With the advent and maturity of Web 2.0 concepts and feature rich dev tools, the impetus to develop desktop solutions for your computing needs should be seeing a decline. I was mulling over the “problem of choice” ( Matrix fame)…… What would be the factors to consider when deciding whether an application/system should be served as a standalone installer for a desktop app OR a surf-n-use web solution. These are some of the factors that favored going online with our apps.
Cross compatibility: This is one BIG advantage where you would’nt have to create Linux, Mac and Windows distro’s for the same app. Bad news for those companies that made a neat packet out of “application porting”.
Universal Upgrade: Web applications reduce the pain of distributing patches, service packs and version updates. This needs to be done only in the centralized application server and it trickles to all users.
Easy application support: This will come as a great sigh of relief to companies maintaining extensive service/ support personnel. The logic lies in the fact that a stable release of a software is done after extensive QA where trained testers try to break the code. So most support queries issues are with respect to system specific compatibility issues, missing support utilities and the problems due to OS localization etc etc etc… These are cleaned out in one sweep when you go online.
Heightened security and reliablity: Service continuity is enhanced if the application servers are robust and outages will not happen on an ad-hoc basis. If the application is processor intensive then high end servers can do a better job and heighten throughput as compared to a desktop.
Will be building on this in the coming days. For the moment just could’nt resist sharing this with you…..
Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Prospero año y Felicidad
I want to wish you a Merry Christmas
I want to wish you a Merry Christmas
I want to wish you a Merry Christmas
From the bottom of my heart
As a continuum of my post on test approach best fit vs first fit, thought id present Heuristic testing as a means of getting this done….
Question is “What is heuristics”
Well, a heuristic is a rule of thumb solution to a problem that may qualify as the solution but need not necessarily be so….. This a terminology where emphasis lies on the potential of a thought, approach or method to be come the solution for a problem.
How does this help testing…… Well QA and testing has reached very appreciable maturity levels the worldover (barring India ) that for any given problem posed you have a sizeable set of solutions as compared to what you would have 10 years back. Let say i want to do funtional testing. There are umpteen number of options at hand like the following:
Sticking to age old manual testing.
An automated solution ( just because a testing can be automated it need not be)
The possibility of using my own custom scripts.
Possibility of using COTS products ( high industry affinity)
Now heuristic testing is a methodology where the set of n possible solutions are all given equal importance initially. Then begins the probing stage where the validity of accepting any of these n solutions is questioned and a process of elimination gets kicked off. Darwin says “The fittest will survive”. Well if thats true for the cosmos then why should not hold true for Testing Methodologies ?
The biggest truth is “Winrunner need not be the best solutions for your functinal testing requirements just because your QA Consultant know only that !!!!! ”
Sorry if that came across too hard…… but then in many cases i have seen the following classic case “My carpenter knows how to use the only the hammer and i want him to put in a screw. So he bangs the bejesus out of the screw till it goes in….. End result i have a wall that looks like its survived world war II……… and we give him an award for ontime service delivery but failed to realize that the next day a painter and a mason will have to come in for damage control post deployment………” Now i be that sounds like a familiar story…….
This is where we do Heuristic testing where the primary focus is not on getting A single solution but to ascertain what options we have. Then we get around to finding our best option after careful analysis by questioning the authenticity of each of our options and let the fittest solutions emerge as the winner….
My friend Kenney recently introduced me to the concept of stumbling. This a concept where the Internet goes democratic. You as user of the internet now have the right to vote for content/ information on the internet that you think is more precise and relevant than other websites that talk of the same thing. I believe that this brings us one more step closer to harnessing the collective intelligence of users on the internet. This is a great place to start stumbling:
Download the stumble toolbar for your Mozilla or IE.
Visit the sites you like and vote for them by pressing the “I like it” button.
You can also register for types of information that generally interests you and when you click the stumble! button on the toolbar it will fetch a random page from the interests you have registered. Trust me it makes for some cool reading. You can also invite friends to join this network and stumble on pages that your friends have voted for.
It was a really welcome sight to see stumble votes affecting google listings also. As a stumbler my mouse pointer drifts to google results that have a “stumble thumb” next to it
So what are you waiting for…… “Get Stumbling NOW !!!!!!”
) that for any given problem posed you have a sizeable set of solutions as compared to what you would have 10 years back. Let say i want to do funtional testing. There are umpteen number of options at hand like the following:
