or enable a gaming system, Intel Software Development Products create forms, position and size widgets, about 60 UI elements that can be give your applications the power of parallelism. and develop user interfaces using any Wolfram Workbench Brings The assembled using drag and drop. The Java layout manager taking advantage Power of Eclipse to Mathematica tool has plug-ins for integration with Visit www.intel.com/software/products/eclipse for more information. of GroupLayout constraints. The soft- Mathematica is a powerful tool for Code Warrior and Nokia’s ware, which costs US$299, includes calculation, programming and docu- Carbide.C++ Express environments Copyright Intel Corporation, 2006. All rights reserved. Intel, the Intel logo, are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. *Other names and brands may© be claimed as the property of others. both SWT and Swing design tools. The mentation math—ranging from pro- as well as CVS and ClearCase. update of WindowBuilder Pro can now grammable numeric and symbolic cal- www.wirelexsoft.com
Summer 2006 www.eclipsereview.com | 9 FOUNDATION From The Eclipse Foundation
Callisto Arrives On Schedule
The big event for the Eclipse community was the release products, complementary open-source of 10 different projects on June 30; an event we called the projects and Eclipse-related training, Callisto release. The projects included in Callisto were the Business support and services. The portal, Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) Project, C/C++ IDE (CDT), Eclipse Plug-in Central (EPIC), makes it easier than ever for developers, Data Tools Platform (DTP), Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF), software vendors and enterprises to Graphical Editing Framework (GEF), Graphical Modeling Framework find high-quality open-source and (GMF), Eclipse Platform (SDK), Eclipse Test and Performance Tools commercial plug-ins, tools and add- Platform Project (TPTP), Eclipse Web Tools Platform Project (WTP) on services to enhance their Eclipse and Visual Editor (VE). development. The EPIC portal will be a key part of the Eclipse Foundation’s effort to promote and grow the over- This was a remarkable community bership meeting, Eclipse project talks all Eclipse ecosystem. For more infor- effort that involved 10 project teams, and technical symposia. For more mation about EPIC, go to 23 subprojects, 260 committers locat- details, go to www.eclipsecon.org/ www.eclipseplugincentral.com. ed in 12 different countries from 15 summiteurope2006. Here is a summary of project different ISVs, and shipping over 7 reviews that have arisen so far in million lines of code on the same day. NEW COMMUNITY PORTAL 2006. We hope to make this a regular Congratulations to all of the individu- The Eclipse Foundation has launched feature of this column. It is based on als involved. a community portal to promote the the RSS feed at www.eclipse.org/ We hope you’ve enjoyed download- adoption of Eclipse-based commercial projects/reviews-rss.php. ing the new releases and checking out the new features in each of the proj- ects. The planning now starts for the Table 1 Project Updates next year’s release, tentatively called PROJECT REVIEW DATE Europa (another moon of Jupiter). Rich Server Platform Created and Provisions May 5 The Eclipse on Linux (Linux Distro) Project Proposal Posted May 5 ECLIPSE ANNOUNCEMENTS Modeling Top-Level Project Created and Provisioned May 10 We’re pleased that Motorola has Dali Move Release Approved May 24 joined the Eclipse Foundation as a Callisto Simultaneous Release Pending May 26 Strategic Developer and will join the UML2 2.0 Release Approved June 7 JSF 0.5 Release Pending June 21 Eclipse Board of Directors. Motorola Enterprise Component Framework Waiting for PMC Decision June 21 has also proposed a new Eclipse proj- Dali 0.5 Release Pending June 21 ect to build tools and frameworks for Tools for Mobile Linux Proposal Posted June 22 Mobile Linux. Aperi Storage Management Project Proposal Posted June 28 We’re also pleased to announce Google Summer of Code Project Approved June 28 Rich Ajax Platform (RAP) Project Approved June 28 Eclipse Summit Europe, the The Subversive Project Proposal Posted June 29 Foundation’s inaugural European con- Model-to-Model Transformation Proposal Posted July 7 ference for the Eclipse community. The Eclipse Orbit Project Proposal Posted July 10 The two-day event will be held in DTP Enablement Project Approved July 12 Esslingen, Germany October 11–12. Embedded Rich Client Platform Move Approved July 19 EMC (Apogee) Creation Review July 25 The entire Eclipse community is invit- ALF 1.0 Release Review July 25 ed to participate in an Eclipse mem-
10 | ECLIPSE REVIEW Summer 2006 SHOPTALK Applications in the Real World
When the Community Wins, All Eclipse Users Win
In every field of endeavor, there are those who are con- by the recognition as Top sidered stars and those who work behind the scenes in an Ambassador. “What I’ve done is effort to help achieve the overall goal at hand. Within the Eclipse nothing very special and nothing that I can take credit for,” he says. “I’ve community, those stars are the gurus who put immense time and been very active on newsgroups and effort into becoming experts on topics that benefit everyone. These Bugzilla. I think the award was in few may be thanked by their peers on a daily basis, but isn’t it nice recognition of that. The Foundation is to receive real recognition? That’s why the Eclipse Foundation very much in the mode of trying to launched the Eclipse Community Awards, which kicked off earlier enable projects to make progress. They’re not trying to make the this year at EclipseCon in Santa Clara. progress themselves. The progress is typically achieved by the users and These awards honor individuals power user, he understands that developers.” who have helped further the reach of there’s no way that any single per- When you look at Burnette’s the Eclipse community and extend son can answer every question relat- resumé, his qualifications belie his the ecosystem. They recognize the ed to Eclipse. He’s made an effort to humble nature. He’s programmed people who have volunteered their foster the Eclipse community and everything from multi-user servers to time and resources in making Eclipse introduce people to one another for compilers and commercial video a vibrant and innovative community. support and advice. Often, he’s the games. He’s also has written several The winners were selected by their one giving the advice. articles and books on Eclipse, most peers in an online vote, making the Some 90 percent of SAS’s Java recently the “Eclipse IDE Pocket honor yet more personal and, for developers use Eclipse in the work- Guide” (O’Reilly, 2005). In addition, those who didn’t attend the confer- place, estimates Burnette, and his he writes the Dev Connection ence, we honor them here as well. own professional experience with (blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette) Web site. The categories this year were Top Eclipse includes writing internal plug- Burnette is a prime example of the Contributor, Top Committer and Top ins that adapt the IDE for the compa- cooperation and collaboration among Ambassador. ny’s own internal procedures. For Eclipse users throughout the world. example, using the Rich Client ED BURNETTE, Platform, he wrote an application for ALAIN MAGLOIRE, TOP AMBASSADOR testing his group’s software products. TOP COMMITTER The Top Ambassador award recog- “It was a way for us to get a lot of The Top Committer award recognizes nizes an individual who best pro- functionality in a little bit of time,” he exemplary support for the communi- motes cross-project interactions and explains. “If I had tried to write it ty through newsgroups, Bugzilla, building a collaborative Eclipse devel- from scratch, it wouldn’t have been white papers, conference presenta- oper community. The ambassador’s half as elegant. Internal testing appli- tions, blogs and other formats, work spans the gap between and cations are often just one-off. You get expanding beyond a specific project across Eclipse projects, user groups or them to where they work and then into the larger Eclipse community. plug-in developers. This year’s win- you move on to something else. Alain Magloire, a systems engineer ner was Ed Burnette, a principal sys- Generally, they’re not all that great, for QNX Software Systems, was hon- tems developer for SAS. but Eclipse is just a really nice tool ored in this category. Burnette encourages people to that makes creating apps like this Magloire believes that his award give peer-to-peer support because, much easier.” was primarily in recognition of the even though he’s considered a true Burnette was somewhat surprised amount of work that he did in bring-
Summer 2006 www.eclipsereview.com | 11 SHOPTALK
ing the QNX version of the IDE up, milestones and the usual uneasy rela- ments are placed, the way that tabs going back to 2001. “I was nominated tions with the testers, which goes on are designed and the appearance, our simply because I must have the high- until beta/GA. At a different stage, team has probably consulted on it. est number of committed lines of customers give input and can follow From the get-go, the appearance of code and as the one that put in the the process. the user interface is where we’ve con- most effort getting the first version of As with the winners of all of the tributed, including fixing problems CDT working. I was involved in every Eclipse Community awards, that users have identified.” component of the CDT,” he says. Magloire’s humility is impressive. He In addition to the user interface, Back in 2001, QNX was looking for is extremely pleased to see that other Watson and her team have worked on a new IDE to enhance its tool set, companies are joining the CDT effort developing Eclipse’s identity. As most and IBM was pushing VisualAge and providing new directions, new people who use the IDE know, it does- Micro Edition as a base platform on visions and new ideas to the project. n’t look like any other environment. which to build tools. A group of engi- “I share the award with the QNX The icons, the splash screens and the neers from QNX was dispatched to folks and the CDT community for the things that you see in the task bar are see how viable it could be to have a long nights coding, design and argu- all components that they have devel- Java IDE in the first place. “That’s a ing,” he says. “However, I will keep oped, paying close attention to the story in itself,” Magloire says. the T-shirt and the Nokia N90 phone consistency of appearance of the entire “Imagine a bunch of hardcore embed- I received in recognition.” set. If there’s a particular piece that ded C programmers sent to do Java has priority for a certain release, they development when even the mention LINDA WATSON, make it obvious and appealing to of C++ made them cringe.” TOP CONTRIBUTOR users. One example from the last Much of this effort led to the The Top Contributor award is release was to enhance the Preferences C/C++ Development Tools project, bestowed on an individual whose dialog to make it easier to use. and it was Magloire who served as contributions flow into Eclipse proj- “If you took away the visual ele- the technical “mentor.” ects. The award can also apply to a ments of Eclipse, all you’d have would “It took hard work and lots of fight- part-time committer who has made be a blank white space and a com- ing to get the message across that substantial contributions in a non- mand line. We’re here to think about Eclipse was a viable option,” he committer role. The winner in this everything you see,” Watson says. recalls. “Don’t forget that back in 2001, category was IBM’s Linda Watson, “Any design issues that we work on Java was a hard sell to any embedded visual user-interface design lead for have to be validated cross-platform in C shops. We, however, had a great Eclipse, who reports to John terms of design and technical imple- team with open minds. Within QNX, I Kellerman, IBM’s chief Eclipse guru mentation. In addition to the identity may symbolize the CDT, but CDT is a (see Perspectives on page 38). aspects and the Workbench UI, we collaborative process, where a team is In the case of Eclipse, the area of work on the icons and wizard graph- responsible for a component. We have visual design goes beyond simply ics. We also support any of the other design meetings and brainstorming in building pretty interfaces. It includes plug-in areas like JDT and PDE that conference calls. Somehow, all the the Workbench, the UI for the require specific visual design support.” teams manage to post a design plan. Workbench and anywhere a visual While Watson is certainly pleased Then the community sends feedback element can be linked to usability with what she and her team have after the cycle dates are posted, and and ease of task completion. Though, accomplished, she too exemplifies the we work hard to be on time.” as an open-source IDE, Eclipse is only same modesty shown by the other In addition to the amount of code five years old, Watson has been heav- Community Award winners. “The that he and his team have produced, ily involved with it for the past 10 thing I’m most proud of in winning Magloire believes that part of the rea- years, since its infancy as IBM’s inter- the award is not the honor itself but son that QNX can make an impact is nal VisualAge for Java. that it represents the teamwork that that it’s familiar with the approval “When Eclipse was in its first I’ve been part of. It’s truly an amaz- process that an Eclipse project under- release, I worked with the developers, ing experience to see the developers goes. They have a customer agree- and the architecture was fairly set, and designers and usability people all ment that contains the requirements but I worked with them to get the working together. I’ve had the rare and serves to produce other docu- appearance cleaned up,” she says. opportunity to see the evolution and ments relating to what is possible “At that point, I think our mandate growth of Eclipse from the very within a given time frame. Once the was to be a good Windows citizen, beginning. It’s become successful design cycle is over, development is but now we’re really looking good as through the contributions of so many started with a team of programmers, a cross-platform development tool. If people. I’m very proud to have been the documentation people and the you look at the views and perspec- a part of that success.” testers. At a different stage, QNX has tives, the color, the way border treat- —George Walsh, Executive Editor
12 | ECLIPSE REVIEW Summer 2006 PROJECTS Fundamentals of the Platform | by Raghu Srinivasan
The JavaServer Faces Tools Project
JavaServer Faces (JSF) is one of the new standards in configuration file, and its Navigation the Java EE 5.0 release that has become one of the most page provides a graphical representa- prominent tools for building Java EE Web applications. This tion of the navigation rules, depicting the linkage of pages and actions in Eclipse undertaking, known as the JSF Tools Project, provides the navigation rule element. comprehensive tools to support the development of Web The editor supports drag-and-drop applications. of existing pages from the Project Explorer view to the editor canvas, Extending the Eclipse Web Tools configuration resource file, typically and features a fly-out tool palette that Platform Project with tools that sim- called faces-config.xml. In this file, includes all the operations that can plify JSF application development, the you define the managed beans, val- be performed in the Navigation page. project aims to bring to JSF applica- idators, converters and navigational The Managed Beans page is a form- tion development the same ease of rules of your Web application. The based editor that consists of a tree use that Eclipse projects offer. True to JSF Tools Project provides a multi- view to display all the managed the Eclipse charter of providing page editor that simplifies creation beans in the file and options to create frameworks that allow tool vendors to and maintenance of the resource file. and manage them. The rest of the extend the IDE, the JSF Tools Project pages in the editor provide similar has contributed a core set of frame- interfaces for other elements in the works that allow adopters to enable Figure 1 Setting the value of the “from” resource file. and extend its features. outcome to log-in The project has also contributed In concert with the WTP 1.5 an EMF model of the application con- release, the JSF Tools Project has figuration resource file and a frame- released a technology preview that work called the JSF Application supports the JavaServer Faces 1.1 Configuration Manager. The frame- specification, and support for JSF 1.2 work provides a unified application is planned for the upcoming release configuration model through the API, of WTP 2.0 in June 2007. In this arti- which effectively merges all of the cle, I’ll provide an overview of the application’s faces configuration mod- features in this release and walk you els. The framework also provides through the process of building and notification services to monitor deploying a JSF application using the changes to the EMF objects. These project’s tools and frameworks. So services enable the addition of new let’s get started on our guided tour. functions such as support for cross- model validation of the various arti- THE FACES CONFIGURATION This editor includes the WTP XML facts defined in the resource file. EDITOR Source Editor as well as multiple One of the new artifacts introduced form-based editors for managing THE JSF–JSP PAGE SOURCE by JSF technology is the application other artifacts in the file. The Source EDITOR page content is kept synchronized The JSF specification defines JSP as Raghu Srinivasan is a software development manager in the JDeveloper Group at Oracle, with changes in other pages and vice the default page-description language. where he is responsible for Eclipse projects. versa for a seamless editing experi- To be added to a JSP page, JSF com- He’s the project lead of the JSF Tools Project ence. The editor’s Overview page ponents use corresponding JSP tags. and a member of the WTP PMC. summarizes the information in the The WTP project provides a feature-
Summer 2006 www.eclipsereview.com | 13 PROJECTS
rich source editor for editing a JSP validator tag in the JSF Core taglib vides similar support for values of page (see “Develop Web has the attribute validatorId, which attributes that are bound to methods Applications Faster With WTP” by can be one of the standard validators defined in a managed bean. Tim Wagner, in our premiere issue). defined in the JSF specification or the Keeping in mind the features that set of validators registered in all the VALIDATION Eclipse users have come to expect in application configuration resource The JSP Source Editor now supports editors, including code completion files in the Web application: semantic validation for both EL and and as-you-type syntax and seman- non-EL values of attributes of the tic validations, the JSF Tools Project
14 | ECLIPSE REVIEW Summer 2006 PROJECTS
in the library are added to the build classpath and are optionally deployed to the server. The JSF Library feature Frameworks can be used to add support for other is similar to the JDT User Library, but can control its deployment to the component libraries, enhance existing tool features or server and can be created through extension points. add new features or services.
FRAMEWORKS These features, implemented using this framework. standard.jar the JSF Tools Project frameworks, are Let’s explore some of these fea- designed to be extensible so that tures in action by building a simple CREATING A WEB adopters can add or extend them. two-page JSF application. The first APPLICATION FOR TOMCAT They can be used to add support for step? Download and install the soft- Create a New Dynamic Web other component libraries, enhance ware list shown in Table 1. Application called FirstJSFApp. Set existing tool features or add new fea- the target runtime to Apache Tomcat tures or services. Here’s a brief REGISTERING APACHE 5.5. On the next wizard page, add overview: TOMCAT SERVER the JavaServer Faces facet. Use the Content Model Annotation We’ll deploy the applications to an preset combo box to choose a ver- Framework: Allows an adopter to Apache Tomcat Server. To register sion 1.1 project. On the JSF define additional metadata for ele- the server, select Windows Capabilities page, add the SUN-RI ments and attributes on any XML- >Preferences>Server>Installed library and select the Deploy JARS based content model for use at Runtimes. Click the Add… button to WEB-INF/lib. Click the Finish design time. This allows a plug-in and follow the dialogs to register the button to create the JavaServer developer to provide the metadata to server. Next, create an instance of Faces Application. You may be support tooling for other tag the server. Add the Servers view by prompted to accept the license for libraries such as the MyFaces selecting Window >Show the Web App DTD from Sun. You Tomahawk components. A tutorial View>Servers. On the Servers view, may also be asked to choose the accompanying the developer’s guide right-click to select New>Server J2EE perspective upon completion. demonstrates how this can be from the pop-up menu and follow In both cases, accept. accomplished. the dialogs to create a server. Your JSF application has now Design-time Metadata Processing been created. Note that the web.xml Framework: Uses the annotations CREATING JSF LIBRARIES file has been updated with the Faces framework to provide services, such Let’s create a library called SUN-RI servlet and servlet mapping. A stub as content assist and validation, to that contains the Sun JSF RI and JSF application configuration file the JSF–JSP Source Editor. It allows Apache JSTL jars so that our appli- (faces-config.xml) has been created, for defining new services, such as cation can execute against Apache and the build path has been updated Quick Fix and Hyperlink, or extend- Tomcat. Select Windows>Prefer- with the implementation jars. ing existing services. ences>Web and XML>JSF Design-time Application Manager: Libraries. Click the New... button to CREATING JSF–JSP PAGES Provides an approximation of certain add a new library. Browse to the Add the JSF tag outputLabel with an JSF runtime state information at folder that has the JSF Reference empty EL expression for the value design time, and allows for a plug- Implementation libraries and add attribute, as shown below, and save. gable design-time variable, property the jsf-api.jar and jsf-impl.jar. Check Use the JSP Page wizard to create a and method resolvers. the “is JSF Implementation” check page called login.jsp in the Web JSF Application Configuration box. Next, add the Apache Content folder of the new applica- Manager: Offers a unified applica- Commons jars and the JSTL jars. tion. On the Select Templates page tion configuration model via the The following jars must be present of the wizard, select the New API, effectively merging all faces in the library: JSP(html) template. Click Finish, configuration models into a single and the page will open in the WTP model. The framework also includes jsf-api.jar JSP source editor. Add the JSF tag jsf-impl.jar notification services to monitor commons-beanutils.jar libraries, the view and the form tag. changes in the model. Cross-model commons-collections.jar The JSP page should look like validations and additional applica- commons-digester.jar Listing 1. Add the JSF tag tion-wide functionalities will be commons-logging.jar outputLabel with an empty EL supported due to the inclusion of jstl.jar expression for the value attribute as
Summer 2006 www.eclipsereview.com | 15 PROJECTS
shown below, and save. The editor will indicate a syntax error. Listings
I LISTING 1
package com.tutorial; I LISTING 2 THE LOGIN.JSP PAGE CONTENT public class LoginBean { <%@ page language=”java” contentType=”text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1” private String prompt = pageEncoding=”ISO-8859-1”%> "Name"; private String name; <%@ taglib uri=”http://java.sun.com/jsf/core” prefix=”f”%> <%@ taglib uri=”http://java.sun.com/jsf/html” prefix=”h”%> public String getName() { return name;
16 | ECLIPSE REVIEW Summer 2006 PROJECTS
the cursor inside the brackets, hit Ctrl config.xml file in the Project Tomcat instance. Click Finish. You and the space bar simultaneously. You Explorer to launch the Faces should see the Tomcat server start in should see a pop-up with a list of all Configuration editor. Switch to the the console view and the executing the implicit objects in addition to the Navigation tab. Add the login.jsp log-in page appear in the Web managed bean that was defined. and welcome.jsp to the Navigation browser. Click the log-in button. You Select the managed bean, loginBean. tab. Select the Page control from the should navigate to the welcome Enter a dot after loginBean and pause. Palette and drop it on the Navigation page. Congratulations! You’ve creat- You should see a pop-up listing the tab. Choose the page in the resulting ed and executed your first JavaServer properties of the bean. Select Name. Select JSP File dialog. Faces application using the new The tag should be as follows: Connect the two pages. Click the Eclipse WTP JSF tooling. Link control in the Palette, select the
Summer 2006 www.eclipsereview.com | 17
An Introduction to Embedded Rich Client Platform Eclipse on Cell Phones?
ou can take it with you—literally. Applications that BY CHRIS ANISZCZYK, GORKEM ERCAN, used to run on the desktop can now be accessed n & MARK ROGALSKI Ythrough a browser, and apps that needed a browser can today be run anywhere, anytime. That’s the power of the embedded Rich Client Platform, an alternative to the to the embedded space. The important thing to remember traditional big-screen GUI. What’s best about building about J2ME is the notion of configurations and profiles. applications using eRCP is that, as with the Eclipse RCP, J2ME configurations comprise a virtual machine (VM) and you can do it all from your favorite workstation, using a minimal set of class libraries that provide the base func- open-source tools and technologies. So, what are you tionality for particular devices. These devices share similar waiting for? Let’s get started! characteristics like memory footprint and network connec- tivity. Currently, there are two J2ME configurations: WHAT’S ERCP ALL ABOUT? Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) and The RCP application model is used widely on desktops, Connected Device Configuration (CDC). Profiles are high- but its architecture is well adapted to embedded devices er-level APIs that, combined with device configurations, because multiple applications can run in a single JVM provide a complete runtime environment that is targeted using the Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGi) plat- for a specific set of devices. form. OSGi enables devices (including desktops) of any When working with eRCP, it’s important to note your shape or size to conform to a consistent and modular pro- target application because it will dictate the devices that gram model on a well-architected set of framework and can consume your application. (Note: OSGi lets you define core services. execution environments [EE] that mirror profiles.) eRCP This framework provides services and life-cycle man- currently runs on Windows Mobile 2003/5 and the Nokia agement to enable dynamic loading and many other fea- Series 60/80 devices—with QTe device support on its way. tures. The embedded Rich Client Platform (eRCP) proj- The eRCP project includes a Windows Desktop runtime ect is about bringing the familiar concepts of Eclipse’s so you can run and test eRCP-based applications without Rich Client Platform (RCP) to the applications that run going through the hassle of deploying your code to on devices such as mobile phones and PDAs. Concepts the device. Figure 1 (see page 23) shows Eclipse saying like plug-ins, views and the Workbench are all retained, Hello from a Windows Mobile 2005 cell phone. but in a much smaller footprint that can fit on today’s more capable devices. The prime benefit is that Eclipse INSIDE ERCP skills for writing RCP applications for desktops can be The eRCP project provides code patches that make the transferred to writing eRCP applications for devices. Eclipse Core Runtime and OSGi plug-ins compatible eRCP consists of a complete Eclipse runtime based on with the J2ME Foundation profile. It now uses this set of OSGi R4, several components that are subsets of RCP plug-ins directly from Eclipse. For other components, components and some components specific to small device development. Together, these provide a powerful Chris Aniszczyk is a software engineer at IBM Lotus currently environment that gives developers Eclipse’s capacity to focused on OSGi/Equinox development. He also works on the Gentoo use existing services and features, along with new capa- Linux distribution, and is a committer on many Eclipse projects. bilities that really allow Java applications to run effec- Gorkem Ercan is a senior software engineer in Nokia’s Java plat- tively on a multitude of different devices. forms group, and a committer for the Eclipse eRCP and Eclipse webtools projects. A WORD ON J2ME Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) is a Java platform for embed- Mark Rogalski is the development lead for an IBM project targeting ded devices. Similar to the enterprise (J2EE) and desktop mobile devices as well as the project lead for the Eclipse eRCP project. (J2SE) platforms, J2ME delivers Java technology’s benefits
Summer 2006 www.eclipsereview.com | 19
eRCP Development such as the Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT), JFace and capabilities. The Core component is the only mandatory Update Manager, it has subsets to reduce their size and component for a platform and is a subset of basic desktop provide a concentrated API that’s useful for embedded SWT. The Expanded component contains a subset of more devices. The eSWT Mobile Extensions and MicroXML sophisticated desktop SWT widgets that require more components were created to solve issues like the memo- resources. The Mobile component includes widgets that ry constraints found in most embedded environments. are targeted for mobile devices. In the case of Mobile Extensions, giving developers the ability to further abstract device input and output mech- anisms to accommodate the wide range of different I/O ESWT IS DESIGNED TO BE INDEPENDENT mechanisms is important. For MicroXML, the need was for a small and fast XML parser. MicroXML definitely FROM OTHER ERCP COMPONENTS, SO YOU fits the bill, providing full SAX and DOM support in only CAN USE IT WITHOUT ERCP AS A “MIDLET.” 107 kilobytes. Figure 2 shows Label and Text widgets displayed on a Nokia S60 implementation. Another important design feature of eSWT is compati- COMPONENTS bility with its desktop counterpart. eSWT is a subset of The embedded Standard Widget Toolkit (eSWT) is a sub- the desktop SWT API, but doesn’t alter the behavior of set of the well-known Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT). In widgets or features that are common to both toolkits. A addition to embedded versions of the desktop SWT com- desktop version of the implementation for mobile exten- ponents, eRCP provides Mobile Extensions containing new sions is available as part of the project so that you can dialogs and controls targeted for embedded devices. Just develop eSWT-based applications that are targeted for like desktop SWT, eSWT is designed to be independent both mobile and desktop platforms. It also ensures that from other eRCP components, so it is possible to use applications targeted for eRCP can also be run with desk- eSWT without eRCP as part of a “midlet.” top RCP. For example, the following Hello World example eSWT is divided into three components to provide flex- will run in both eRCP and RCP contexts: ibility for configuring eSWT content according to device public class HelloWorld {
Table 1 Widgets and layouts in eSWT core public static void main( String[] args) { org.eclipse.swt.widgets org.eclipse.swt.layout Display display = new Display(); Listener FormAttachment Shell shell = Button FormData new Shell(display);
Canvas FormLayout Text text = Combo new Text(shell, SWT.SINGLE); Composite text.setText(“Hello World!”);
Control shell.open(); Decorations while (!shell.isDisposed()) { if (!display.readAndDispatch()) Dialog display.sleep(); Display } Event display.dispose(); } FileDialog } Item Label ESWT CORE Layout The core library offers the minimal set of functions List required for developing embedded applications. These Menu include essential widgets, graphics and events. The API MenuItem provided is a subset of desktop SWT API, so applications MessageBox developed using it are binary-compatible with desktop ProgressBar platforms. eSWT core APIs inherit all classes from desktop Scrollable SWT in org.eclipse.swt, org.eclipse.swt.events, ScrollBar org.eclipse.swt.graphics packages and some of the classes Shell from org.eclipse.swt.widgets and org.eclipse.swt.layout. Slider The included classes from these packages are shown in Synchronizer Table 1. Text eSWT ExpandedeSWT Expanded is also a strict subset TypedListener of desktop SWT. The desktop SWT widgets and layout Widget managers that require more memory and larger screen sizes are provided via this library. All the desktop SWT
22 | ECLIPSE REVIEW Summer 2006 eRCP Development classes present in Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 org.eclipse.swt.browser and org.eclipse.swt.dnd are also present in the library. The classes listed in org.eclipse.swt.layout and org.eclipse.swt .widgets packages are also available, as shown in Table 2.
ESWT MOBILE EXTENSIONS eSWT introduces new widgets and dialogs with this library to better support dif- • TextExtension: An extension to the Text control that ferent input and output mechanisms and better use the provides the functionality needed for efficient use of native UI capabilities common to mobile devices. The fol- keyboard devices that have limited options. lowing are the new controls and dialogs contained in the • TimedMessageBox: A dialog that closes itself after a org.eclipse.ercp.swt.mobile package: certain time to notify the user about a limited amount • CaptionedControl: Displays a caption in front of of information. another control and an optional trailing. Depending In addition to the new controls and dialogs, the on the platform behavior, the caption is highlighted mobile library also provides APIs to query and track the when the contained control is focused. changes in certain mobile device features, such as • Command: Represents a general action that is associ- screen and input capacities. The MobileDevice, Screen ated with a control. The means of invoking a and Input classes, and their respective events and event Command differ according to platform capabilities. listeners, can be used to better adjust eRCP applications While they can be menu items in one platform, they to different devices. may be associated with a hardware command button or voice commands. Table 2 eSWT Expanded is a strict subset of desktop • ConstrainedText: A single line text control that limits SWT the characters that can be used by the user. This con- trol is ideal for numeric, decimal and phone number org.eclipse.swt.widgets org.eclipse.swt.layout input on devices. ColorDialog FillLayout • DateEditor: A data entry control that allows users to DirectoryDialog GridData enter or choose a date or time. FontDialog GridLayout • HyperLink: A selectable control similar to a hyperlink Table RowData on a Web page that launches applications like phone books, messaging or browsers that are common to TableColumn RowLayout mobile platforms, as shown in Figure 3. TableItem • ListBox: A selectable user interface that displays a Tree collection of ListBoxItems. A ListBoxItem allows the TreeItem specification of multiple icons and multiple lines of text. • ListView: Displays a collection of options in a multi- EJFACE column layout to allow you to select certain items. A eJFace, like its RCP cousin JFace, is a platform-independ- list item can have an icon and text. ent UI toolkit that provides viewers that simplify the • MobileShell: An extension of the desktop Shell that development of eSWT-based applications. eJFace wraps allows the trimmings to be dynamically changed. the eSWT widget in the context of the Model-View- • MultipageDialog: A tabbed dialog common in the Controller (MVC) paradigm. To use it, you supply an mobile world. Each tab hosts a Composite that leads eJFace viewer with a model of your choice and controller only to its own contents, as shown in Figure 4. classes that make the viewer show what you want. The • QueryDialog: A dialog for querying different data viewer types available in eJFace are: types, such as time, date and password. • CheckBoxTableViewer • SortedList: A list in which the elements are displayed • CheckBoxTreeViewer in ascending or descending order. This list can be fil- • ComboViewer tered. • ListViewer • TaskTip: A nonmodal window with text and an • TableViewer optional progress bar that is suitable for providing • TreeViewer feedback on long-running tasks. eJFace provides a resource-handling class that allows
Summer 2006 www.eclipsereview.com | 23 eRCP Development for the efficient manipulation of resources such as fonts public void setFocus() {} and images to save memory and increase performance, } as well as a preference page framework. This allows The next step is to notify Eclipse that you have a view to eRCP applications to provide preference pages in a plat- offer. This should be familiar if you’ve ever created a view form-consistent manner. One difference from the desktop in Eclipse, because you need only to modify the implementation of preferences is that it shows preference plugin.xml file: pages applicable only to the foreground application on a device rather than a conglomeration of pages from every
24 | ECLIPSE REVIEW Summer 2006 Take the Guesswork Out of Project Management
A Development Library At Your Fingertips
est practices can be an elusive term, but any attempt BY PER KROLL & KURT SAND to standardize the development process and give n Bsome common guidelines to everyone involved in application creation can’t be a bad thing. How would it be OpenUP/Basic. Over time, you can expect the scope of to have a flexible library and means of collaboration that these practices to include a variety of agile development helps you get products to market more efficiently? The approaches and grow to new software and systems engi- answer for many may be the Eclipse Process Framework neering domains. (EPF). AN AGILE APPROACH WHAT IS EPF? You may find that the first process, OpenUP/Basic, inte- EPF is different than other attempts to create best prac- grates well with your current practices. It takes an agile tices in software development. Its open-source aspects approach to development, valuing team collaboration provide developers, academia, practice and thought and benefits to the stakeholders versus unproductive leaders, consulting organizations and technology ven- deliverables and formality. However, the process does dors a forum for collaborating to create reference this within a proven, structured iterative life-cycle, so libraries and processes that work in practice rather than that projects can have enough control and measures to theory. EPF is committed to taking a fresh approach to fit within an organization’s limits, as illustrated in process development to overcome common challenges Figure 1. such as: The goal of OpenUP/Basic is to deliver an iterative • Practices from different sources captured in different software development process that is minimal, complete formats, making it hard to combine their content into and extensible. It was seeded through an IBM contribu- an integrated process. tion of a subset of RUP with many influences from • Practices that are difficult to customize to fit the Scrum. It has since been enhanced by committers and unique needs of a project. For example, it’s hard to contributors from more than a dozen organizations. rewrite a few pages and publish a new book to OpenUP/Basic is minimal in the sense that it includes address the unique style of your project. only content that is deemed essential. The process is • Practices typically expressed in text form without any less than 200 pages long and consists of only six roles, formal metamodel, making it difficult to use tools to 22 tasks and 17 artifacts. This means that it’s briefer instrument and automate them, resulting in manual, than your average book on processes, with the benefit haphazard adoption within your development envi- of being easier to use, with browser-based navigation, ronment. and an index and search engine that allow you to find • Branding of practices that encourage silos to drive toward divergence rather than convergence in the Per Kroll is project leader for the Eclipse Process Framework project, industry. and development manager for RUP/RMC. His most recent book, with Interim builds of EPF are available now. You can Bruce MacIsaac, is “Agility and Discipline Made Easy—Practices access the software by going to www.eclipse.org/epf. from OpenUP and RUP” (Addison-Wesley, 2006). You can also download EPF Composer, the tool for con- Kurt Sand is a senior manager for Telelogic Solutions. He defines, figuring and publishing process content (see “Increasing develops and promotes software development, governance and com- Development Knowledge with EPFC” by Peter Haumer, pliance solutions for Global 1000 companies. Spring 2006), along with a process library called
Summer 2006 www.eclipsereview.com | 25 Eclipse Process Framework
ics such as distributed or large-scale development, use How to Contribute to EPF of specific tools or technology, or compliance with stan- dards. EPF development progresses like any other Eclipse project. It’s also extensible, which means it can be used as a Anyone can contribute to the content and tool by reviewing the latest builds and submitting defects, recommendations and foundation on which process content can be added or improvements via Bugzilla. tailored as needed. This extensibility is aided by EPF separating method content, which you can see as a ref- If you want to take EPF beyond its current work and create a erence library of best practices, from process, which new content area, you need to submit an initial showcase that describes how to deliver software by using appropriate demonstrates that you have enough developers interested in evolving the content and a likely target audience. subsets of the reference library. If you want to extend OpenUP/Basic to address development that needs to For example, you can post a note to the EPF newsgroup comply with a certain standard, you can produce a plug- expressing your interest and use the response to build inter- in that will describe how to add, modify and delete est. As your idea gains ground, you’ll get many ideas from material. A plug-in can bring additional material to the the community on how to improve the content. By design, it’s easy to start working on content within EPF. However, reference library, like how to deal with traceability and the quality bar to get content included into an official audits, or it can help you modify processes, such as release is set high. You need to have favorable reviews by inserting formal reviews and audits at appropriate stages committers, and you need to have high and consistent qual- of development. ity from a technical and writing perspective. You also need OpenUP/Basic is part of a larger method framework to show that you have a sustainable developer, user and ideally value-add community for your content. that consists of a base process and, in the future, a number of extensions that will allow you to construct a If you’ve created content that EPF committers don’t accept, family of processes addressing a variety of development you can always make it available outside the “official” EPF needs, all united by a set of core principles for agile builds as a plug-in that people can download for a fee or free development. These principles are: of charge. • Balance competing priorities to maximize stakeholder value information when you need it. • Collaborate to align interests and share understanding The process is complete—it covers an entire course of • Evolve to continuously obtain feedback action for building a system. In addition to guidance • Focus on articulating the architecture around roles, tasks and artifacts, it gives you: • Templates to use as a starting point for producing GETTING STARTED WITH EPF project plans, iteration plans, test cases and other Probably the best approach in learning to use EPF is to artifacts try to use OpenUP/Basic as-is on a project to gain some • Examples experience with it before you customize it. Using their • Checklists to get information on what constitutes a favorite Web browser, team members can find relevant good test case or good requirements information about doing their job and learn how the • Guidelines to assist you in performing tasks like writ- artifacts they work on are developed and used collabora- ing automated tests and producing test suites tively with other team members. For example, as an • Concepts to educate yourself on topics such as pat- analyst, you can see what tasks you typically work on terns or components and what artifacts you’re responsible for, as shown in At the same time, OpenUP/Basic doesn’t explore top- Figure 2. If you decide to work on the Define Vision
Figure 1 Coming to agreements. OpenUP/Basic is an iterative approach with four well-defined milestones
Inception Elaboration Construction Transition
Life-Cycle Life-Cycle Initial Product Objective Architecture Operational Release Milestone Milestone Capability Milestone Milestone
Inception Elaboration Construction Transition Iteration(s) Iteration(s) Iteration(s) Iteration(s)
26 | ECLIPSE REVIEW Summer 2006 Eclipse Process Framework
Using OpenUP/Basic Figure 2 Browser-based navigation aids with the analyst role doesn’t replace the need for the books, articles and coding guidelines you use today. However, it does provide you with an easily accessible knowledge base for specifying process standards for a team.
HOW TO TAILOR EPF TO YOUR NEEDS As you get familiar with OpenUP/Basic, you may want to change the process, which EPF Composer allows you to do. For example, you may want to add your own examples for artifacts, change templates to match the information you want to capture, or add or rewrite guidelines to reflect your own best practices. All of these changes can be captured in your own sepa- task, you receive step-by-step guidance, checklists, rate plug-in that will be expressed as a change set. guidelines, concepts and other useful information that The advantage of this approach is that you can easily can assist you in developing a vision, as shown in move your changes to the new version as new releases Figure 3. As you progress through creating a vision, become available. If the EPF project or other content cre- you’ll update the Glossary, assuming you’ve decided to ators produce a plug-in for describing how to use a require- have one. You can use the tem- Develop a vision. Step-by-step guidance helps both novices and experts plate as a vision to get you Figure 3 started and to make sure that the visions for all of your projects are stylisti- cally similar. If you’ve never written a vision before, you might want to read through some rele- vant concepts and guide- lines for requirements, requirements gathering techniques and achieving concurrence. Once you think you have a decent vision document, you can use the checklist for a vision to help you assess whether it’s appropriate. Similar guidance is avail- able for key tasks and arti- facts for other people on the project, including developers, testers, archi- tects, project managers and stakeholders.
Summer 2006 www.eclipsereview.com | 27 Eclipse Process Framework ments management tool to create and manage a vision doc- beyond Eclipse-based development to any best practice that ument, you can pour this bucket of content into your ver- can be captured, described and published. sion without having your changes overridden. This lets you integrate OpenUP/Basic into your process while using con- COMMUNITY STRENGTH tinuous innovation within the EPF project and from value- EPF’s true strength lies in the fact that it’s an open-source add providers. Work is also underway to integrate Wiki project. Its success is dependent on the strength of the technology into EPF, which would make it even easier for community that supports the effort. Three thriving com- projects and individuals to augment and modify the process. munities are necessary for it to be successful: • Committers and Contributors, who will develop the EPF: BEYOND ECLIPSE open-source practices and supporting process tools EPF Composer uses the Eclipse Platform and technologies to • Users, who adopt and benefit from the technology leverage the existing work of other Eclipse projects while • Value-added Providers, who offer products and serv- focusing tooling efforts on what’s needed for process ices based on the open-source offering authoring and publishing. Initially, the EPF project However, a really exciting focused on creating a com- aspect of EPF is that the con- EPF-PRODUCED CONTENT CAN ADDRESS mitter and contributor com- tent produced can address DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES FOR ANY munity. Recently, it has development processes for become established as one any platform and technolo- PLATFORM AND TECHNOLOGY. of the most vibrant Eclipse gy—including development projects, with a growing using J2EE on Eclipse or .NET using Microsoft Visual development team comprising more than 25 committers Studio. When you want to deploy a process to the team, from over a dozen organizations and many contributors. you can publish the content as a cohesive Web site in Close to a hundred participants were present in a total of HTML format, allowing developers on any platform to five face-to-face meetings in Europe, U.S. and Canada, access the process regardless of whether that platform can along with many workgroups with weekly e-meetings. The run or is running Eclipse. This extends EPF’s value well team continues to innovate and make incremental improvements. The Benefits of Using EPF A growing number of individuals and organizations have expressed interest in contributing process content for An open-source framework for developing, integrating XP, Scrum, Essential Unified Process (EssUP), Agile Unified and publishing processes can provide a number of signifi- Process (AUP), DSDM and the OPEN Process Framework. cant benefits to you and your organization: Many of these companies are going through legal proce- • The ability to quickly and easily capture and communi- dures associated with contributing content to Eclipse. And cate best practices reduces the risk of losing a key several thought leaders in the agile community have team member and provides an effective means of train- expressed an interest in creating a broader collaboration ing new team members. around a consolidated agile framework. . • Using a common framework based on a documented OpenUP/Basic is a tool-agnostic process that can be metamodel makes it easier to integrate best practices used with pen and paper, whiteboards or tools. The meta- from multiple sources. It also makes it easier for you to model does provide for hooks called tool mentors that can share your practices with others. be added to offer you step-by-step guidance for carrying out tasks using a certain tool. Value-added providers can • EPF provides an easy way to communicate processes across projects in your organization and with external also produce plug-ins that allow you to add mentors for stakeholders that may include regulatory bodies that the tools you’re using. You should expect to see a lot of require documentation of your development processes. interesting progress in these areas in the future.
• The EPF ability to integrate process with tool guidance EPF MOVES FORWARD enables you to first define your practices before choos- ing tools for automation. This reduces the chance of Time after time, open-source projects have shown that purchasing tools that don’t support the way you devel- they drive unprecedented innovation. We should expect op software and systems. It also guards against tools that both EPF content and associated tooling will con- going unused because people don’t know when and tinue to evolve at an increasingly rapid speed. You can how to use them. already explore a range of interesting ideas on how to • EPF enables you to continue to evolve your practices. leverage Wiki technology, card game metaphors, visuali- Current practices can be documented, baselined and zation and automation technology to make the process analyzed to identify gaps and areas for improvement. easier and more fun to adopt. Subsequent process-improvement initiatives are simpli- So get involved to help build the next generation of fied via configuration and change management of the software processes. Knowledge, as we all know, is process artifacts. This can also be applied to more for- mal process improvement initiatives such as CMMI, if strength, and getting products to market faster by con- you wish. tributing to and using a growing knowledge base makes development easier for everyone.
28 | ECLIPSE REVIEW Summer 2006 Managing Dependencies to Give Apps Long Life
Leaving the Crystal Ball Behind in App Development
othing lasts forever. The sad fact is that application BY PETER VARHOL quality degrades during its useful life. Software n Nguru Tom DeMarco has claimed that applications become more “brittle” as enhancements, modifications out the need to write and rewrite foundation code for and bug fixes performed over a period of years degrade every application. their overall quality and their ability to adapt to future How we manage the dependencies in our code goes a modifications and changes in scope. The longer you long way toward creating a sound architecture that helps keep a code base in productive use, the more likely it is preserve quality over the application’s useful life. It may to cause problems for users. sound trite to say that there are good dependencies and What does this have to do with your software proj- bad dependencies, but this goes back to best practices for ect? It helps you to understand the reasons why quality building code. Good dependencies are those that tend to degrades over time. Changing and adding code to an flow in one direction, usually from the least stable pack- existing application remains largely a manual operation, ages to the most stable. with a potential for errors and omissions with each change that will ultimately lower its quality. But application quality also has an architecture com- UNSTABLE DEPENDENCIES ARE ponent. Brittleness occurs because the original applica- tion design may not be ideal, and because changes over INHERENT IN PACKAGES THAT CHANGE time fail to follow good design principles in the rush to address bugs or add new features. The result can be OFTEN THROUGHOUT DEVELOPMENT called “accidental architecture,” where the architectural model evolved based on a series of tactical decisions AND MAINTENANCE rather than a strategic plan. In particular, several different types of dependencies LINKING THE PIECES deserve scrutiny. A common one is cyclic dependency, A significant aspect of application architecture has to do in which cycles exist in the package-dependency graph. with dependencies among components. Code is full of Packages that have cyclic dependencies are typically dependencies; that is, most packages call other packages more difficult to unit test, maintain and understand. in some capacity and call other code as well. There are Cyclic dependencies make it more difficult to predict also dependencies on the operating system, processor and the effect that changes of a package will have on the underlying I/O hardware. Some of these dependencies are rest of the system. A set of packages with cyclic direct, while others are indirect. dependencies has issues related to the concept of This is not only desirable, it’s inevitable. It’s impracti- design layering in that the packages have a disorgan- cal to write code that doesn’t contain dependencies. ized architecture. Without them, there would be little more than basic I/O, Unstable dependencies also have an impact on appli- and the application would have no coherent structure cation architecture robustness. Unstable dependencies (anyone remember Fortran?). In general, we accept the are inherent in packages that change often throughout dependencies on the JVM or on operating system services Peter Varhol is a software consultant and technology writer based in as vital to writing an application. They provide rich I/O Nashua, New Hampshire. He can be reached at [email protected]. and a fine level of control over application features, with-
Summer 2006 www.eclipsereview.com | 29 Dependency Analysis development and maintenance. Due to those frequent other poor design decisions, then inform designers and changes, the application’s structure becomes unstable as even individual developers of rule violations. The actual the dependencies shift. architecture of the application can then evolve in a We can turn these truisms into design rules for manag- deliberate manner instead of being an accident, result- ing package dependencies. Such rules might look some- ing in significantly better application quality across the thing like this: entire life cycle. Minimize dependency cycles between packages: Dependency analysis provides details on what pack- Cyclic dependencies make an application brittle by get- ages or classes are dependent upon others, so that archi- ting away from a layered architecture. Calling back and tects and developers have a clear understanding of the forth between packages makes it more likely that effects that changes and enhancements will have on dif- ferent parts of the code Figure 1 Many dependency analysis tools use visual displays of dependencies base. It allows architects between packages to design applications that follow best practices, and developers to implement code that doesn’t become brittle over multiple main- tenance releases.
ECLIPSE GETS INTO THE ACT Fortunately, Eclipse is becoming a popular host for tools that provide an insight into the dependen- cies within an application. The Eclipse platform pro- vides several ways of per- forming dependency analy- sis. Even dependency tools that don’t integrate into Eclipse as plug-ins can be used in conjunction with the IDE. For example, some third-party products let you run an analysis through Ant, which, of course, is a standard Eclipse compo- nent. In addition, changes changes in one package will require corresponding to the resulting structure can be applied to the Eclipse changes in classes, both in that package and the code- project, so that any changes performed can automatically pendent one. be seamlessly loaded into Eclipse. JDepend, licensed Maintain independence between specific packages: under the BSD license and also executable as an Ant When packages reflect different application aspects but task, provides the ability to delineate all of the dependen- where those aspects are independent from each other, cies among Java packages. it’s crucial to maintain this independence over time. Not However, the easiest way to work with dependency only does it minimize complexity, it also allows effective analysis from within Eclipse is through plug-in integra- code sharing among various applications. tion. A Stanford University project has taken the Maintain a layered architecture: Keep dependencies JDepend source and turned it into an Eclipse plug-in. moving in a single direction only, from the highest-level Commercial products have also been implemented as packages to the lowest. This supports the concepts of plug-ins to offer build, analysis and fix cycles for layering and stable dependencies. By keeping the dependencies without leaving the platform. dependencies moving downward and to more stable Dependency analysis can be approached in several packages, you minimize the chances of disruptive ways. Probably the simplest way to identify and exam- changes and unpredictable results in every change you ine dependencies is by listing all the classes and meth- make. ods along with what they call and what calls them. Structured techniques that fit well with the current However, such a list will tell you little about the nature emphasis on agile programming are beginning to emerge of the dependencies, because our brains don’t process that scan an application to identify dependencies and large amounts of text information very well.
30 | ECLIPSE REVIEW Summer 2006 Dependency Analysis
Instead, it’s easier and more informative to visualize Figure 2 A sample DSM showing dependencies in dependencies. One way of doing this is to draw a dia- the wrong direction gram of components and the relationships between them. Figure 1 shows such a diagram for part of the Apache JMeter code base and the relationships between Java packages, for example. ABC D These images are visually attractive, contain a lot of information, and can be helpful in determining architec- ture issues that should be addressed. But in reality, the A X diagrams themselves contain too much information. You don’t necessarily need to know the nature of the dependencies right away to know whether or not you’ve B X violated any of the design rules. Until you get to the point of fixing poorly designed dependencies, this may X X be information overkill. C
USING MATRICES AND DIAGRAMS Alternatively, a natural way of tracking dependencies is D X with matrices. They present both a visual image of the state of dependencies within an application and avoid providing unnecessary information on the state of the application design. Matrices can show dependencies what others just by looking at the Xes. Figure 3 shows between packages without the need to delineate each just what such a diagram would look like with no unde- dependency. It’s possible to draw out such matrices by sirable dependencies. In this case, all of the packages hand, but several approaches have been used to auto- farther up in the design are dependent only on lower- mate the process. level and more stable packages. One such automated technique is the Design This simple diagram uses an X to represent a depend- Structure Matrix, or DSM. DSM has grown out of ency. You can also take that a step further and use a research conducted at MIT on representing and analyz- number to represent the exact number of dependencies ing complex systems. An active community is pursuing between the packages. In practice, the Xes are replaced research and development into its use by the actual number of dependencies between the (www.dsmweb.org). DSM represents a Java application packages. This provides an even clearer representation in a matrix view, with class- of the dependencies’ extent es listed on both the hori- Figure 3 The same DSM, but with the dependencies between packages. These zontal and vertical axes. adjusted numbers are, of course, The squares in the matrix hypothetical, since this dia- represent whether or not gram doesn’t represent the dependencies exist between ABC D actual packages of a Java packages. application. But it’s illustra- Figure 2 shows a simple tive of the DSM’s ability to example of a DSM matrix. A immediately point out This application has four potential problems with an packages: A, B, C and D. architecture. Each is listed on the hori- When you rearrange the B X zontal and vertical axes. packages from most stable The diagonal, of course, to least, or from the foun- represents the unity case, XX dation packages to those where a package has a C that depend on them prima- dependency on itself (which rily in a layered manner, all will always be the case). of the numbers are below An X in a block else- D X X the diagonal. This means where in the diagram repre- that higher-level packages sents a dependency by a depend on lower-level ones, vertical package on a hori- which promotes stability zontal one. For example, in Figure 2, Package C is used and predictability during the life of the application. by Package D. Alternatively, you can say that Package D Dependencies run in the same direction, from top to depends on, or has a dependency on, Package C. bottom. Likewise, Package A also has a dependency on Package Of course, you may not have designed your applica- C. It is easy to see what packages are dependent on tion that way. If not, DSM can help you determine the
Summer 2006 www.eclipsereview.com | 31 Dependency Analysis layering. But it instills the information needed to prac- choose suitable packages based on the layer where the tice discipline during the numerous bug-fixes and top-level classes are located. You can do this within the enhancements that inevitably occur almost continuously context of the Lattix LDM tool, for example, or manually. while an application is in active use. The DSM is both infinitely scalable and collapsible. You PLANNING AHEAD can make the matrix as large as you need it. If it grows Eclipse is more than a development environment; it’s an too large, you can collapse it in a couple of different ways. application life-cycle platform. This was reinforced with First, you can organize your packages into larger group- the Software Tools and Performance Project, and is ings—call them subassemblies or application components. being extended with two new projects being defined this You might organize architecturally, by selecting classes or year: the Application Lifecycle Framework (ALF), being packages that belong together functionally, and organizing led by Serena, and the Tools Services Framework, being each of those separately led by Compuware. using DSM. In this light, dependency Figure 4 shows how ECLIPSE IS MORE THAN A DEVELOPMENT analysis is a life-cycle tool. dependency analysis can Because “bad” dependen- be integrated into Eclipse ENVIRONMENT—IT’S AN APPLICATION cies, or broken architecture using the Lattix LDM rules, can degrade an appli- plug-in as an example. LIFE-CYCLE PLATFORM. cation whenever it’s modi- When you build the fied, these tools can help application, in this case the open-source Ant code base, you not only in initial development, but as you bring the Lattix perspective displays the dependency matrix, your applications back for bug fixes and enhancements along with a number of metrics, including the total for years to come. number of dependencies among packages and rule vio- An Eclipse development team can employ dependen- lations, system stability and the number of package lay- cy analysis as a life-cycle quality tool, enabling both ers between dependent classes. These displays help you designers and developers to create and maintain a more assess the architecture so that you can address any defi- robust application. It will focus on using the informa- ciencies. tion provided by dependency analysis to make better decisions on architecting the application, and apply FIXING STRUCTURAL DEPENDENCIES analysis of an application’s structure whenever code To make the right decisions as a software architect or is added in order to reduce testing requirements while developer, you should understand the functionality and delivering enhancements without breaking existing requirements of the program. You also need to have features. some idea about which parts of the program are Figure 4 Plug-ins can make analysis a part of the design and maintenance processes likely to be extended or reused. However, as will be demonstrated here, package structure can be improved even without this knowledge. One of the first things to look for is whether any classes are at the top level. A high occurrence of cyclic dependencies associated with the “collapsed” top- level classes, as is the case in this example, is a good indication that top-level classes should be moved to appropriate subpackages. As shown in the matrix view, the Ant code base has several top-level class- es. For improved package structure, it is good practice to move these classes to subpackages. However, care should be taken to
32 | ECLIPSE REVIEW Summer 2006 Saying Howdy to the World With RCP
Creating a ‘Hello World’ Eclipse Application
he Eclipse IDE regularly tops the list of open-source BY DAN RUBEL & KEERTI PARTHASARATHY tools for developer use and satisfaction. Beneath this n TIDE is a generic platform called the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP), with which you can build general-purpose for the application. The Exporting Section of the Overview cross-platform client applications. To help you learn Eclipse page lists the steps to follow to package the application. and rich client programming, we’ll present a simple exam- Click the Launch an Eclipse Application in the Testing ple of a “Hello World” executable program that introduces section of the manifest to run the RCP application. you to some Eclipse RCP concepts, programming tech- Here’s the list of source files that were created: niques and structures. Our example, created using Eclipse Activator.java: Controls the life cycle of the plug-in. 3.2, shows how easy it is to create an Eclipse RCP applica- If you’re using Eclipse 3.1, the filename will reflect the tion, turn it into a product, generate JUnit tests for the UI, plug-in project name. and package and deploy the application. You may see some Application.java: The main program that launches slight display differences if you’re using Eclipse 3.1. the application and controls all aspects of its execution. ApplicationActionBarAdvisor.java: Customizes CREATING AN RCP PROJECT menus, toolbars and status bars. The first step in creating a “Hello World” application is to ApplicationWorkbenchAdvisor.java: Handles the create an RCP project using the Eclipse New Project wizard. Workbench, provides life-cycle and event-loop hooks for Follow these steps to create the project. In the Eclipse IDE, the Workbench and sets the default perspective. choose the menu item File > New > Project to launch the ApplicationWorkbenchWindowAdvisor.java: Used New Project wizard. Select Plug-in Project from the list. In to customize the Workbench window, such as status the next page of the wizard, enter the name of the project. line, toolbar and title. It also provides hooks for the For our example, enter org.eclipse.rcpapp.hello, make sure Windows life cycle. that Create a Java Project is selected and that Eclipse ver- Perspective.java: Defines the perspective. sion 3.2 is selected as the target platform. Then click the The three Advisor classes are used to configure all Next button. In the next window, select Yes to Create a aspects of the Workbench. The plugin.xml file defines the Rich-client Application, then click Next. Select the Create a org.eclipse.core.runtime.applications extension point, Plug-in using one of the Templates options; then choose the which defines the class to run to launch the application; in Hello RCP template. This is a minimal stand-alone RCP this case, Application.java, as shown in Listing 1. application. Click Finish. The project is created, and the plug-in manifest is opened in the plug-in manifest editor, as Dan Rubel is CTO of Instantiations and has more than 15 years of shown in Figure 1. commercial software development experience, including eight years The plug-in manifest editor can be used to manage the with Java and four years with Eclipse. He has been the primary architect and product manager for several successful commercial plug-in and edit its files: manifest.mf, plugin.xml and products, including JFactor, jKit/GO and jKit/Grid, and has played build.properties. The Overview page has links that are used key design and leadership roles in other commercial products such as to develop, test and deploy a plug-in. The Plug-in Content WindowBuilder Pro, VA Assist and CodePro Studio. section can be used to manage the different sections of the plug-in manifest. The plug-in manifest editor has pages to Keerti Parthasarathy is a member of the technical staff at Instantiations. She has a master’s degree in computer science from configure and manage the dependencies, extensions and Portland State University and more than eight years of experience in extension points of the plug-in. The Testing section has a software development. Launch an Eclipse Application link that is a one-click launch
Summer 2006 www.eclipsereview.com | 33 Hello World
Figure 1 The plug-in manifest in the manifest editor CREATING THE PRODUCT CONFIGURATION FILE Once an application is creat- ed, you often need to turn it into a product within Eclipse. Let’s take the “Hello RCP” application we’ve cre- ated and make it into a product. To do this, we create a product configuration file. The product configuration file defines and manages all aspects of an Eclipse product and has the .prod- uct extension. Some of the product’s aspects to be defined are the product launcher name, about dialog and splash screen. The product configura- tion file is used at build time to build and deploy the product. ADDING A MENU AND A MENU ITEM Select File > New > Product Configuration to launch The next step in creating an application often involves the Product Configuration wizard. In the Product adding menus and menu items. To enhance our basic Configuration file wizard, select org.eclipse.rcpapp.hello RCP application, let’s add a menu and a menu item, as the parent directory, enter helloRCP.product for the which, when selected, will open a dialog with the file name, and select the basic configuration file. The “Hello” message. To add the menu, enter the following product configuration file is generated and opened in code in the fillMenuBar method in the the editor. ApplicationActionBar Advisor: The product configuration file editor is used to manage and edit all the information contained in the product config- // create a Hello menu uration file. Fill in the product name and specify org.eclipse MenuManager HelloMenu = new MenuManager(“&Hello”); .rcpapp.hello.application as the application to be run. // add the menu to the menu bar menuBar.add(HelloMenu); Click the New button for the Product ID field to create a new product ID, org.eclipse.rcpapp.hello.product. This is If you launch the application at this point, no menu will defined in the plugin.xml by the org.eclipse.core.runtime appear, since you haven’t added any menu items. To add a .products extension: menu item to the menu you just created, define an action to open a dialog with the message “Hello!” by creating the
34 | ECLIPSE REVIEW Summer 2006 Hello World
TESTING THE UI Figure 2 A sample of the Hello World Product Definition window We can select a variety of open-source and commercial test frameworks to facilitate GUI testing. Let’s use the Abbot open-source frame- work to write a test to exer- cise the menu in the “Hello RCP” application. Download the abbot_1.0- rc1-eclipse-3.0.zip (http://sourceforge.net/ projects/abbot) and install it in the plug-ins directory of your Eclipse installation. Create a plug-in test project by selecting File > New > Plug-in Project, then name the project org.eclipse .rcpapp.hello.test. Add these plug-ins to the dependencies, using the manifest editor:
• org.eclipse.rcpapp.hello tion dialog, select Run… from the Run menu. The launch • org.junit configuration is used to specify the program to be run; the • abbot • abbot.swt.eclipse arguments, if any are necessary; and the plug-ins needed • abbot.swt.hierarchy in the runtime workspace. Select JUnit Plug-in Test, and click the New button. A new JUnit plug-in test launch Create a a test package, then a HelloRCPTest class. The configuration is created. Name it testHelloRCP. Select Run testMenuAndDialog method uses an Abbot a Single Test and enter org.eclipse.rcpapp.hello.test as the BaseOKCanelDialogTester to invoke the message dialog project. Then, select test.HelloRCPTest as the test class. upon selection. Click OK to close the message dialog. Now the launch configuration is as shown in Figure 3. The next step is to create a JUnit Plug-in test launch In the Main tab, select Run a Product and org.eclipse configuration for the test. To open the launch configura- .rcpapp.hello.product. Now run the test. You’ll see the “Hello RCP” application Figure 3 Selecting “Run a Product” and org.eclipse.rcpapp.hello.product runs the Abbot test window open. When the Open Info menu is selected, the message dialog pops up and is closed by clicking the OK button, and the application exits. Congratulations! You have now successfully run a GUI test for the “Hello RCP” application!
DEPLOYING THE PRODUCT Eclipse offers a wide variety of options to package an application for deployment. To export the product, select Export > Plug-in Development > Eclipse Product from the File Menu. Select Export to archive, type in hello.zip as the name of the archive, and click Finish. The “Hello
Summer 2006 www.eclipsereview.com | 35 Hello World
RCP” product is now ready to be deployed. Exporting to hello.zip file in the destination directory. The “Hello RCP” a directory can be used in conjunction with a commer- application is ready to run. Click the hello.exe file to cial installer to create a professional-looking deployment launch the application. If your executable fails, check your executable. entries against the code and screenshots in this article. If it runs, give yourself a hand—you’ve successfully created INSTALLING AND EXECUTING THE APPLICATION your “Hello World” Eclipse application! In the final step in testing the “Hello World” product, REFERENCES we’ll install and execute the application from the hello.zip I “Eclipse: Building Commercial Quality Plug-Ins,” by Eric Clayberg and Dan Rubel (Addison-Wesley, 2006) file. This will test what end users would do in installing I “Eclipse Rich Client Platform,” by Jeff McAffer and Jean-Michel Lemieux (Addison-Wesley, 2006) an Eclipse application that you’ve created. Unzip the I The Abbot Java GUI Test Framework (http://abbot.sourceforge.net/doc/overview.shtml) Listings I LISTING 1: THE EXTENSION POINT THAT DEFINES THE APPLICATION.JAVA CLASS
I LISTING 2: OPENHELLODIALOGACTION.JAVA /*** * * Action to open a dialog with a Hello! message * */ public class OpenHelloDialogAction extends Action {
private final IWorkbenchWindow window;
public OpenHelloDialogAction(IWorkbenchWindow window){ this.window = window; setText("Open Info"); setId(“helloRcp.hello”); }
public void run(){ // open the message dialog if(window != null) { try { MessageDialog.openInformation(window.getShell(), "Hello RCP Application", "Hello!!!"); } catch (Exception e) { MessageDialog.openError(window.getShell(), "Error", "Error opening dialog" + e.getMessage()); } }
} }
36 | ECLIPSE REVIEW Summer 2006 PERSPECTIVE
continued from page 38 I embedding, enabling rich client and administration. • Security services for authenticat- applications to run native appli- ing user access, managing user cation components (like THE ONE-TWO PUNCH credentials, data encryption, digi- browsers, spreadsheet, graphing If you’re not already building rich tal certificates, secure communi- and word processor objects, etc.) client applications, get ready to start, cation with servers and providing within the application window or because that’s where Web develop- rich client applications with secu- for the rich client application ment innovation is taking place, result- rity “sandboxes” to protect the itself to be embedded within a ing in easier-to-use applications that client device from attempts to native application. deliver more value to users and more download information from • Support for offline computing for market differentiation to vendors of servers and access local files. cacheing application code and software applications. Invest in both • Desktop integration services data, extensions for synching RCP and RIA skill sets and technolo- include platform-independent cached data with the server after gies, and always focus on requirements access to native editing features connectivity is reestablished. when deciding on an approach. Aim like drag-and-drop, clipboard cut, I call these Enterprise Web 2.0 for an applications strategy that fea- copy and paste, edit undo and frameworks, which make your RIAs tures an Enterprise Web 2.0 framework redo, and so on. They also richer, faster and easier to maintain that unites the richness of RCP with include services for application while preserving low-cost deployment RIA ease of development.
Table 1 Deciding Between an RCP and an RIA Factor RCP is best if… RIA is best if…
Usage Model Your client application needs to: Your client application: • Support complex, nonlinear UI navigation. • Supports linear UI navigation, repeating a standard sequence of steps, such as in • Mostly operate offline (as in developer tools and online commerce and data entry. office suites). • Will be connected to a server. • Runs as part of an existing Web-based application.
RCPs provide robust UI frameworks, access to client resources and client/server RIA applications are browser-based and require a server connection to run. They fea- messaging, etc., making it easy for highly skilled (and expensive) RCP developers ture advanced UI widgets like trees and charts, but enabling nonlinear UI navigation to build support for the features above. can be complex and hard to maintain.
Application Application longevity and maintainability are important, and client updates will occur Application updates will occur frequently, and code maintainability is less important. Lifecycle relatively infrequently.
I find RCP applications easier to maintain due to the robust object modeling, reuse RIA scripting languages lend themselves well to rapid development, but are harder and inheritance enabled by RCP languages (e.g., Java, C#). This can be out to maintain than RCP languages. On the positive side, application changes don’t weighed by the need to update and synchronize client installations for each change. require client-side updates, making them easy to deploy.
Project Scope Your client application scope is complex, and your development team is larger. Your client application scope is simpler and is developed by a small to medium-sized team.
RCP languages have strong facilities for team development and code reuse, making RIA toolkits and scripting languages make it easy to access server-side components, them well suited for large, complex project scopes, but they require more expensive but aren’t well suited for implementing complex client-side logic, nor do they have OOP developers. especially strong support for team development.
Deployment • You have control over users’ client configurations. • You’re not sure all users will be able to download and run the required VM. • The client application must run as a desktop application, not in a browser. • Your application must run in a browser. • The client application must interact with local resources—files, other client • The client application doesn’t need to access client resources. applications, etc.
A virtual machine (VM) executes the RCP application—as a desktop application or RIAs don’t require a client VM, making them faster to start and easier to distribute in a browser—and enables access to local resources. However, the client machine to a broader group of users running on a wider variety of client devices. Because of must be capable of downloading and running the VM. Due to IT security policies or strict client-side security, they lack an easy and portable way to access client-side client incompatibility, this may not always be the case. resources.
Application Your application features lots of client-side logic—especially involving access to You need or want a choice of where application logic lives. Logic client resources or support for offline computing.
RCP programming languages have well-developed capabilities for defining business RIA logic can reside mostly on the server or the client (or anywhere in between), logic and accessing local resources. In fact, they are the same languages used to but RIA scripting languages make it easier to access server-side business logic than implement server-side service oriented architecture (SOA) components. implement client-side logic, which can be hard to maintain over time.
Summer 2006 www.eclipsereview.com | 37 PERSPECTIVE The Present and Future of Eclipse | by Robert Buffone
The Battle for Your Application: RCP vs. RIA
The Web has revolutionized software development by or client-based? Is access to making it easier to create and deploy client applications. client-side resources required? Though simple to use, Web user interface (UI) capabilities often limit WILL THEY CONVERGE? their utility. They reduce usability by adding click-and-wait page I’ve often wished RCP could be more refreshing and limiting usage of keyboard accelerators and shortcuts. like RIA, and vice versa. In fact, they They feature just enough UI widgets to make them good at collecting can be. Organizations are beginning to form data and leading users through a series of pages to complete a implement home-built or commercial transaction. And they generate a lot of network traffic transferring Java and advanced AJAX-based frame- Web pages between browser and server, slowing performance. works that extend RIAs with powerful RCP-like capabilities, such as: • Rich UI services for generating Rich client platforms, like the DEALING WITH THE DILEMMA cross-platform rich user inter- Eclipse RCP, address the UI issues The best way to cut through the hype faces and binding them to busi- with robust frameworks (SWT and is to focus on application require- ness logic components. JFace), and address deployment ments. RCP and RIA excel in different • Application object life-cycle issues with update management. scenarios, and I find the following management services for imple- With desktop application develop- five factors to be helpful when decid- menting more robust, maintain- ment seemingly removed, you may ing which approach to use: able client-side logic; services believe that the end of HTML brows- • Usage Model: How will the often include instantiating, con- er-based Web applications is near. application be used? Online or trolling and terminating UI con- But along comes AJAX. Combining offline? Casual or prolonged trols and application sessions. JavaScript and XML-based UI defini- use? Will the UI drive the user or • Persistent storage services enable tions, it overcomes the traditional UI vice versa? the application or a group of rich constraints of browser-based applica- • Application Life-cycle: Will the client applications to store and tions, enabling the development and application be in production for access information on the client easy deployment of Rich Internet months or years? Will require- device. Applications (RIAs) like GMail and ments change frequently? Will • Peripheral device services pro- Google Maps. Thus, there are two maintainability be a factor? vide cross-platform access to rich-client technology segments com- • Project Scope: Will the develop- printers, bar-code readers and peting for the right to address your ment team be large or small? other peripheral equipment con- client application requirements. What developer skills are avail- nected to the client device. If both platforms offer similar bene- able? Will the client require- • Messaging services include con- fits, how do you make the right choice ments be complex or simple? nection status monitoring and for your particular application? Having • Deployment: Will the application notification, communications (var- architected many RCP and RIA appli- be deployed to one client plat- ious forms of message sending cations, as well as a framework that form or many? Will it be brows- and receipt: publish/subscribe, unites them, here are the guidelines I er-based? Do you have control message broadcasting, real-time follow when selecting an approach. over users’ client config- push and alerts, and so on) and urations? message integrity (message queu- Robert Buffone is principal software architect • Application Logic: How complex ing with a persistent queue and at Nexaweb Technologies, which sells rich are the business logic require- guaranteed order of delivery). Internet application development tools. ments? Will the logic be server- I continued on page 37
38 | ECLIPSE REVIEW Summer 2006
Sybase_WorkSpace_Ad.qxp 5/25/06 9:47 AM Page 1
Sybase WorkSpace: Do Something More Interesting
A SINGLE ENVIRONMENT OFFERS WHAT YOU NEED FREEDOM TO CUSTOMIZE BASED ON YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS Sybase WorkSpace is a Java™ toolkit offering the five most important WorkSpace’s modular packaging allows enterprises the flexibility to design and development tools in an integrated easy-to-use, open decide how to assign business critical tasks to developers, rather than source framework: requiring them to fit into ill-fitting “roles” predetermined by a vendor. • database development • mobile development You buy only the pieces you need, enabling you to customize your • web application development • enterprise modeling environment as you see fit. • services-oriented development With Sybase WorkSpace, you’re finally free to do the design and MAKES DEVELOPMENT AND DESIGN EASY TO LEARN AND USE development that’s interesting to you. For more information and Using industry-leading integrated model-driven design, visual develop- to download White Papers and an evaluation copy, visit ment and task-based wizards, Sybase WorkSpace automates mundane www.sybase.com/workspace tasks and cuts the typical development tool learning curve, freeing developers to concentrate on what’s important—business logic.
Copyright © 2006 Sybase, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All product and company names are trademarks of their respective owners. November 7-9, 2006 The Hyatt Regency Cambridge Boston, MA
er ist rly eg Ea R for ts! ay oun Tod isc k d D ac Bir e B Se ver CoCourse Listing SUPERB SPEAKERS! TOTAL IMMERSION! TERRIFIC TOPICS! Scott Barber Choose From 67 Classes Managing Test/QA Teams Rex Black Testing SOA and Web Services Clyneice Chaney Pick From 8 In-Depth Tutorials C# and ASP.NET Test Ross Collard NEW! Birds-of-a-Feather Sessions Security Testing Elfriede Dustin Locating Performance Bottlenecks Jeff Feldstein Network With Colleagues Just-in-Time Testing Robert L. Galen Ice Cream Social Effective Metrics Robin F. Goldsmith Requirements Gathering Hung Q. Nguyen Reception in Exhibit Hall Improving Java Performance Robert Sabourin Pose Your Questions to 25+ Exhibitors Agile Testing Mary Sweeney Risk-Based Testing Strategies And dozens more! Mingle With More Than 40 Speakers Test Automation Produced by Welcome
Save the Dates! November 7-9 at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge in Boston
From service-oriented architectures to AJAX to applica- where the industry is headed and what challenges you’ll tion security, change is the one constant in software likely be facing next year. development. In the face of continuous innovation, While participating in the technical program is impor- experts like you who are trying to improve the quality of tant, equally valuable is the your company’s software encounter new challenges opportunity you will have to every day. And with code size and complexity increasing meet with other software year by year, is it any wonder your information needs professionals outside the continue to grow as well? Now in its third year, BZ classroom. Conference activ- Media’s Software Test & Performance Conference pro- ities are arranged to maxi- vides you with the practical, how-to information that will mize your learning experi- help you meet these challenges and make you successful ence while leaving you time in your profession. to compare notes with your The technical program for this conference was classmates and confer with designed to serve the needs of people just like you: test members of the faculty. and QA managers, development managers, test-focused As an added bonus, the developers and senior testers. The conference addresses conference schedule and such diverse topics as requirements management, securi- format will provide time for ty testing and test automation. you to discover You can learn about testing service-oriented architec- the latest prod- tures and explore the fundamentals of database testing ucts—which will Register today at and how to recognize performance bottlenecks. Or you be presented in can delve into the intricacies of profiling J2EE applica- the exhibit area— www.stpcon.com tions, learn about performance tuning .NET applications and pick the and understand how to use metrics effectively to improve brains of the tool vendors. Read through the class listings software quality. The three-day conference program and build a custom course of study over three days that packs in eight daylong tutorials plus more than 60 class- will give you and your team tools and techniques that es ranging from 60 to 90 minutes in length. you can take back to the office and put into effect imme- The faculty was handpicked for its technical expertise diately. We look forward to seeing you at the Software and ability to communicate. You’ll meet and learn from Test & Performance Conference. industry luminaries like Rex Black, Rob Sabourin, Robin Goldsmith and Bob Galen. The program also features Lindsey Vereen exciting keynote presentations to help give you a sense of Conference Chairman
Diamond Sponsor Platinum Sponsors
Gold Sponsors
Media Sponsors
2 Event NEW! Schedule BIRDS OF A FEATHER SESSIONS Monday, November 6 Join your colleagues and 4:00 pm – 7:00 pm Registration our instructors for informal Tuesday, November 7 discussions. Pose your 7:30 am – 7:00 pm Registration toughest questions on the 8:00 am – 9:00 am Continental Breakfast following break-out topics: 9:00 am – 10:30 am Full-Day Tutorials 10:30 am – 11:00 pm Coffee Break 11:00 am – 12:30 pm Full-Day Tutorials • Test Automation 12:30 pm – 1:45 pm Lunch Break • .NET 1:45 pm – 3:15 pm Full-Day Tutorials 3:15 pm – 3:45 pm Coffee Break • Testing for Security 3:45 pm – 5:00 pm Full-Day Tutorials • Java 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm Birds of a Feather Session • Agile Testing Wednesday, November 8 • Improving Performance 7:30 am – 7:00 pm Registration 7:30 am – 8:30 am Continental Breakfast 8:30 am – 10:00 am Technical Classes Tuesday, November 7 10:00 am – 10:30 am Coffee Break 10:30 am – 12:00 pm Technical Classes 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm 12:00 pm – 1:15 pm Lunch Break 1:15 pm – 2:30 pm Technical Classes Wednesday, November 8 2:30 pm – 3:00 pm Coffee Break 2:30 pm – 7:00 pm Exhibit Hall Open 8:30 pm – 10:30 pm 3:00 pm – 4:15 pm Technical Classes 4:15 pm – 4:30 pm Break 4:30 pm – 4:45 pm Industry Keynote 4:45 pm – 5:30 pm Keynote (Rex Black) Note: Sign-up for these sessions 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm Reception in Exhibit Hall will be on-site. 8:30 pm – 10:30 pm Birds of a Feather Session Thursday, November 9 7:30 am – 4:00 pm Registration 7:30 am – 8:30 am Continental Breakfast 8:30 am – 10:00 am Technical Classes 10:00 am – 10:30 am Coffee Break Contents 10:30 am – 12:00 pm Technical Classes 12:00 pm – 1:15 pm Lunch Break 12:00 pm – 4:00 pm Exhibit Hall Open 1:15 pm – 2:00 pm Ice Cream Social in Tutorial/Class Descriptions ...... 4 Exhibit Hall 2:00 pm – 3:15 pm Technical Classes Faculty Biographies ...... 16 3:15 pm – 3:45 pm Coffee Break 3:45 pm – 5:00 pm Technical Classes
Hotel and Travel Information . . . . .21 Exhibit Hours: Wednesday, 2:30 pm – 7:00 pm Conference Planner ...... 22 Thursday, 12:00 pm – 4:00 pm Pricing and Registration ...... 24 Register at www.stpcon.com Updated July 26, 2006 3 Full-Day "This is the best conference I have attended. The instructors were extremely knowledgeable and helped me look at testing in a new way.” Tutorials —Ann Schwerin, QA Analyst, Sunrise Senior Living
FULL-DAY TUTORIALS T-4 Twenty-One Ways to Spot—and Fix— Tuesday, Nov. 7 Requirements Errors Early By Robin Goldsmith While many organizations have begun paying closer attention to | 9:00 am – 5:00 pm defining requirements, few fully realize the need to know that their requirements are accurate and complete, and few know how to T-1 Assessing Your Test Team Effectiveness, test requirements effectively. Most rely on one or two weak meth- NEW ods and have little awareness of how many errors they’ve missed— By Rex Black Efficiency and More errors that later turn into expensive feature creep. This interactive As a test manager, you’re probably looking for ways to do better and class explains why it’s so hard to test requirements, and it intro- demonstrate your team’s value and to find ways to improve it. This duces 21 increasingly powerful methods to help you find frequent- tutorial delivers. You’ll learn techniques to assess your team that ly overlooked requirements errors when they are easiest and least are driven by insightful questions and careful data analysis. By apply- expensive to fix. ing the ideas in this tutorial to each of the 12 critical testing process- Following the instructor’s proven CAT-Scan Approach, partici- es, you’ll know where you and your team stand. pants apply the techniques successively to a real case and discover This one-day tutorial is very hands-on with lecture primarily how each different method reveals additional, otherwise overlooked used to stimulate discussion. After each process is discussed, atten- defects in the requirements. Participants learn ways to find previ- dees will work through exercises that estimate performance met- ously overlooked requirements, increase meaningful customer/user rics for their own test teams. After each exercise, attendees have involvement, enhance communications and understanding and test a chance to discuss their results. the adequacy of requirements definitions.
T-2 Testing Techniques: Theory and Sp Application By BJ Rollison ec T ial This tutorial presents the formal theory and practical application Development rac of functional (behavioral) and structural (coverage) testing techniques. k! This tutorial will teach functional testing techniques, including or Test/QA exploratory testing, boundary value analysis, equivalence class par- titioning and combinatorial analysis. Structural testing techniques Managers’ Classes covered include statement coverage, decision/branch coverage, con- Need a higher-level view? You’ve come to the dition and basis path coverage. right place! Here are classes just for you—but feel By attending this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use functional free to deep-dive into any class or topic you want! testing techniques to establish a solid foundation and minimum baseline of test cases. You'll understand how structural testing techniques can be used to design additional tests from a white box T-1 Assessing Your Test Team Effectiveness, Efficiency approach to complement the test effort, to ensure that critical paths and More – Black (Full-Day Tutorial) in the code have been exercised and to achieve higher code cov- T-5 Foundations of GUI Test Automation erage results. You will also learn how to apply both black box and – Makedonov (Full-Day Tutorial) white box test design approaches to test more effectively. 107 Designing for Testability – Feldstein 108 Testing the Software Architecture – Sangal T-3 Testing in Highly Iterative, Quasi-Agile 109 Effectively Training Your Offshore Test Team – Hackett Projects—Practical Strategies for Mixed 203 How to Turn Your Testing Team Into a High- Culture Projects By Timothy D. Korson Performance Organization – Hackett In the highly iterative, fast-paced environment of agile development 207 Analyze the Return on Your Testing Investment projects, the traditional approaches to testing, quality assurance, – Black requirements gathering and team interactions break down. QA man- 209 Quality Throughout the Software Life Cycle agers trying to encourage best practices recommended by CMMI and SPICE find themselves at odds with developers trying to adopt best – Feldstein practices as recommended by the Agile Manifesto. 304 Managing Acceptance Testing Cycles More Efficiently In the end, no one wins. Because of the constraints of corporate poli- – Makedonov cies and management edicts, developers can’t fully adopt agile prac- 403 Deciding What Not to Test – Sabourin tices. Because the developers do adopt as much of the agile process as 502 Creating and Leading the High-Performance Test they can get away with, the QA team finds that traditional approach- Organization, Part 1 – Galen es to quality management no longer work. Such projects must suc- 509 Recruiting, Hiring, Motivating and Retaining Top ceed in a “quasi-agile” development environment. Testing Talent – Feldstein This tutorial will introduce you to software development process- 602 Creating and Leading the High-Performance Test es and practices that affect your world. You will learn practical strate- Organization, Part 2 – Galen gies for effectively integrating testing processes with modern soft- 702 S-Curves and the Zero Bug Bounce: Plotting Your Way ware engineering processes. You will learn how to create effective to More Effective Test Management – Bradshaw tests, both component-level and sys- 705 Coding Standards and Unit Testing—Why Bother? tem-level, for modern software sys- – Sokolov tems. Detailed case studies will 707 Performance Testing for Managers – Barber convey specific techniques for testing both components and 801 Effective Metrics for Managing a Test Effort entire systems. – Bradshaw 806 Best Practices for Managing Distributed Testing Teams – Stevens Register at www.stpcon.com 4 "Great topics—well presented by reputable presenters. Having Full-Day attended two years in a row, I have yet to be disappointed." —Ardan Sharp, QA Manager, SunGard Tutorials
NEW T-5 Foundations of GUI Test Automation NEW T-8 Creating Agility and Effectiveness in By Yury Makedonov Software Testing By Linda Hayes Testers and managers find themselves between a rock and a hard Most companies resist test automation until the software is sta- place when implementing test automation. From one side they are ble, reasoning that any savings from automation will be offset bombarded by a constant stream of sales pitches promoting the by the maintenance required to keep up with changes. Also, tra- “click, click, click” record-and-replay approach. From the other side ditional record/script/replay approaches can’t be implemented they are pressed by test automation gurus promoting their own frame- until the code is functional, which is too late in an agile devel- works. So, it’s a challenge to keep their sanity under these condi- opment environment. tions and to make sensible test automation decisions on tool and This session will present an incremental approach to test framework selection and test automation management. automation that supports an agile development environment by In this real-world tutorial, major myths and misconceptions allowing automated tests to be written before the code and then are dispelled, and explanations are provided on how to ensure the be rapidly updated as changes are introduced. You will learn efficiency of GUI test automation. The tutorial covers major prin- how to improve code development practices through automa- ciples and current industry standards of GUI test automation, how tion, define executable requirements and write self-document- to decide if a specific project should be automated or not, how to ing automated tests before code is developed. You will also learn define a scope for test automation, how to select a test tool to auto- how to implement a test tool and platform agnostic automation mate a specific application and much more. architecture and automate test case maintenance for rapid response to changes. NEW T-6 Software Endgames: How to Finish What You’ve Started By Robert Galen We’ve all survived more than one software project that ended TECHNICAL CLASSES badly, where either the requirements were misunderstood or were implemented poorly. Or overall quality targets couldn’t be met Wednesday, Nov. 8 because there were simply too many defects. Or the team simply | 8:30 am – 10:00 am couldn’t decide on priorities and in which direction to steer the project. Many projects fail during testing. Not because of the testing per 101 Seven Low-Overhead Software Process se, but because of the massive discovery of defects and functional Improvement Methods By Robin Goldsmith gaps that indicate the true viability of the project. I call this time the For many, software process improvement is synonymous with high- Software Endgame, and I’ve spent a great deal of time negotiating its overhead, long-term, organizationwide initiatives that often are resis- challenges through numerous software projects. ted and fail to produce the desired results. In this interactive pres- This presentation focuses on a set of high-level practices and entation, you’ll learn seven methods that can help you make soft- techniques that will help improve your management and project ware faster, cheaper and more reliable without all the hoopla. Key steering within the endgame, providing guidance that will increase to meaningful results is recognizing, measuring and then specifi- the odds of successfully delivering a project. You’ll learn how to cally improving high-payback aspects of the instructor’s proven REAL create an endgame delivery map that directs your release and test- software process, which often differs considerably from what we pre- ing milestones via entry/exit criteria; the importance of release sume we are doing. In truly agile fashion, applying these methods criteria within the endgame and high-level rules of thumb for defin- proficiently focuses efforts most efficiently on effectively producing ing them; how to manage defect repairs—where to focus your efforts useful software from the start. and scheduling rules of thumb—plus the many options you have for “fixing” defects. 102 Just-in-Time Testing Techniques and Tactics, Part 1 By Robert Sabourin T-7 Using Metrics to Improve Software Testing As the Boy Scout credo goes, “Be prepared.” In this class, you will By Alfred Sorkowitz learn how to be ready for just about anything in a software testing proj- Software metrics can aid in improving your organization’s testing ect within the volatile environment of a Web or e-commerce software process by providing insight and early visibility into the “real” project. Managers will learn an array of techniques to manage and track status of the testing effort and helping to make assessments as to software testing in chaotic environments—specifically, projects with whether progress, productivity and quality goals are being met. This continuously changing requirements and shifting priorities. Members tutorial presents a practical guide on how to start taking advantage of the development and testing teams will learn how, even while work- of these new tools/techniques to aid in improving the testing process. ing with minimal information, to develop tests and converge the prod- These metric-based tools and techniques have successfully been uct development effort. used by software test teams, software developers and SQA/IV&V staffs. In this class, you will receive an overview of software quality 103 Automated Database Testing: Testing and goals, criteria and metrics. You will also learn: Using Stored Procedures By Mary Sweeney • The cost of inadequate software testing, a set of govern- Today’s heterogeneous data environments place an increasingly ment/industry “best practices” metrics that can track the heavy burden on test engineers. Applications, whether Web-based real status, quality and productivity of the testing effort, or client/server, must be tested for seamless interface with the as well as provide an indication of future problems. back-end databases; this typically goes far beyond what the pop- • Software complexity metrics: A new structured testing ular test automation tools can provide. The intricate mix of methodology that uses metrics to aid in developing soft- client/server and Web-enabled database applications are extreme- ware that is easier to test and maintain and selecting an ly difficult to test productively. As a result, you are increasingly appropriate set of paths for more thorough testing. expected to know how to create and use SQL queries, stored pro- • How to integrate software metrics into the testing process. Register at www.stpcon.com 5 Technical "Good immersion in testing concerns." Classes —James Fields, Development Manager, Data-Vision Inc.
cedures and other relational database objects to effectively test NE 105 Code Coverage Metrics and How data-driven environments. W By Rex Black In this class, you will learn about testing at the database layer to Use Them More and more testers and programmers are using tools that provide as an important adjunct to current tests. Using demonstrations and code coverage metrics. These metrics tell the tester or programmer how code examples, the instructor will present tips and techniques for much of the code has been covered by a given set of tests and, more creating efficient automated tests of the critical database back end important, what conditions might not be covered. In addition, some using SQL, scripting languages and relational database objects. tools can evaluate the coverage of data flows. Some tools can also pro- You’ll learn why testing of database objects and stored procedures vide insight into the complexity and, thus, the likely difficulty level is necessary; how simple and effective automated tests for the back of future refactoring of the code. end can be created using various programming languages, includ- In this practical class, we’ll examine the following code coverage ing PERL and VBScript; and how to successfully test database metrics and how you can use them to write better code or tests: state- objects, such as stored procedures and views, with many exam- ment, branch, condition and loop coverage metrics; McCabe ples and code. Cyclomatic complexity and basis path coverage; and data-flow cov- erage via set-use pairs. Each metric will be illustrated using a real program, with tests developed and run to achieve given levels of cov- Spe Need To Tune erage. The code sample provided can be used, along with the course cial materials, to evaluate a given tool’s ability to provide useful code Tra coverage metrics. ck! Performance? Crank up your applications’ performance by NEW 106 Foundations of GUI Test Automation choosing from these hot classes! Using C#, Part 1 By BJ Rollison There is a trend in the software industry for companies to seek can- 305 How to Optimize Your Web Testing Strategy didates whose qualifications include the ability to write automated – Nguyen tests. Additionally, some companies realize the limitations of com- 402 Accelerate Testing Cycles With Collaborative mercially available tool sets that use proprietary scripted languages. Performance Testing – Cavallaro So, modern programming languages are being employed to develop 408 Techniques for Testing Packaged Application more effective and more robust automated tests. But for testers who Performance – Feaster lack a programming background, the initial hurdle of learning a pro- 503 Pinpointing and Exploiting Specific Performance gramming language can be a bit intimidating. This is further compli- cated by the fact that most programming courses teach us how to Bottlenecks – Barber develop applications and not how to use a programming language to 504 Performance Tuning ASP.NET 2.0 Applications, Part 1 write automated tests. – O'Mara This class is designed as a starting point for testers who lack a pro- 603 SOA Performance Testing Challenges – Barber gramming background, or for those with an understanding of program- 604 Performance Tuning ASP.NET 2.0 Applications, Part 2 ming concepts but are unfamiliar with automated testing using C# to – O'Mara test a Windows application. This class discusses common testing tasks 608 Verifying Software Robustness – Collard illustrated with well-commented code examples and developed with 707 Performance Testing for Managers – Barber free tools available on the Internet. In this session, you will learn 803 Real-World Performance Testing Lab for (Almost) how to launch, gather information, synchronize and close an applica- Free – Flint tion under test (AUT); manipulate and send test data to an AUT; and 805 Building a Bridge Between Functional Test generate test data. Automation and Performance Testing – Sody NEW 107 Designing for Testability By Jeff Feldstein 104 Lessons Learned in Test Automation, Many developers believe testing begins when all the features are com- Part 1 By Elfriede Dustin plete and they hand off their work to the test team. While this may This class will present and discuss a series of automated testing be what actually occurs in many development projects, it is far from lessons learned from actual experiences and feedback from real proj- the ideal. Software quality assurance begins in the definition phase ects. You’ll learn how to avoid some typical false starts and road- of the project. One important aspect of software quality to consider blocks when you implement your test automation efforts. is testability of the software architecture. Testability of your appli- Part 1 of this class includes a discussion of better ways to define cation can have a profound effect on its overall quality. This class automation criteria, how to avoid duplicating the development effort will explain what to look for in a testable architecture, avoiding com- when designing automated test cases, how to create reusable auto- mon mistakes and pitfalls, how to present your ideas to the devel- mated test cases, the need to verify all vendor claims in your own opment team and how to build test automation systems that take environment, the pitfalls of delegating the tool selection to a reseller advantage of the testable architecture. or consultant and how to select the right tool. You’ll also learn how to avoid losing sight of the testing efforts because developers or testers NEW 108 Testing the Software Architecture are too busy coming up with elaborate By Neeraj Sangal scripts to automate their unit and sys- Automated testing of the software architecture can keep quality from tem tests. degrading and help preserve the design intent. In this class, a new lightweight approach to specifying and verifying the architecture is presented. Inter-module dependencies are utilized to represent the architecture of a software system using a dependency structure matrix (DSM). Once the architecture is specified, it can then be verified through automated tests during development. Furthermore, archi- Register at www.stpcon.com tectural violations can be easily prioritized for remediation. This 6 “Excellent conference—provided a wide range of topics for Technical a variety of experience levels.” —Carol Rusch, Systems Analyst, Associated Bank Classes
approach will be presented through real life examples by applying 204 Lessons Learned in Test Automation, it to a number of commonly used applications. Dependency analy- By Elfriede Dustin sis will be used to extract the architecture for applications such as Part 2 We continue to explore automated testing lessons learned from actu- Ant, JUnit, jEdit and the Eclipse platform. We will look at real exam- al experiences and from feedback based on real projects to help you ples of software development spanning several years to see how to avoid some typical false starts and roadblocks when you implement architecture evolves, how it often begins to erode and how regular test automation efforts. In Part 2 of this class, attendees will learn when testing can prevent this erosion. automated testing doesn’t speed up the testing effort. Attendees will also learn how to create mini development life cycles, how to main- 109 Effectively Training Your Offshore Test tain automated unit and system tests, how to implement smoke tests, Team By Michael Hackett and the pitfalls of using automated performance testing tools. Working with offshore teams is a fact of life now for domestic test leads and managers, but many are still struggling to make their glob- 205 Database Security: How Vulnerable Is al test team work effectively. Training your offshore test team is crit- By Mary Sweeney ical to the success of your projects. If done right, training can help Your Data? There are many levels of software security. But how secure is the minimize your stress and late-night phone calls and ensure that you most important component of your application: your database? Quality are getting the right information from the offshore team to make sure control organizations must step up to the challenge of ensuring your testing effort is successful. Training of the offshore team needs data security with appropriate tests that focus on this vital area. In to focus on a broad range of topics and must be specifically designed this class, you will learn what the test team needs to know about pro- to the unique needs of that team. tecting the server, the database connections, controlling access to In this class, we will discuss the key elements of successful off- database tables and restricting access to the database server itself. If shore testing, including training in the areas of process, data is in jeopardy, the entire system is at risk. We will also discuss product/domain knowledge and testing techniques, and how train- the basics of security testing to ensure protection for the critical data- ing can be used as a retention tool for offshore staff. The class will base component. include several real world examples based on the speaker’s experi- ences working with teams in the most common offshoring locations. NEW 206 Foundations of GUI Test Automation Using C#, Part 2 By BJ Rollison Wednesday, Nov. 8 C# is a powerful programming language quickly becoming common- ly used to develop test automation. But to effectively test Windows | 10:30 am – 12:00 pm (Win32) applications written in C/C++, we must also learn to use common Win32 Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Part 2 of this class discusses how to use process invocation serv- NEW 201 Prevent Showstopper Overruns ices to use Windows APIs to perform common testing tasks illustrat- With Risk-Based Proactive Testing ed with well-commented code examples, and developed with free By Robin Goldsmith tools available on the Internet. In this session, attendees will learn Project budget and schedule overruns frequently are caused by late, how to: unplanned significant redesign and rework to fix showstopper errors. • Import Win32 API library functions and marshal data types Traditional, reactive testing misses too many showstoppers or catch- • Get and set AUT focus es them too late to fix easily. In contrast, Proactive Testing’s power- ful risk analysis techniques identify many of the up to 75 percent of showstoppers that are ordinarily overlooked. Moreover, Proactive Testing can drive development to build systems in a truly agile dif- ferent way that avoids much of the rework that showstoppers tradi- tionally would have necessitated. The class will cover risk-based testing fundamentals and the limitations of traditional reactive test- ing approaches. You will learn how to continually refocus on test- ing higher-level risks more frequently and earlier in the testing cycle, as well as methods for identifying ordinarily overlooked showstop- pers and reducing overruns.
202 Just-in-Time Testing Techniques and Tactics, Part 2 By Robert Sabourin Please see description under Class 102.
203 How to Turn Your Testing Team Into a High- Performance Organization By Michael Hackett All development managers, test managers and their organizations are looking for ways to improve quality. Quality improvement can come in many forms: reducing risks by delivering higher and predictable quality products; optimizing time-to-market; increasing productivi- ty; and building a more manageable organization. Some managers look for quality improvement by attempting to implement a more standard or formal process. This sounds good, but where is the road map for how to get there? This class will help! You’ll learn how to evaluate your test process and strategy, create a culture for change, implement change and use effective methods for measuring improvement. Register at www.stpcon.com 7 Technical “As a project manager, this conference fit my role well. Developers would also benefit.” Classes —Lloyd Goss, Project Manager, JAARS
• Manipulate controls • Manipulate menus • Create custom methods to perform repetitive tasks • Create a reusable test library
207 Analyze the Return on Your Testing Investment By Rex Black Testing is not just a good idea—it’s a good investment. This class demonstrates the value of solid testing through quantifiable returns on the investment. Through effective developer testing, skilled development managers deliver solid, quantifiable benefits in four ways: • Find bugs that get fixed—or even prevent them • Find bugs that don’t get fixed but are known • Run tests that mitigate (potentially expensive) risks • Guide the project with timely, accurate, credible information Attendees will learn about all of those benefits—and how to meas- ure them. A hands-on exercise teaches you how to estimate the return you could—or currently do—achieve on your test investment.
208 Using Scrum to Manage the Testing Effort By Robert Galen Many testing efforts succumb to management and project pressures and become chaotic in terms of their focus and work quality. It’s sim- ply the nature of the endgame phase of software development proj- Wednesday, Nov. 8 ects, where anything goes in pushing for the delivery of a product, and it’s usually quality that goes first. Beyond the product quality | 1:15 pm – 2:30 pm impacts, the team usually suffers, too, with low morale and little empowerment. 301 Hacking 101: Donning the Black Scrum is one of the agile methodologies, and it focuses on project NEW management in agile and iterative development efforts. It can be suc- Hat to Best Protect Applications From cessfully applied to testing efforts to renew their focus and drasti- Today’s Hacking Threats By Tom Stracener cally improve overall results. In this presentation, we will explore the Applications have become fertile ground for attackers to uncover Scrum methodology and learn to apply it practically to your testing seemingly innocuous features and utilities in today’s complex sys- cycles. In this class, attendees will learn how the Scrum methodolo- tems and gain unauthorized access. Hackers seek out weaknesses gy applies to the testing effort. in the many modules and components of complex systems, looking for hidden fields, embedded passwords, exposed parameters to manip- ulate and ways to tinker with input strings and steal data. At a time NEW 209 Quality Throughout the Software Life By Jeff Feldstein when security is highly coveted, understanding the enemy’s mind- Cycle set is more crucial than ever. Therefore, one of the best defense mech- Software quality is everybody’s job. Quality cannot be tested into anisms against hackers is to understand how they think—and recog- the product; it must be emphasized, monitored and measured from nize your network’s Achilles’ heels before a hacker exploits them. the beginning of the project. Each team involved in the project, In this class, you’ll learn the thinking, strategies and method- including product marketing managers, program managers, devel- ologies commonly used by hackers and how to effectively implement opment engineering, documentation and test engineering, plays a a sound defensive plan that will help mitigate multiple attacks. key role in assuring software quality. A carefully planned applica- Top Web application security flaws, including invalidated input, bro- tion development life cycle is a key requirement to successful deliv- ken authentication and management, buffer overflows, injection ery of on-time quality software. flaws, insecure storage, denial of service and insecure configuration The application development life cycle consists of four broad management, will be addressed so as to arm you with the right knowl- phases: requirements, development, test and post-customer ship. edge to protect your company’s infrastructure. Each phase has important activities that directly affect the quality of the delivered software. This presentation will explore each phase in detail from a software quality perspective. It will describe activities 302 Five Core Metrics to Guide Your Software that need to happen at each step and the role of the test or software Endgames By Robert Galen quality engineer, and will enumerate many common mistakes made. By its very nature, the endgame of software projects is a hostile envi- In addition you will learn how to catch bugs earlier in the life cycle ronment. Typical dynamics include tremendous release pressure, con- when they are cheaper to fix. tinuous bug and requirement discovery, exhausted development teams, frenzied project managers and long hours. Testing teams are usually in the thick of this battle and accustomed to these dynamics. However, project managers may not be proactive enough in working with their testing teams to understand the change and repair workflows within their projects. Yes, we work hard at managing bug reports, but we can do so much more to influence and focus a project’s direction. In this presentation, attendees will learn how project managers can focus the entire team on a few key performance metrics to improve the overall endgame experience and increase the probability of delivering on Register at www.stpcon.com time. And yes, to also survive yet another endgame. 8 “Best concentration of performance testing Technical presentations/professionals I’ve seen.” —Nathan White, Manager, Testing Services, AG Edwards Classes
303 Overcoming Requirements-Based Testing’s NEW 307 Taking AIM—Using Visual Models Hidden Pitfalls By Robin Goldsmith for Test Case Design By Robert Sabourin Testing based on requirements is a fundamental method that is Designing test cases is a basic fundamental skill all testers master over relied on extensively. However, its thoroughness frequently can time. This workshop teaches a fun graphical technique to help design be compromised by traps that testers are not aware of. In this inter- powerful test cases and choose test data that will surface important bugs active presentation, you’ll learn key sources of requirements-based fast. These skills can be used in exploratory, agile or engineered con- testing oversights, including distinguishing business requirements texts—anytime you need to design a test. from system requirements; assessing the extent to which the require- Mindmaps are powerful graphical tools used to help visualize ments are complete; the premise of one test per requirement; the complex paths and relationships between concepts. The workshop appropriate level of test case detail; and developers’ inclusion of shows how Mindmaps can be used to visualize test designs and help requirements-based unit tests. The class will also focus on the understand variables being tested, alone and in complex combina- strengths and often unrecognized weaknesses of requirements- tions with other variables and conditions. The AIM (Application Input based tests; the importance of testing based on business as well as Memory) heuristic is taught through a series of interactive exercises. system requirements and determining how many tests a require- Real recent project examples are used to demonstrate these techniques. ment needs. We will look at using some widely available free open-source tools to help implement great test cases and to help focus our testing on what matters and quickly hone in on critical bugs! If you are new to test- NEW 304 Managing Acceptance Testing Cycles By Yuri Makedonov ing, these techniques will remove some of the mystery of good test More Efficiently case design. If you are a veteran tester, these techniques will sharp- Once in a while a supposedly “almost completed” project requires en your skills and give you some new test design approaches. one more cycle of acceptance testing and then just one more, then another and so on. Surprised management looks on in disbelief as the project spirals out of control down into a bottomless pit of NEW 308 Elements of Software Design for “acceptance testing cycles.” Yet, often management does not have Unit Testing By Thierry Ciot a 100 percent clear and correct understanding of what is happen- Too often, software projects are built around classes and compo- ing and why it’s happening. As a result, their actions might not nents that incorporate a tangled web of dependencies that can hin- necessarily be very effective in controlling the situation. In this der—or even prevent—unit testing. What steps can you take to keep presentation, you will learn the different reasons for why these this headache out of your project? This course, for beginner to inter- testing cycles can happen and specific techniques for getting a mediate programmers/testers and managers, will introduce you to project like this out of a tailspin. the design guidelines that facilitate unit testing. By building appli- cations around classes and components with clearly defined depend- 305 How to Optimize Your Web Testing encies, code will be more unit-testable by design. Following these Strategy By Hung Q. Nguyen guidelines can also greatly reduce the number of stubs or mock objects needed to perform unit testing. The guidelines presented One of the key strategic challenges of Web testing is the dominance in this course are based on solutions that have been used in actu- of change. Another key challenge is interdependence. Web applica- al projects, and each guideline is illustrated with code examples tions are fundamentally dependent on cooperating tools and process- es. Many of the processes, tools and standards in use by groups that do Web testing were originally developed with simpler and less Sp dynamic situations in mind. Used by skilled and thoughtful people, All ecia in the context of a clear strategy, these processes and tools can add Tra l value. But if we allow them to drive our testing practices, they can Sabourin, ck! easily do more harm than good. In this talk, you will learn how to analyze and optimize your Web testing strategy by selecting the right All the Time! types of tests, how to execute them at the right time with a balanced number of cycles, and how to drive changes to improve your team’s Rob Sabourin is one of our high- testing throughput. est-rated speakers, and heck, he just loves teaching. If you like his NEW 306 Model-Based Testing for Java and Web- workshop style and are ready to think out of the box, Based GUI Applications By Jeff Feldstein then don’t miss these classes! Classic test automation simply repeats the same tests (with option- ally varying data) until it stops failing or the application ships. The 102 Just-in-Time Testing Techniques and Tactics, Part 1 problem with this approach is that customers rarely flow through 202 Just-in-Time Testing Techniques and Tactics, Part 2 the application in the same sequence as the automation, and thus 307 Taking AIM—Using Visual Models for Test Case they are likely to find bugs that the automation missed. Model-based Design testing is a form of automated testing that brings random and flexi- 403 Deciding What Not to Test ble behavior to your automated test cases. 507* Unit Testing for Agile Development, Part 1 Model-based testing can be used for many types of software 607* Unit Testing for Agile Development, Part 2 or application testing. This class will teach how to implement mod- 708 What Hollywood Can Teach You About Software el-based testing, specifically as applied to Java and Web applica- Testing tions. Part of the course includes a demonstration of model-based testing; you will be able to download the XDE Tester source code *Note that the Agile classes are limited to 30 participants, used in the demonstration. Although the example application test- so register early! ed by this source code is fairly simple, it contains all of the data structures, concepts and program flow for implementing a large- scale, industrial strength, model-based test system. Register at www.stpcon.com 9 Technical “I learned things I didn’t know existed! I met people from all ranges of QA, all of whom were brimming with information Classes they were willing to share.” —Rene Howard, Quality Assurance Analyst, IA Systems
that emphasize practical solutions. The class will end with a review must build security into their products as they are being developed. of a complete real-world example. This class focuses on application security throughout the soft- ware development life cycle. Attendees will learn secure coding 309 Models for Security Testing in the guidelines that will help prevent defects from getting into code and NEW that they must adhere to during the development process. They will Software Development Life Cycle learn about the Secure Software Development Life Cycle (SSDL) and By Ryan Berg its relationship to system development starting with the guidelines How should security testing be implemented during software devel- for security implementations. opment to ensure a more secure product? There is general agree- The class covers the security program review and assessment ment in the industry that improving software security is a valuable activities that need to be conducted throughout the testing life cycle endeavor, but implementing programs that generate positive, meas- and the secure deployment considerations that have to be imple- urable results has eluded most companies. Questions arise about mented. It also addresses the metrics and final review and assess- the lack of security expertise among development teams and lack ment activities that need to be conducted to allow for adequate and of development expertise among security teams, and there is a mis- informed decision making. conception that the addition of security reviews will ultimately extend development schedules. At the same time, centralized deci- Accelerate Testing Cycles With Collaborative sions must be made to define security policies, determine what con- 402 stitutes a vulnerability, and prioritize remediation efforts accord- Performance Testing By Rick Cavallaro ing to available resources. Organizations need a concrete model for Testing and tuning the performance of enterprise Web applications security evaluation and a comprehensive task list detailing the roles is a complex task, undertaken by a team of individuals that may and responsibilities for each group involved. include performance engineers, QA testers, architects, developers, The class will include practical models that give testing respon- database administrators and related project team members. Fostering sibility to developers, QA staff or security teams, explaining the spe- communication among these individuals can be challenging and can cific requirements for each approach as well as expected outcomes. often lead to testing delays. The process is especially difficult when testers and developers are distributed around the building, around the country or even around the globe. Secure Your This session will provide a new methodology for collaborative Sp load testing—an antidote to the iterative, multiweek process based ec on e-mail and conference calls that most organizations are forced to T ial Software! rac use today. You will learn: k! Securing the network is fine, but it’s not • The drawbacks of traditional approaches to performance enough! These classes will help you testing test your software for security. • How to incorporate a team-based methodology for perform- ance testing 205 Database Security: How Vulnerable Is Your Data? • A new solution for collaborative load testing in a Web-based – Sweeney environment • How outsourcing can impact QA efforts, and what you can 301 Hacking 101: Donning the Black Hat to Best Protect do to mitigate that impact Applications From Today’s Hacking Threats – Stracener 309 Models for Security Testing in the Software NEW 403 Deciding What Not to Test Development Life Cycle – Berg By Robert Sabourin 401 The Secure Software Development Life Cycle – Dustin Software project schedules are always tight. There is not enough time 606 Exploiting Web Application Code: The Methodologies to complete planned testing. Do not stop just because the clock ran out. This presentation explores some practical and systematic and Automation of SQL Injection – Fisher approaches to organizing and triaging testing ideas. Testing ideas are 701 The Five Most Dangerous Application Security influenced by risk and importance to your business. Information is Vulnerabilities—And How to Test for Them coming at you from all angles—how can it be used to prioritize test- – Basirico ing and focus on the test with the most value? Triage of testing ideas, assessing credibility and impact estimation can be used to help decide what to do when the going gets tough! Decide what not to test on pur- Wednesday, Nov. 8 pose—not just because the clock ran out! | 3:00 pm – 4:15 pm 404 Putting the User Back in User Acceptance Testing By Robin Goldsmith 401 The Secure Software Development User acceptance testing (UAT) is often a source of consternation. NEW Even though the process takes up considerable user time, too many Life Cycle By Elfriede Dustin defects continue to slip through, and users increasingly beg off from According to Gartner and Symantec, most business security vulnera- participating with claims that they don’t have the time. Both effects bilities are now at the application layer. Attackers are focusing their may be symptoms of professional testers’ mistaken conventional efforts on regional targets, desktops and wisdom about the nature and structure of UAT. In this eye-open- Web applications that potentially give ing presentation, you’ll learn ways to gain user confidence, com- attackers access to personal, financial petence and cooperation. Plus, you’ll learn how to create user- or confidential information. driven UAT that increases user testing competence and confidence. Consequently, companies respon- sible for developing software 405 Getting a Handle on Risk: Risk-Based Testing Strategies By Clyneice Chaney Register at www.stpcon.com With the rapid pace of application development, testing has become 10 Keynote Address: Rex Black • President, RBCS Technical Wednesday, November 8 • 4:45 pm – 5:30 pm Five Trends in Software Engineering Classes Five strong winds of change are blowing in the software and systems engineering world. As winds affect a sailboat, these winds of change will affect software engineering, including development and testing, as a field, and software engineers as a ing techniques, including workload modeling, endurance and stress community. Your career is at stake, and both risks and opportunities testing, diagnosis and problem isolation and automated script cre- abound. In this talk, Rex Black will speak about these five trends and ation. In addition, the speaker will address how to create an opti- how they affect software engineering. He will offer cautions about mal team structure and enhanced reporting and communications the risks and identify the potential opportunities you face. For each techniques. trend, he will provide references to books and other resources you can use to prepare yourself to sail the ship of your software engi- neering career to the destination you desire: professional success. Thursday, Nov. 9
a challenging proposition. Trying to meet tight deadlines and deliv- | 8:30 am – 10:00 am er products that meet customer requirements is the greatest challenge testers face today. This presentation discusses a risk assessment tool 501 Strategies and Tactics for Global Test that is used to assess risks associated with product testing. The assess- By Hung Q. Nguyen ment tool provides an alternative to “guesses” about what should be Automation, Part 1 tested and helps test managers determine where they should con- We automate software testing to gain speed. We organize our distrib- centrate their efforts. uted teams globally to maximize round-the-clock coverage and cost The proposed risk strategy for testing moves us from the informal efficiency. Both solutions fulfill legitimate objectives. However, imple- approach experienced testers often use to a more formal and systemat- menting them successfully while keeping the risks contained with a ic way of assessing risk that allows you to base your test strategy on the high degree of certainty proves to be an enormous challenge. In this assessment as well as address the quality concerns of the stakeholder. class, through a series of technical and management case studies and real life examples, you will learn about seven steps that will deliv- er return on investment through a global test automation program. NEW 406 Java EE Performance Tuning Attendees will learn how to: assess testing strategy and needs; min- Methodology: Wait-Based Tuning imize the costs and risks of global resources; select the right test By Steven Haines automation technology for the job; align testing with business process- Java EE performance experts know that the key to success is to focus es and development practices; and measure, analyze and optimize application tuning effort where it’s needed most—at the wait-points, for continuing improvement. where the delays happen. But what are the wait-points, how can you find them in your application, and what can you do about them? That’s NEW 502 Creating and Leading the High- what you’ll learn in this intermediate-level class. Performance Test Organization, Part 1 Wait-points can encompass Web and business tier thread pools, By Robert Galen external dependency connection pools, persistence caches, object pools and even garbage collection. We’ll show you how to disassem- Issues such as fewer people, less time, constantly changing technolo- ble your application call stack, identify wait-points and tune from gies and increasing business expectations are clearly the norms for the inside-out to optimize throughput and suspend requests where what software teams must face today. Nowhere is this more evident they are best suited to wait. You’ll leave this class knowing how to than within testing teams, since the pressure increases as we move focus your application tuning efforts to immediately improve the down through the life cycle. This pressure poses a tremendous lead- performance of your Java EE systems. ership challenge for testing team managers, group leaders or anyone chartered with directing testing. However, this challenge creates the opportunity for effective test leaders to differentiate themselves and NEW 407 Agile Test Development their teams as they meet and exceed organizational expectations. By Hans Buwalda This two-part class focuses on acquiring the fundamental skills to Agile methods have become standard in the software development become that outstanding test leader. It will explore such issues as how world. The emphasis on short, iterative cycles, constant feedback to: build, motivate and lead great testing teams; create impact driven and a team-based approach to quality has proven effective for deliv- communications on testing state; properly plan and execute your team’s ering software on time and on budget. The same approach can be evolution, growth and ability to meet project challenges; handle the applied to developing your tests and test automation, even if your toughest “people” challenges facing good managers; and be agile and development project is using a traditional “waterfall” life cycle. Good adaptable—learning to change with the organizational landscape. test design, especially good automated test design, requires constant feedback from project stakeholders outside the QA team, including 503 Pinpointing and Exploiting Specific the development team, management and customers. The tests should By Scott Barber go through several “iterations” of review before being put into “pro- Performance Bottlenecks duction” against the system under test. One part of the system is always slowest—the bottleneck. Until you This class will discuss an agile approach to building tests and test remedy that bottleneck, no other tuning will improve performance automation, so that the QA team can ensure that the system is tested along that usage path, but before you can tune it, you must first early and often, thereby taking testing off the critical path to releas- conclusively identify it. Once the bottleneck has been identified, the ing the product. This class will present a methodology and case study resolution can be reached more quickly if you modify your existing to illustrate how agile test development can be implemented in real tests to eliminate distraction from ancillary issues. Pinpointing the world projects. bottleneck precisely is an art all its own. Designed for technical performance testers and developers/archi- tects, this class will show how the performance testing team and the 408 Techniques for Testing Packaged NEW development team can work collaboratively to analyze results and Application Performance By Michel Feaster identify bottlenecks by tier, component and object. Then you’ll learn Enterprises are investing more and more in ERP/CRP applications how to design tests to exploit those bottlenecks for tuning purposes like SAP and Oracle. While these are more critical to the business with examples using IBM Rational and free tools. than ever, new paradigms such as SOA, agile development and off- shoring are creating an added layer of complexity for QA organi- zations. This presentation will drill down on performance test- Register at www.stpcon.com 11 Technical “I’ve received volumes of new information and ideas to share with my team.” Classes —Theresa Harmon, Business Applications Developer, Pharmacare Specialty Pharmacy
504 Performance Tuning ASP.NET 2.0 ammunition you need to convince management of the economic By Thomas O’Mara and business benefits of comprehensive unit testing. Applications, Part 1 This two-part class addresses unit testing issues within the con- This class will provide an intuitive understanding of how to set up text of different development life-cycle models, especially new agile a solid testing infrastructure, will help you gain an in-depth under- approaches, and demonstrates the tools and techniques needed to standing of critical .NET and ASP.NET components, and will show organize for and implement unit testing. The class is taught in work- you how to monitor the operating system and the ASP.NET appli- shop style and includes many hands-on group and team exercises, cation in real time. You will also get a good overview of statistical examples and unit testing tool demonstrations. measurements and their meanings as applied to the data. Due to the interactive nature of these workshops, class size is lim- The first part of this class will take an in-depth look at the .NET ited to 30 people. Framework 2.0 that includes the Common Language Runtime, Windows 2003 Server with Internet Information Server 6.0 and ASP.NET 2.0 architecture as it relates to performance tuning. Part 2 of this class will offer an in-depth real time look at the crit- Spe ical performance counters on Windows 2003 Server, IIS 6.0 and ci Black is Back! Tr al ASP.NET 2.0 as they provide feedback on the health of the applica- ack tion running under load. ! Rex Black was one of our most popular 505 Identify and Mitigate Risks Through speakers at the first STPCon, By Rex Black and he’s back. Sign up for one or Testing, Part 1 more of these classes, and you Over the past 10 years, professionals working in software and sys- won’t be disappointed! tem development have learned how to apply the powerful techniques of risk analysis and risk management to their projects. In this class, T-1 Assessing Your Test Team Effectiveness, Efficiency you will learn: and More (Full-Day Tutorial) • How to apply risk analysis techniques ranging from informal discussions to ISO 9126 to failure mode and effect 105 Code Coverage Metrics and How to Use Them analysis 207 Analyze the Return on Your Testing Investment • How risk prioritization can tell system development 505 Identify and Mitigate Risks Through Testing, Part 1 professionals where to focus development and test resources 605 Identify and Mitigate Risks Through Testing, Part 2 • How the project team can improve the accuracy of the risk analysis—and thus the effectiveness and efficiency of test- ing—throughout the system development life cycle 508 Using Code Metrics for Targeted Code Part 1 of this class will discuss the various techniques and illustrate By Andrew Glover them through real case studies. Part 2 includes a hands-on exercise to Refactoring Oftentimes, candidate code for refactoring is based on subjective prepare you to apply these powerful techniques to your next project. determinations. The proper uses of code metrics, such as cyclomat- ic complexity, fan-in, fan-out and depth of inheritance, can also facil- 506 Rapid Business-Driven Testing By Clyneice itate the discovery of candidate code that is in need of refactoring. Chaney For example, cyclomatic complexity is adept at spotting meth- Structured testing is a vital part of any development project. The ods containing a high degree of conditional logic, which, conse- problem is that almost no one is given the time and resources to prop- quently, can be replaced with polymorphism as elaborated by erly execute a thorough test process. In an ideal world, rapid test- Martin Fowler. Additionally, excessively deep hierarchy trees cre- ing would not be necessary, but with most development projects there ate problematic testing targets, which can be broken out into sep- are schedule crunches and times when a quick assessment of the arate objects with Fowler’s Replace Inheritance with Delegation product quality is necessary. and Collapse Hierarchy patterns. Fan-in and fan-out are quite effec- Rapid testing is a way to scale thorough testing methods to fit tive at pinpointing brittle code, which can be refactored into a arbitrarily compressed schedules. “Rapid” doesn’t mean “not thor- more stable state with numerous patterns, including Extract ough,” but it does mean as thorough as is reasonable given constraints Hierarchy and Extract Class. on time. In this class, you will learn how to use new rapid busi- You’ll leave this class with an understanding of seven industry- ness-driven testing techniques, methods and templates that will standard code metrics; moreover, you will have the ability to uti- increase product quality in rapid development projects. lize these metrics to spot “complex” code and will have a grab bag of techniques with which to improve the code. 507 Unit Testing for Agile Development, Part 1 By Robert Sabourin 509 Recruiting, Hiring, Motivating and With the increasing popularity of agile development methods, the Retaining Top Testing Talent By Jeff Feldstein role of testing is starting earlier in the software development cycle. The expectations today are for increasingly high-quality software, Testers and developers are challenged to develop software at light- requiring more sophisticated automation in testing. Test and QA ning speed, often using new and untested technologies. The class teams must work more closely with development to ensure that will show you how development and testing teams can work togeth- this sophisticated automation is possible. This has led to software er to promote and implement engineers applying creativity, talent and expertise to not just appli- improved unit testing. Attendees cation development, but testing as well. This transition from man- will learn how to save your com- ual to scripting to highly engineered test automation changes the pany money by finding and fix- way we recruit, hire, motivate and retain great test engineering tal- ing bugs long before system ent. testing even starts. Get the The speaker uses examples of how his team at Cisco changed the way it tests over the past six years. In this class, he’ll review eight reasons why test is a better place for software developers than Register at www.stpcon.com software development, and he’ll show how and when to express 12 “This conference helps testers and developers as well as managers Technical and leaders. There is enough variety and content for everybody. ” —Michael Farrugia, Software Engineer, Air Malta Classes
these points to hire, motivate and retain top talent. You’ll see how 608 Verifying Software Robustness to inspire greater innovation and creativity in your testing process- By Ross Collard es and how to manage and inspire test and development teams that Do you like breaking things? If so, this session’s for you! are spread across different locations. You’ll also learn the place of It’s not enough to design systems for dependability; we have to manual testing in the new environment. verify that reliability as well. Software is robust if it can tolerate such problems as unanticipated events, invalid inputs, corrupted Thursday, Nov. 9 internally stored data, improper uses by system operators, unavail- 10:30 am – 12:00 pm able databases, stress overloads and so on. Systems that include both | hardware and software are robust if they can tolerate physical prob- lems such as equipment damage, loss of power and software crash- 601 Strategies and Tactics for Global Test es. Since these problems can and do occur in live operation, this By Hung Q. Nguyen session examines how to evaluate a system’s robustness within the Automation, Part 2 relative sanctity of the test lab. Please see description under Class 501.
NEW 602 Creating and Leading the High- 609 Metrics: How to Track Things That Matter Performance Test Organization, Part 2 By Clyneice Chaney By Robert Galen Metrics programs have often been a dirty word, misused and poor- ly implemented. This class discusses ways to provide metrics that Please see description under Class 502. really matter to organizations and provide visibility into their or their customers’ organizations. The class will begin with discussions about NEW 603 SOA Performance Testing Challenges why metrics programs fail and will move on to discuss keys to suc- By Scott Barber cessful metrics programs, developing quality metrics that matter and Officially, SOA stands for service-oriented architecture, though Martin ways to implement and maintain these metrics over time. Fowler quips that maybe service-oriented ambiguity would be more apropos due to the diversity of technical methods being used to imple- Thursday, Nov. 9 ment the SOA concept. The great thing about this ambiguity is that while the developers, architects, vendors and standards groups strug- | 2:00 pm – 3:15 pm gle to narrow the range of technologies, we testers have a chance to get ahead in our preparations for testing these applications. This pres- entation will introduce the core concepts of SOA, discuss the challenges NEW 701 The Five Most Dangerous these concepts present to performance testing and finally map out a Application Security Vulnerabilities— performance testing strategy that allows us to use SOA as a springboard and How to Test for Them By Joe Basirico to move the state of performance testing significantly forward in your The most difficult problems of IT security are found at the applica- organization and the software industry as a whole. tion layer. Exploitability of applications due to poor design has reached epidemic levels. Perimeter/network defenses are not enough to pro- 604 Performance Tuning ASP.NET 2.0 tect organizations from attacks and most software teams possess nei- Applications, Part 2 By Thomas O’Mara ther the tools nor the expertise to properly secure their applications. Please see description under Class 504. This class highlights the top five security vulnerabilities that face testers today. You will learn practical how-to tips for testing your applications with a security mindset to attack their applications before 605 Identify and Mitigate Risks Through a hacker does. Testing, Part 2 By Rex Black Please see description under Class 505. NEW 702 S-Curves and the Zero Bug Bounce: Plotting Your Way to More Effective 606 Exploiting Web Application Code: The Test Management By Shaun Bradshaw Methodologies and Automation of SQL The use of objective test metrics is an important step toward improv- Injection By Matthew Fisher ing the ability to effectively manage any test effort. Two significant SQL injection is a technique for exploiting Web applications that use test metrics concepts, the S-Curve and Zero Bug Bounce, allow test client-supplied data in SQL queries without stripping potentially harm- leads and test managers to easily track the progress of a test effort, ful characters first. Despite being remarkably simple to protect against, improve the ability to communicate test results and test needs to the there are an astonishing number of production systems connected to project team, and make better decisions regarding when an applica- the Internet that are vulnerable to this type of attack, due to the sim- tion is ready to be delivered. ple fact of improper input validation. Developers and quality assurance You will learn: professionals who design, build and test business-enabling applica- • How to establish an S-Curve: What an S-Curve is, why it is tions generally lack the security knowledge necessary to avoid creat- important in testing, how to develop a theoretical S-Curve, ing common defects that are so easily exploited by hackers. what metrics can be tracked using the S-Curve and how to In this class, you’ll learn about the techniques that can be used to track them. take advantage of a Web application that is vulnerable to SQL injection. • How to create a Zero Bug Bounce: What the Zero Bug Bounce The session addresses proper mechanisms that should be put in place (ZBB) is, why it is important in tracking defects, and how to protect against SQL injection, as well as overall improper-input to generate a ZBB. validation issues. • Interpreting the graphs: Finally, we discuss a method for examining and interpreting the graphs created by these 607 Unit Testing for Agile Development, Part 2 By Robert Sabourin Please see description under Class 507. Register at www.stpcon.com 13 Technical “Reputable speakers and presenters. Great class topics.” Classes —Jung Manson, QA Manager, Webloyalty.com
metrics to make improvements to the current test efforts as skyrocketing costs, a lack of management visibility and question- well as future development efforts. able quality of tests. These universal problems in test automation have led this speak- er to introduce the 5% challenges of test automation: No more than NEW 703 Testing Java Programs—Memory By Averil Meehan 5% of tests should be executed manually, and no more than 5% of Management Issues the test effort should be spent creating automation. The speaker will It is a myth that Java’s garbage collection has solved memory man- present the keys to meeting the 5% challenges and illustrate them agement problems. These can still cause space leaks severe enough through a case study of a successful project that maximized test automa- to crash a program or for a thread of execution to stop. Unfortunately, tion while minimizing the time spent automating tests. often such errors occur only when a program runs for a long time, so they may not show up until the testing stage of development. Such errors are extremely difficult to debug as the error can appear in one 707 Performance Testing for Managers section of code yet be caused by another. The nature of memory errors By Scott Barber means that the problem can manifest itself in different ways and at Performance testing as an activity is widely misunderstood, particular- different times in code execution, something that also makes detec- ly by managers and others not directly involved in doing it. This presen- tion and solution problematic. In this class, we will discuss what tation details the most critical things for managers to know about the per- memory problems can occur and consider different approaches to formance testing process and ways to improve it. Learning, understand- detecting the code that caused them. ing and applying these nuggets of knowledge to your current or future performance testing projects will dramatically increase your team’s chances of success. In this class you will learn how to work with experienced per- NEW 704 Defining Test Data and Data-Centric By Chris Hetzler formance testers to get the results you need, why performance testing Application Testing should begin well before the application is fully functional and how to As applications grow larger and more complex and as automated test- do it, and ways to better integrate performance-testing personnel into the ing of these applications is increasingly adopted, the data that is used development team effort. In addition, you will learn how to recognize during the execution of the automated tests needs to be clearly defined the difference between “delivery” and “done” as they relate to perform- and identified early in the development life cycle. Currently, the Software ance testing and how to assess and balance the risks inherent in each. Engineering Body of Knowledge does not contain a definition for “test Also covered is how to create and maintain a program that will ensure data,” nor do any of the top books on the subject of software testing. not only that your performance testers have the tools they need, but This presentation will propose a definition for the term “test data” and that they will know how to use them and when to put them away. outline what testers can do to ensure that teams are considering it in their planning phases and provide useful ideas on how to isolate what those data needs might be. The presentation will use examples of soft- NEW 708 What Hollywood Can Teach ware development projects that have defined their test data early and You About Software Testing those that have not to provide you with context and examples. By Robert Sabourin Powerful lessons can be learned from some of the great epic movies of 705 Coding Standards and Unit Testing—Why our day: “Star Wars” and bug triage, “Indiana Jones” and requirements, Bother? By Sergei Sokolov “Monty Python” and configuration management, “Jurassic Park” and Many developers think that the industry “best practices” of coding unit testing, “The Usual Suspects” and teamwork, and “Star Trek” and standards and unit testing are a waste of time: They require addition- SLAs. al effort, but they don’t seem to make your life any easier, or your There are important metaphors within these movie stories that you code any better. This is not surprising. can apply to real test management problems. Robert Sabourin’s enter- This class explains how developers can apply coding standards taining talk ties practical real-world experiences to lessons learned and unit testing to improve their code and prevent the number of from the movies, offers tips to manage your team and provides his problems they need to identify, diagnose and fix over the course of unique insight into how to get things done. the project. The first half teaches you how to apply coding standards You will learn: to prevent errors related to code functionality, security and perform- • How to identify your testing project genre—epic saga, action ance. The second part focuses on how you can extend traditional thriller, mystery or comedy unit testing to expose reliability problems that could lead to insta- • How to storyboard a testing project bility, unexpected results or even crashes or security vulnerabilities. • How to draw lessons from an unlikely source Discussion will include how these test cases can be leveraged to build a projectwide automated regression system that runs in the back- Thursday, Nov. 9 ground each night and immediately alerts the team when code mod- ifications or additions break previously verified functionality. | 3:45 pm – 5:00 pm
NEW 706 The 5% Challenges of Test NEW 801 Effective Metrics for Managing a Automation By Hans Buwalda Test Effort By Shaun Bradshaw Some of the most common problems with software test automation When managing a test effort, test leads and test managers sometimes projects are that too much effort is spent on developing test scripts find it difficult to empirically convey the impacts of scope changes, where the percentage of tests that is actu- delays and defects to upper management. This class introduces a set ally automated is only a meager 20% to of well-defined test metrics related to tracking and managing a test- 30% because too much time is spent ing effort. It demonstrates how to consistently apply these metrics on script maintenance. These issues to software projects and how to improve communication of your find- cause numerous pains, including ings to the rest of the organization. The following concepts will be taught as a part of this class: • Test Metrics Philosophy – A four-step strategy for creating, tracking and interpreting test metrics Register at www.stpcon.com • Base Test Metrics – Fourteen simple metrics easily tracked 14 “This conference is great for developers and their managers, as Technical well as business-side people.” —Steve Margenau, Systems Analyst, Great Lakes Educational Loan Services Classes
by test analysts that can be used to derive more sophisti- to determine the common areas that can boost the testing performance cated test management information for both sides and how to recognize the limits of such efforts. • Management Test Metrics – Ten metrics and two graphs that make managing and communicating the status of a test effort N 806 Best Practices for Managing easier for test managers and test leads EW • Interpreting Test Metrics – A method for examining and Distributed Testing Teams interpreting the data to make improvements to the current By Dean Stevens test effort as well as future development efforts Software testing projects are now often completed using a distributed model to leverage offshore labs to lower costs or decrease project deliv- ery time. But without building certain cultural, methodological and 802 Software Testing a Service-Oriented NEW technological foundations into your organization’s core values, it can Architecture By Laura Rose be difficult or impossible to effectively manage projects being complet- The presence of service-oriented architectures (SOA) has grown ed by dispersed virtual teams. significantly in the past few years, and test professionals must stay Managing a distributed testing project requires a highly disciplined abreast of the latest technologies in order to continue providing sig- approach. Developing an effective framework for the execution of dis- nificant value-add to the software development process. tributed projects goes hand in hand with requiring consistently docu- This class describes briefly what SOA is, methodologies that mented processes and standards (“best practices”). However, by archi- can be employed when testing in an SOA environment, common and tecting a work model to accommodate a distributed model, you ensure potential pitfalls that can be avoided, a comparison and contrast of a rigorous approach that will assist the successful execution of projects testing in an SOA environment versus a “traditional” test environ- according to a well-defined set of best practices, regardless of the exe- ment and a look ahead at future opportunities. cution model employed. Once methodological and technical frameworks are in place, the bulk of the remaining challenges are related to “soft issues,” including cultur- NE 803 Real-World Performance Testing Lab W for (Almost) Free By Aaron Flint al incompatibility, leadership problems, trust issues and negative com- petitiveness. These are actually the major obstacles to successful comple- This course will discuss how to set up and maintain an effective per- tion of distributed projects. However, there are concrete ways to allevi- formance test lab without spending a great deal of money on special- ate these problems, including redefining your corporate culture, improv- ized performance testing hardware or software. Topics that will be cov- ing project planning and adjusting project staffing and technical infra- ered include: what is needed to set up an effective performance lab; the structure. In this session, attendees will learn methodologies and best hardware needed to get the maximum performance from the lab; and practices designed to build “teamness” between distributed groups and the software that must be installed and run in the lab, including tuning options and software configurations. We will also discuss how to man- set up both the physical and project structure so your teams can succeed. age and run performance tests and generate results. Finally, we will talk about maintenance issues such as how to preserve the environment. NEW 807 Diagnosing and Resolving J2EE Application Issues Before Deployment 804 Testing Java Applications Using the By Ferhan Kilical and Stanley Au Yeung Eclipse Test and Performance Tools Platform J2EE offers many advantages to developers but introduces many chal- (TPTP) By Paul Slauenwhite lenges to the development, performance diagnosis, tuning, deployment and management of applications in the enterprise network. In this class, The Eclipse Test and Performance Tools Platform (TPTP) provides a attendees will learn how to proactively detect problems and isolate flexible and extensible framework for creating and managing tests, them at different layers and tiers. They will acquire the tools to be deployments, datapools, execution histories and reports with exten- able to pinpoint root causes to specific application components. sions for performance, JUnit, GUI and manual testing of Java applica- The class begins with the end-user business process, then drills tions. In this class, you will learn how to use the performance, JUnit, down to application layers, communication between different layers, GUI and manual test tooling in the TPTP for testing Java applications. transaction trend-request data, method calls and class data. During Intended for developers and testers who want to test their Java appli- the class, the presenters will share some of the hands-on samples that cations, the class begins by providing an overview of the motivation, they mastered during their own J2EE tuning efforts. history and architecture for the TPTP project. Then the TPTP test frame- work is explained with a focus on extending the framework for vendor- specific purposes. Finally, the performance, JUnit, GUI and manual test NEW 808 GUI Test Automation for Eclipse tooling in the TPTP project is demonstrated to illustrate the life cycle RCP Applications of an application’s test assets. Attendees are provided with the sample By Dan Rubel and Phil Quitslund configuration and code used in the technical class. The Eclipse IDE and Eclipse RCP applications are taking the Java world by storm, and along with that wave is the need for automat- ed user interface testing. This class introduces open-source tools NEW 805 Building a Bridge Between Functional Test Automation and and methodologies such as Abbot for SWT and Eclipse TPTP GUI Recorder for automated testing of Eclipse RCP applications. Performance Testing By Peter Sody Attendees will be taken step-by-step through the process of creat- In a lot of software development organizations there is a clear distinc- ing and running GUI tests using these tools, and learn the strengths tion between functional test automation and performance testing. This and weaknesses of each approach. This intermediate-level course often leads to different teams testing either the functionality or perform- assumes you have knowledge of Eclipse technology, building user ance of the same software systems. This class highlights the common- interfaces and testing user interfaces. alities between functional test automation and performance testing and shows how these two areas can benefit from each other. This class gives practical examples on how to benefit from a collab- oration, covering aspects of the whole test cycle. Applied in the right way, this can go far beyond reusing common artifacts. With the right approach the teams can complement their skill sets and significantly increase the efficiency and coverage of their testing. You will learn how Register at www.stpcon.com 15 Conference and Tutorial Faculty
Scott Barber is software test manag- ices. Mr. Black has published several books, including “Managing er at AuthenTec and a member of the the Testing Process” and “Critical Testing Processes.” He has also technical advisory board for Stanley written more than 20 articles, presented hundreds of papers, work- Reid Consulting. Previously, he was a shops and seminars, and given more than a dozen keynote speech- consultant who focused on teaching and es at conferences and events around the world. Mr. Black is the performing practical performance test- president of both the International Software Testing Qualifications ing and analysis. His project-level expe- Board and the American Software Testing Qualifications Board. rience was evenly split between testing and analyzing performance for complex systems and mentoring organizations Shaun Bradshaw serves as in the development of customized cor- director of quality solutions for porate methodologies based on his per- Questcon Technologies. He is respon- formance testing approach. sible for managing Questcon’s team of Mr. Barber has a master’s degree in IT from American senior practice managers in the areas Intercontinental University. He writes Peak Performance, the per- of quality solutions development formance testing column in Software Test & Performance maga- and service delivery, and also works zine, and he also speaks at many technical conferences. with clients to improve their quality assurance and software test processes. Joe Basirico has spent most of his educational and professional career studying security and developing tools Hans Buwalda leads LogiGear’s that assist in the discovery of security action-based testing (ABT) research and vulnerabilities and general application development, and oversees the prac- problems. His primary responsibility at tice of ABT methodology. Mr. Buwalda Security Innovation is to deliver the is an internationally recognized expert company’s Security Training specializing in action-based test Curriculum to software teams in need automation, test development and test- of application security expertise. Mr. ing technology management. He’s also Basirico has trained developers and a speaker at international conferences, testers from numerous world-class organizations, such as delivering tutorials and workshops, as Microsoft, HP, EMC, Symantec and ING. He holds a B.S in com- well as presenting testing concepts such puter science from Montana State University. as ABT, the three Holy Grails of test development, soap-opera testing and testing in the cold. Recently, Mr. Buwalda co-authored “Integrated Test Design and Automation.” He holds an M.S. in Ryan Berg is a co-founder and lead computer science from Free University, Amsterdam. security architect of Ounce Labs, an innovator of software vulnerability risk management solutions, based in In his five years at Empirix, Rick Waltham, Mass. Prior to Ounce Labs, Cavallaro, senior applications engi- Mr. Ryan co-founded Qiave neer, has worked with hundreds of Technologies, a pioneer in kernel-lev- companies helping to ensure the per- el security, which was sold to formance of their most critical Web WatchGuard Technologies in 2000. He applications. A 10-year veteran of the also served as a senior software engi- software industry, he specializes in neer at GTE Internetworking, leading testing and application development. the architecture and implementation of Prior to joining Empirix, Mr. Cavallaro new managed firewall services. Mr. Berg holds patents, and has served in engineering roles at Aviv, patents pending, in multilanguage security assessment, interme- Workstation Solutions and Revelation diary security assessment language, communication protocols Software. He holds a BSEE degree from and security management systems. the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.
A 20-year-plus software and systems Clyneice Chaney, quality manager engineering veteran, Rex Black is pres- at Project Performance, brings more than ident and principal consultant of RBCS, 16 years of testing, quality assurance and which offers training, assessment, con- process improvement experience. She sulting, staff augmentation, insourcing, is an American Society for Quality offsite and offshore outsourcing, test Certified Quality Manager and a Quality automation and quality assurance serv- Assurance Institute Certified Quality Analyst. Focusing on process improve- ment and procedure development in the software testing and quality assurance areas, Ms. Chaney has successfully led process improvement, methodology development and re-engineer- ing projects for organizations wishing to improve their software development, testing processes and tools implementation. Register at www.stpcon.com 16 Conference and Tutorial Faculty
Thierry Ciot is a senior software engi- Jeff Feldstein is currently a manager of software develop- neer with more than 15 years of expe- ment at Cisco Systems Inc. During his 24-year career, he has been rience in software design and implemen- a software developer, tester, development manager and comput- tation. His experience spans many oper- er consultant; for the past five years, he ating systems, programming languages has been involved with software test- (ADA, C, C++, Java, .NET) and a multi- ing or has managed a team of devel- tude of application domains, from mail opers who write software test tools. His and messaging to debugging tools. Mr. specialties have included internetwork- Ciot currently works at Compuware as ing, real-time embedded systems, com- a technical lead on DevPartner Studio. munications systems, hardware diag- He is also the lead developer for System Compare, a tool that nostics and firmware, databases and enables users to quickly find why an application works on one test technologies. Mr. Feldstein has system but not on another. been one of the highest-rated speak- ers at previous Software Test & Performance conferences. Ross Collard is president of Collard & Co., a New York consult- ing firm. While he specializes in software testing and quality assurance, his con- Matthew Fisher is a senior security sulting assignments have included strate- engineer for SPI Dynamics and has gic planning on the use of information been specializing in Web application technology for competitive advantage, security assessments for many years. A the facilitation of quality improvement native Washingtonian, he has per- teams, management of large software formed countless assessments of Web development projects and the develop- applications within the DoD and the ment of software engineering practices. federal government, as well as some of Mr. Collard has made keynote pre- the largest commercial institutions sentations at major software conferences, around the globe, and is registered as published articles and conducted sem- a subject matter expert to the Defense inars on information technology topics Information Services Agency. Prior to for businesses, governments and universities, including George joining SPI Dynamics, Mr. Fisher worked at Computer Sciences Washington University, Harvard, New York University and U.C. and Digex, where he acted as lead technical adviser on large- Berkeley. He holds a B.E. in electrical engineering from the scale enterprise Web applications for Fortune 500 companies. University of Auckland, New Zealand, an M.S. in computer sci- He is a contributing author to the book “Google Hacking for ence from the California Institute of Technology and an M.B.A. Penetration Testers” and is currently working on his own book, from Stanford. titled “Web Application Security: A Guide for Developers and Penetration Testers.” In addition, Mr. Fisher leads the Washington, D.C., OWASP chapter. Elfriede Dustin is an SQA manager at Symantec, author of the book “Ef- fective Software Testing” and lead Aaron Flint has more than 10 years of author of “Automated Software Testing” increasingly senior quality assurance and “Quality Web Systems.” She is cur- experience, primarily focused on test- rently writing the “Security Testing ing enterprise-level server software, and Handbook,” along with two security responsible for functional testing, per- experts, to be published by Symantec formance testing and building teams for Press (spring 2006). She has also quality assurance. For the past three authored various white papers on the years, Mr. Flint has been the QA man- topic of software testing and is a frequent speaker at various ager at Layer7 Technologies. Prior to this, software testing conferences. he worked at GTE Enterprise Solutions Ms. Dustin has a B.S. in computer science and more than 15 as QA team lead for multiple-listing-serv- years of IT experience in various positions, such as QA director ice real estate system software, and InfoWave Software as QA team for BNA Software and assistant director for integration test and lead and manager for enterprise wireless connectivity software. deployment at CSC on the IRS modernization effort.
Bob Galen is a principal consultant Michel Feaster is the director of prod- of RGalen Consulting Group LLC, and has uct management for Mercury Interactive. nearly 25 years of experience working in She has seven years of experience as a a wide variety of domains at companies systems engineer, and has worked close- including Bayer, Bell & Howell Mail ly with hundreds of Mercury Interactive Processing, EMC, Lucent, Unisys and software developers and QA manager Thomson. customers helping them to streamline Mr. Galen regularly speaks at inter- QA operations. She has spent a total of national conferences and professional 12 years in the enterprise software indus- groups on software development, proj- try. Ms. Feaster’s in-depth technical ect management, software testing and knowledge and engaging style have made her a sought-after speaker at numerous industry events. Register at www.stpcon.com 17 Conference and Tutorial Faculty
team leadership. He is a certified Scrum Master and a member Guide” and “Pro Java EE Performance Management.” Mr. Haines of the Agile Alliance. Mr. Galen is author of “Software Endgames: has taught Java at the University of California in Irvine and at Eliminating Defects, Controlling Change, and the Countdown to Learning Tree University. As the Java host on InformIT.com, he On-Time Delivery.” publishes a weekly column on everything from Java Web technolo- gies to design patterns and performance tuning.
Andrew Glover is president of Stelligent, where his primary responsi- Linda Hayes is the CTO of Worksoft, bilities include the strategic develop- and also the founder of three software ment of Stelligent’s products and serv- companies, including AutoTester, ices. Mr. Glover’s career includes found- which delivered the first PC-based test ing Vanward Technologies and leader- automation tool. Ms. Hayes holds ship in software development for IBM, degrees in accounting, tax and law, is Philips Electronics and Procter & an award-winning author on software Gamble. He is a graduate of George quality, and has been a frequent indus- Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and is try speaker at numerous industry con- a frequent speaker at industry events. ferences and shows. She has been Mr. Glover is a co-author of “Java Testing named one of Fortune Magazine’s Patterns” (Wiley, 2004). “People to Watch” and one of the “Top 40 Under 40” by Dallas Business Journal. She has been a columnist and contributor to StickyMinds and Better Software magazines, as well as a colum- Robin F. Goldsmith has been presi- nist for Computerworld and Datamation, author of the dent of the Go Pro Management consul- “Automated Testing Handbook” and co-editor of “Dare to Be tancy since 1982. He works directly with Excellent” with Alka Jarvis on best practices in the software and trains professionals in business engi- industry. neering, requirements analysis, software acquisition, project management, qual- ity assurance and testing. Previously he Chris Hetzler is employed in the was a developer, a systems program- Fargo, N.D., Microsoft Business Solutions mer/DBA/QA and a project leader with development office as a software devel- the City of Cleveland, leading financial opment engineer in test. On his latest institutions and a “Big 4” consulting firm. project, Microsoft Dynamics GP Web Author of numerous articles and the recent book “Discovering Services, he was the lead technical tester REAL Business Requirements for Software Project Success,” Mr. and was responsible for the development Goldsmith was formerly international vice president of the of the product’s test strategy. Mr. Hetzler Association for Systems Management and executive editor of the has a B.S. in computer science and an Journal of Systems Management. Mr. Goldsmith has an A.B. from M.S. in software engineering from North Kenyon College, an M.S. from Pennsylvania State and a J.D. from Dakota State University. He has won Boston University. numerous public speaking awards throughout his academic career.
Michael Hackett is a founding part- ner of LogiGear and is responsible for Ferhan Kilical is an experienced IT professional with more the direction and development of the than 20 years of software development and engineering experi- company's training program. He has in- ence. She has successfully managed tuning efforts of many Web- depth experience in software engineer- based systems in government and nonprofit institutions. Early in ing and the testing of applications devel- her career, Ms. Kilical successfully managed high-profile projects oped for deployment across multiple for the Department of Defense. She has taught computer science platforms. Mr. Hackett writes and teach- courses in the Washington, D.C., metro area universities. Recently es a software testing curriculum for she started a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm specializ- LogiGear University, and for the U.C. ing in performance, load and stress testing, performance moni- Berkeley Extension. He is also co-author toring, application tuning and optimization. of “Testing Applications on the Web: Test Planning for Mobile and Internet-Based Systems,” Second Ed., and holds a B.S. in engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. Timothy Korson has had more than two decades of substan- tial experience working on a large variety of systems developed using modern software engineering techniques. This experience Steven Haines started Quest Software’s Java EE Performance includes distributed, real-time, embedded systems as well as busi- Tuning professional services organization in 2002. Mr. Haines is ness information systems in an n-tier, the author of both “Java 2 Primer Plus” client/server environment. Dr. Korson’s and “Java 2 From Scratch” and shares typical involvement on a project is as a author credits on “Java Web Services senior management consultant with Unleashed.” He is also the author additional technical responsibilities to of two newly released books, ensure high-quality, robust test and qual- “InformIT Java Reference ity assurance processes and practices. Dr. Korson has authored numerous arti- cles, and co-authored a book on Object Register at www.stpcon.com Technology Centers. 18 Conference and Tutorial Faculty
Yury Makedonov was trained as a oped numerous tools for supporting advanced programming researcher and worked in an R&D organ- language features and extensions such as aspect-oriented pro- ization dealing with composite materi- gramming. Mr. Quitslund is also an expert in programming lan- als. He has a Ph.D. degree in physics and guage design, static analysis and code generation. mathematics. He is now using his skills and knowledge to improve software quality. BJ Rollison is a technical trainer in the Dr. Makedonov has 10 years of test- Engineering Excellence Group at ing experience. Currently, he is work- Microsoft, where he designs and devel- ing as a QA manager, a test automation ops an intensive, hands-on technical manager and a senior consultant for the training curriculum for new and expe- Centre of Testing and Quality at CGI Group, a leading Canadian rienced test engineers. He started his pro- provider of end-to-end information technology and business fessional career in the industry working process services. on developing custom solutions for hos- pitals and local government agencies in Japan. In 1994 he joined the Windows Averil Meehan has a Ph.D. in the area 95 project at Microsoft, focusing on the of memory management of object-ori- internationalization of the Windows operating system. ented programming languages. Currently In 1996, Mr. Rollison became a test manager in the Internet Client she lectures at Letterkenny Institute of and Consumer Division, responsible for several client products and Technology, a third level college in a Web server. He moved to Microsoft’s Internal Technical Training Ireland with students at degree and mas- group in 1999 as the director of test training, responsible for plan- ters levels. Dr. Meehan has presented ning and organizing training for more than 6,000 test engineers. He conference papers and written articles also teaches software testing courses at the University of Washington for publications internationally, includ- and sits on the advisory boards for software testing certificate pro- ing “Performance Implications of Java grams at the University of Washington and Lake Washington Memory Management,” “Computer Technical College. Programming in a Blended Learning Environment,” “Java Garbage Collection—A Generic Solution” and “The Semantics of Garbage Collection Rules, A Denotational Approach.” Laura Rose is a quality assurance expert and the product man- ager responsible for automated performance test tools at IBM Rational. In addition to leading projects in both software program- Hung Q. Nguyen is CEO and founder ming and testing environments, she has 13 years of programming of LogiGear, a software quality engineer- experience and 10 in test management. ing firm offering training, testing serv- Ms. Rose has been a member of the American Society for ices and test automation products. He Quality, the Triangle Quality Council and the Triangle Information is author and co-author of several soft- Systems Quality Association. ware testing books, including “Testing She is published and has presented at various test and quali- Applications on the Web,” Second Ed., ty conferences, including IBM Test Symposium West, Practical and “Testing Computer Software,” Software Quality Conference (East and West), American Quality Second Ed. Society Conference, Better Software Conference & Expo and Mr. Nguyen writes and teaches a soft- STARWest. ware testing curriculum for LogiGear University, as well as for U.C. Berkeley and the U.C. Santa Cruz Extension. He holds a B.S. in quality assurance from Cogswell Dan Rubel, chief technology officer for Instantiations, has been Polytechnical College, is a graduate of a Stanford Graduate School designing object-oriented software since 1987. He is an expert in of Business Executive Program, and is a certified quality engineer. the design and implementation of commercial software products like CodePro Studio, jFactor and VA Assist, and frameworks used throughout the company and beyond, including jKit/GO and Thomas O’Mara has more than 25 jKit/Grid. At Objectshare Systems, Mr. Rubel was one of the lead years of experience with PC-based com- designers of WindowBuilder Pro and other products. puting, ranging from Fiber Optic Gyroscope data acquisition using the stack-based FORTH language to Web- Robert Sabourin, P.Eng., has more based applications utilizing the .NET than 20 years of management experience Framework and ASP.NET. In between, leading teams of software development there were C, Visual Basic and various professionals to consistently deliver proj- database and middleware initiatives. Mr. ects on time, on quality and on budget. O’Mara has been working with and writ- Mr. Sabourin is an adjunct professor ing articles about .NET technology since of software engineering at McGill early 2001. He has considerable direct per- University who often speaks at confer- formance-tuning experience on a Web-based ASP.NET banking ences around the world on software engi- software application for large credit unions. neering, SQA, testing and management issues.
Phil Quitslund, window tester architect at Instantiations, is an expert in GUI testing and automation. He has been active in the Eclipse research community since 2002 and has devel- Register at www.stpcon.com 19 Conference and Tutorial Faculty
Neeraj Sangal is president of Lattix, a company specializing time, software-intensive embedded systems. Prior to joining the in software architecture management solutions and services. He Department of the Navy, he was director of the Standards and has analyzed many large proprietary and open-source systems. Quality Control Staff, U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Prior to Lattix, Mr. Sangal was president of Tendril Software, Development. Mr. Sorkowitz has published papers and has pre- which pioneered model-driven EJB development and synchro- sented seminars on software metrics, SQA and testing at confer- nized UML models for the Java programming language. Tendril ences sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society, ACM and the was acquired by BEA/WebGain. Prior to Tendril, he managed a British Computer Society. distributed development organization at Hewlett-Packard.
Dean Stevens has been involved with Paul Slauenwhite is a software developing and delivering world-class developer on the IBM Autonomic hardware, software and service products Computing (AC) Tools and Technolo- for more than 20 years. Prior to joining gies project and a committer to the Symbio, Mr. Stevens founded and served Eclipse Test and Performance Tools as the CEO of China TechSource—an out- Platform (TPTP) open-source project. sourcing broker for Chinese services After receiving a B.Sc. in computer sci- firms. In addition, he has operated a con- ence from Dalhousie University, Mr. sulting firm that worked with corpora- Slauenwhite joined IBM in 2000 and tions to resolve executive management worked on the WebSphere Object Level and execution issues. He has demonstrat- Trace (OLT) project. In 2001, he joined ed success managing global remote development, multicompany the IBM WebSphere Studio Team and projects and distributed virtual organizations. Mr. Stevens began developed logging and tracing technologies. He is currently work- his career writing FORTRAN code for a CDC mainframe. He is a ing on an M.Math in software engineering at the University of graduate of the University of Idaho. Waterloo.
Tom Stracener was one of the founding members of nCircle Over the past 15 years, Peter Sody has Network Security. While at nCircle he served as the head of vul- been a testing contractor, software devel- nerability research from 1999 to 2001, developing one of the oper, test engineer and development industry’s first quantitative vulnerability scoring systems, and manager for several companies and co-inventing several patented technologies. Mr. Stracener is an organizations in Germany and the United experienced security consultant, penetration tester and vulner- States, most recently for Eclipsys and ability researcher. One of his patents, “Interoperability of vul- Vertex. Being an advocate of test-driven nerability and intrusion detection systems,” was granted by the development, he is now using his skills USPTO in October 2005. He is the senior security analyst for for developing architectures and frame- Cenzic’s CIA Labs and the architect of Cenzic’s Application works for both functional test automa- Penetration Testing Methodology. tion and performance testing. Mr. Sody has authored publications on various aspects of software development, including presentations at con- Mary Sweeney has been developing, ferences such as IEEE RE and Net.ObjectDays. He holds an M.S. using and testing relational database sys- in computer science from Kaiserslautern University, Germany. tems for more than 20 years for such com- panies as Boeing and Software Test Labs. She’s the author of “Visual Basic for Sergei Sokolov is the product manager of C/C++ solutions at Testers” (Apress, 2001) and “A Tester's Parasoft, where he has been a senior member of the Professional Guide to .NET Programming” (Apress, Services team for two years. He has more than 10 years of experi- 2006). Ms. Sweeney is a college profes- ence in developing large software systems in C and C++ in the sor with a degree in mathematics and Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry. Mr. Sokolov has computer science from Seattle University. published a number of technical and research papers, and present- She is an MCP in SQL Server, and is on ed at technical conferences on the subjects of application security the board of IIST (International Institute of Software Test). and best development practices. He has two master's degrees, and has been awarded a patent for a new technology in the EDA field. Stanley Au Yeung has years of IT experience in database appli- cations, performance testing and quality assurance. After getting Now an independent software consult- his M.S. degree from George Washington University in Information ant, Alfred Sorkowitz was a comput- Technology, he was heavily involved with research and applica- er scientist with the Department of the tion development projects in the university. Then he joined a non- Navy, responsible for developing real- profit organization where he mastered skills and knowledge in qual- ity assurance and performance testing. He was involved with var- ious high-profile Web systems tuning and optimization projects. He is currently working on a performance optimization project for a mission-critical Navy application as a senior consultant.
Register at www.stpcon.com 20 Hotel and Travel Hotel The Software Test & Performance Conference has secured a special rate of $159/single per night with the Hyatt Regency Cambridge. To make your Information reservations, use the link on the show’s Web site, www.stpcon.com. You can also call the hotel directly. Be sure to identify yourself as being with the Software Test & Performance Conference to receive the group rate.
YOU MUST MAKE YOUR RESERVATIONS BY OCTOBER 16 TO SECURE THIS RATE.
Directions From Logan International Airport: Follow signs to Boston via Sumner Tunnel. After you come out of the Hyatt Regency Cambridge tunnel take exit 26A—(Storrow Drive/Back Bay/Cambridge). Keep left, 575 Memorial Drive go onto Storrow Drive. Go 3/4 mile and take exit on left-hand side (Government Center/Kendall Square). At the top of the ramp take a right Cambridge, MA 02139-4896 over the Longfellow Bridge; at the end of the bridge turn right onto Tel: +1-617-492-1234 Memorial Drive West (Rt. 3 North). Stay on Memorial Drive approxi- Fax: +1-617-491-6906 mately 1 1/2 miles; at the third traffic light turn right. The entrance to the Hyatt will be on your left.
Transportation From the Boston Airport: • Taxi – Approximately $35 • Subway – $1.25 (T stops), 1 1/2 miles from hotel (taxi available) Above Ground: B.U. Central, Green Line (T stops) Underground: Harvard Square, Kendall Square Red Line
Amtrak: • Back Bay Station is located 3 miles from hotel, approximately 10-15 minutes away. Amtrak also stops at South Station in the Financial District, which is approximately 5 miles, 20-30 minutes, from hotel. Taxi is available to and from the hotel. From Back Bay Station, cost is $7-$10. From South Station, cost is $12-$15.
Downtown Cambridge: • Hotel offers complimentary scheduled shuttle service to locations in Cambridge. The shuttle service will take guests anywhere from Harvard Square to the Cambridgeside Galleria Mall area and all points between. • For guests who would like to get into the city of Boston, the shuttle will stop at Kendall Square T Stop (Red Line) or the Boston University T Stop (Green Line). For more information or to sign up for the shuttle, contact the Guest Services Desk at in-house extension 51 or call +1-617-492-1234.
General Shuttle Information: Traffic conditions may change pick-up times, forcing the shuttle off schedule, especially during rush hour and inclement weather. The Hyatt shuttle is for registered guests only. If requested, please show your room key to the driver as identification. T Stop schedules are available at the Guest Services Desk. For the safety of our passen- gers, luggage is not allowed on the shuttle. Shuttle schedule is subject to change without notice.
MBTA: (Subway) 1 1/2 miles from hotel.
Parking: Self-parking is $28 per night with in/out privileges (clearance 6' 8"). Valet parking is $30 per night; RV and van parking is available at your own risk in the employee parking lot, based on availability. See the doorman or front desk upon arrival for details.
Register at www.stpcon.com 21 Conference Planner Register at www.stpcon.com
MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY November 6 November 7 November 8
REGISTRATION OPEN REGISTRATION OPEN REGISTRATION OPEN 7:30 am - 7:00 pm 4:00 pm - 7:00 pm 7:30 am - 7:00 pm
INDUSTRY KEYNOTE 4:30 pm - 4:45 pm KEYNOTE: REX BLACK 4:45 pm - 5:30 pm EXHIBITS OPEN 2:30 pm - 7:00 pm ATTENDEE RECEPTION 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm TUTORIALS TECHNICAL CLASSES 9:00 am - 5:00 pm 8:30 am - 10:00 am 10:30 am - 12:00 pm 1:15 pm - 2:30 pm
T-1 Assessing Your Test 101 Seven Low-Overhead 201 Prevent Showstopper 301 Hacking 101: Donning Team Effectiveness, Software Process Overruns With Risk- the Black Hat to Best Efficiency and More Improvement Methods Based Proactive Testing Protect Applications - Black - Goldsmith - Goldsmith From Today's Hacking Threats - Stracener
T-2 Testing Techniques: 102 Just-in-Time Testing 202 Just-in-Time Testing 302 Five Core Metrics to Theory and Application Techniques and Techniques and Tactics, Guide Your Software - Rollison Tactics, Part 1 Part 2 - Sabourin Endgames - Galen - Sabourin
T-3 Testing in Highly 103 Automated Database 203 How to Turn Your 303 Overcoming Iterative, Quasi-Agile Testing: Testing and Testing Team Into a Requirements-Based Projects—Practical Using Stored High-Performance Testing's Hidden Pitfalls Strategies for Mixed Procedures - Sweeney Organization - Hackett - Goldsmith Culture Projects - Korson
T-4 Twenty-One Ways to 104 Lessons Learned in 204 Lessons Learned in Test 304 Managing Acceptance Spot—And Fix— Test Automation, Part 1 Automation, Part 2 Testing Cycles More Requirements Errors - Dustin - Dustin Efficiently - Makedonov Early - Goldsmith
T-5 Foundations of 105 Code Coverage 205 Database Security: How 305 How to Optimize Your GUI Test Automation Metrics and How to Vulnerable Is Your Data? Web Testing Strategy - Makedonov Use Them - Black - Sweeney - Nguyen
T-6 Software Endgames: 106 Foundations of GUI 206 Foundations of GUI Test 306 Model-Based Testing for How to Finish What Test Automation Using Automation Using C#, Java and Web-based You've Started - Galen C#, Part 1 - Rollison Part 2 - Rollison GUI Applications - Feldstein
T-7 Using Metrics to 107 Designing for 207 Analyze the Return on 307 Taking AIM—Using Improve Software Testability - Feldstein Your Testing Investment Visual Models for Test Testing - Sorkowitz - Black Case Design - Sabourin
T-8 Creating Agility and 108 Testing the Software 208 Using Scrum to Manage 308 Elements of Software Effectiveness in Architecture - Sangal the Testing Effort - Galen Design for Unit Testing Software Testing - Ciot - Hayes
BIRDS OF A FEATHER SESSION 109 Effectively Training 209 Quality Throughout the 309 Models for Security 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm Your Offshore Test Software Life Cycle Testing in the Software Team - Hackett - Feldstein Development Life Cycle - Berg
BIRDS OF A FEATHER SESSION 8:30 pm - 10:30 pm 22 Conference Las Register at www.stpcon.com t Year’s SCOoLnDfer Planner OeUncTe! Registe r Early! THURSDAY November 9
REGISTRATION OPEN 7:30 am - 4:00 pm
4:45 pm - 5:30 pm EXHIBITS OPEN 12:00 pm - 4:00 pm 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm TECHNICAL CLASSES 3:00 pm - 4:15 pm 8:30 am - 10:00 am 10:30 am - 12:00 pm 2:00 pm - 3:15 pm 3:45 pm - 5:00 pm
401 The Secure Software 501 Strategies and Tactics 601 Strategies and Tactics 701 The Five Most 801 Effective Metrics for Development Life Cycle for Global Test for Global Test Dangerous Application Managing a Test - Dustin Automation, Part 1 Automation, Part 2 Security Effort - Bradshaw - Nguyen - Nguyen Vulnerabilities—and How to Test for Them - Basirico
402 Accelerate Testing 502 Creating and Leading 602 Creating and Leading 702 S-Curves and the Zero 802 Software Testing a Cycles With the High- the High-Performance Bug Bounce: Plotting Service-Oriented Collaborative Performance Test Test Organization, Part Your Way to More Architecture Performance Testing Organization, Part 1 2 - Galen Effective Test - Rose - Cavallaro - Galen Management - Bradshaw
403 Deciding What Not to 503 Pinpointing and 603 SOA Performance 703 Testing Java 803 Real-World Test - Sabourin Exploiting Specific Testing Challenges Programs—Memory Performance Testing Performance - Barber Management Issues Lab for (Almost) Free Bottlenecks - Barber - Meehan - Flint
404 Putting the User Back 504 Performance Tuning 604 Performance Tuning 704 Defining Test Data and 804 Testing Java in User Acceptance ASP.NET 2.0 ASP.NET 2.0 Data-Centric Application Applications Using Testing - Goldsmith Applications, Part 1 Applications, Part 2 Testing - Hetzler the Eclipse Test and - O'Mara - O'Mara Performance Tools Platform (TPTP) - Slauenwhite
405 Getting a Handle on 505 Identify and Mitigate 605 Identify and Mitigate 705 Coding Standards and 805 Building a Bridge Risk: Risk-Based Risks Through Risks Through Testing, Unit Testing—Why Between Functional Testing Strategies Testing, Part 1 Part 2 - Black Bother? - Sokolov Test Automation and - Chaney - Black Performance Testing - Sody
406 Java EE Performance 506 Rapid Business- 606 Exploiting Web 706 The 5% Challenges of 806 Best Practices for Tuning Methodology: Driven Testing Application Code: The Test Automation Managing Distributed Wait-Based Tuning - Chaney Methodologies and - Buwalda Testing Teams - Haines Automation of SQL - Stevens Injection - Fisher
407 Agile Test Development 507 Unit Testing for Agile 607 Unit Testing for Agile 707 Performance Testing for 807 Diagnosing and - Buwalda Development, Part 1 Development, Part 2 Managers - Barber Resolving J2EE - Sabourin - Sabourin Application Issues Before Deployment - Kilical, Au Yeung
408 Techniques for Testing 508 Using Code Metrics 608 Verifying Software 708 What Hollywood Can 808 GUI Test Automation Packaged Application for Targeted Code Robustness - Collard Teach You About for Eclipse RCP Performance - Feaster Refactoring - Glover Software Testing Applications - Sabourin - Rubel, Quitslund
509 Recruiting, Hiring, 609 Metrics: How to Track Motivating and Things That Matter Retaining Top Testing - Chaney Talent - Feldstein
23 Pricing and Registration Register Early and SAVE! extreme Early Bird Super Early Bird Early Bird Full Price
Register By By July 28 By Sept. 15 By Oct. 20 After Oct. 20 Full Event Passport $1,095 $1,195 $1,365 $1,565 November 7-9 Best Value Two-Day Technical $935 $1,035 $1,195 $1,345 Conference Only November 8-9 Tutorials Only $695 $795 $845 $945 November 7 Exhibits Only FREE FREE FREE $50
November 8-9 All prices are in US dollars How to Register REGISTER ONLINE. Register online at www.stpcon.com & Performance Conference in previous years? Welcome and use one of the following payment methods: back! Enter the code ALUMNI to receive $100 off the Full Event Passport registration price. CREDIT CARD. You can use the secure online form to pay via credit card and get immediate confirmation of your REFUND POLICY. You can receive a full refund, less a $50 classes. MasterCard, Visa and American Express are accept- registration fee, for cancellations made by October 10, 2006. ed cards. You’ll receive a REGISTRATION RECORD and Cancellations after this date are non-refundable. Send your RECEIPT. Please print out these pages and bring them with cancellation in writing to [email protected]. you to the conference. Present them at the Registration Desk Paid Conference/Tutorial Registration Includes: to pick up your badge and any course materials. • Admission to tutorials and/or technical classes. CHECK. Fill out the online registration form. Print out the Please make your class selections when registering. REGISTRATION RECORD and RECEIPT and mail to BZ • Admission to keynotes Media LLC, 7 High Street, Suite 407, Huntington, NY • Admission to exhibits 11743. Be sure to include your payment. Online registra- • Conference materials tions that are mailed without payment will not be con- • Attendee reception firmed until payment is received. • Continental breakfast, coffee breaks If you register using a P.O., you will be invoiced imme- P.O. Exhibits-Only Registration Includes: diately for the registration amount. Payment must be • Admission to keynotes received before your registration can be confirmed. • Admission to exhibits GROUP DISCOUNTS. Registering four or more attendees • Attendee reception from your company? You can receive a $100 discount off the Register Online Today at www.stpcon.com! Full Event Passport on each registration. Enter the word Registration Questions GROUP when asked for a code on our online registration form. Contact Donna Esposito at +1-415-785-3419 or ALUMNI DISCOUNT. Have you attended the Software Test [email protected].
BZ Media LLC 7 High Street Suite 407 Huntington, NY 11743