Performance Testing

[Me]:- Guruji, if I have to do Performance testing, what questions I will need ask and get answers for effective testing

[Guruji]:- You can ask yourself these questions

      1)       What are the performance criteria that the application needs to meet? (Page load time over various line speeds, bytes over the wire, server-side performance issues, client response times, and so on.)

2)       What are the baseline numbers for these, as determined by testing?

3)       What is the typical customer bandwidth? Make sure that metrics are taken with this.

4)       Will there be automation to quantify the performance numbers?

5)       Will this automation require developers to provide performance markers in the code? Are these documented?

6)       Can the server configuration be changed to set the caching on images higher, allowing users revisiting the site from the same machine the ability to use the images from cache instead of downloading them from the server?

7)       Have all the graphics been optimized for the Web?

8)       What operations are the most expensive?

9)       What do the most expensive operations cost?

10)   What do the cheapest operations cost?

11)   Is there a base cost that cannot be escaped; any fixed overhead costs?

12)   What is the cost (in megahertz or other value) of a typical user scenario?

13)   Is there any instrumentation being used to calculate performance?

14)   Are other tools being used to calculate performance?

15)   What are the metrics for quantifiable entities such as:

a)       Performance versus users

b)       Performance versus time

c)       Transactions per second

d)       Errors per user interaction

e)       Errors per unit of time

f)        Kilobytes of data per second

g)       Average amount of data downloaded per user visit

h)       Round-trip time

i)         Round-trip count

j)         Client response time

k)       Bytes per request

l)         Bytes over the wire per transaction

16)   Has the application been profiled when performing at peak capacity-75 or 80 percent CPU utilization?

 

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Globalization

[Me]:- Guruji, if I have to do Globalization testing, what questions I will need ask and get answers for effective testing

[Guruji]:- You can ask yourself these questions

 

1.       What languages will users be allowed to input information in?

2.       Will complex script input be supported? Are there different behaviors that should be observed here?

3.       What encodings are supported? Not just code-page encodings, but Unicode UTF format and conversions as well.

4.       What code pages are supported? Microsoft? Mac? OEM?

5.       Will this application be code-page-dependent?

6.       Does your application need to do any escapings of the input?

7.   Does the application accept extended ASCII, double-byte, complex script, RTL, or Unicode input?

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Localization testing

[Me]:- Guruji, if I have to do localization testing, what questions I will need ask and get answers for effective testing

[Guruji]:- You ask variations of these questions

1.       What languages will the application be localized into?

2.       When you view each localization, are all the strings localized? Are all the strings supposed to be localized? (Some strings, such as the company name, may not be translated.)

3.       If you provide more than one language, how do you determine which one to show to the user? Read the browser's accept language? A user preference when they register?

4.       Will the localizations from a previous release be reused?

5.       Will server errors (such as response codes-404) be localized?

6.       Is there country-dependent formatting?

a)       Sorting

b)       Number formats (thousand place separator, decimal, and negative)

c)       Numerals-ordinal and cardinal numbers

d)       Units of measurement (U.S. versus metric)

e)       Currency (symbol and placement and the new Euro-some contain more than one symbol; place the symbol before the amount and after as well as with leading and trailing 0s and spaces)

f)        Calendar (Gregorian, Lunar, Hebrew, Thai, Korean, Japanese, Chinese)

g)       First week of year

h)       First day of week (Sunday or Monday)

i)         Date format and separator (mm-dd-yyyy or dd-mm-yyyy or mm-dd-yy, and using a period, dash, or slash to separate the fields)

j)         Time format (12-hour clock versus 24-hour clock and A.M./P.M. formats)

k)       Punctuation (quotes, exclamation marks, question marks, list separators)

l)         Address formats

m)     Name formats (last name last versus last name first)

n)       Phone number formats

7.       Is there language-dependent formatting such as spell check or sort order? (for example, in Finnish or Swedish, the word waffle should be sorted ahead of the word vegetable).

8.       Will complex scripts be supported? Are there different behaviors that should be observed here?

9.       Does the interface display correctly with RTL localizations?

10.    Does the interface properly display the extended ASCII range for each language you localize into?

11.    Does the interface properly display double-byte characters?

12.    Does the interface properly display Unicode-only characters?

13.    What encodings are supported (particularly for Russian [Cyrillic versus KOI-8] and Japanese [JIS versus SJIS])?

14.    Does your application specify fonts to be used? If so, make sure that the fonts you hard-code are able to display the language you are localizing into.

15.    Will this application be code page dependent?

16.    Will the application be pseudolocalized prior to release?

17.    Will all localizable strings be placed in a central location?

18.    Do all graphics and symbols make sense for the language? Many symbols, graphics, and images do not carry the same meaning in different cultures; for example, flags should not represent a language, and icons such as a mailbox may not exist in all regions.

19.    Are there other internationally sensitive issues-maps, country names, and so on?

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Accessibility Testing

[Me]:- Guruji, what are the accessibility questions that I can ask myself while testing the Accessibility aspect of any application

[Guruji]:- You ask variations of these questions

1.       After reading Section 508 (the Rehabilitation Act Amendment [RAA]) of the Workforce Investment Act of 1988, do you notice particulars that apply to your application?

2.       Will your application be made Section 508 compliant?

3.       Can the application be used without a mouse? This means keyboard-only navigation and the use of the Tab key to navigate. Try placing the mouse behind the computer to force you to try this.

4.       Is the tab order through the application logical (TabIndex attribute)?

5.       Does the focus default to the most logical place when a user enters a page?

6.       Are there any keyboard shortcuts in the product (AccessKey attributes)?

7.       Are these shortcuts unique on each page compared to any other access key, browser hotkey, or system command? You cannot have duplicates.

8.       Do all pages, tables, columns, frames, forms, graphics, links, animations, applets, and controls have a descriptive real-language label (ALT text and TITLE text)?

9.       Do all tables have header attributes? (<TH> with a real-language description.)

10.    Do all links, buttons, and graphics have tooltips?

11.    Do all images used as anchors for links have a text-based alternative?

12.    Is the application able to function with all graphics turned off? With the sound turned off?

13.    Can the application function when the user has turned off style sheets in the browser?

14.    Is color or sound the only method of communicating information to the user in any place?

15.    Are the user's specified colors of fonts, links, and the background applied?

16.    Are the user's specified font face and size applied?

17.    Can the application be used while in High Contrast mode?

18.    Does the application or site provide the appropriate properties for the controls in MSAA?

19.    If any text edit boxes are used, can you change the value in the box and have MSAA recognize the new input?

20.    What level of MSAA is the application standardized to (v1.3 or v2.0)? The standardization is a good marketing point and worth at least a mention on the Web page. More information on Microsoft Active Accessibility can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/enable/.

21.    Do included video or animations have closed captioning, narration, or text equivalents?

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Usability testing

[Me]:- Guruji, what are the usability questions that I can ask myself while testing the Usability aspect of any application

[Guruji]:- Asking questions to your self is an effective method to generate and test the applications. Well’’ to start off you can begin asking the following questions

1.       Does the user interaction for this feature make sense? Will the user easily figure out how to use it?

2.       Are Help files provided?

3.       Are error messages to the user helpful?

4.       Will server errors (such as 404s) be given a more usable interface when delivered to the user?

5.       Can the user easily find the necessary navigational controls, or are the application controls easily confused with the browser's controls? (For example, if users are looking for the Help pages for your application, do they instead click the Help for the browser?)

6.       What is the result of each click? Where does it navigate to?

7.       What happens if the user right-clicks? Is this disabled or is there a special menu that appears? Is it supported?

8.       Is the information architecture clearly mapped out with content topics mapped to it?

9.       Would the user try to bookmark the page? Can the user return to a book-marked page of yours? What if the page has been removed? There should at least be a polite general statement and links to the main navigation page of your site/application.

10.    Will there be usability studies performed with typical users prior to the release?

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Risk analysis

[Me]: - Guruji, can you please throw some light on Risk analysis

[Guruji]:- Sure, I can. But before we get there you will need to understand a few terms that are generally used in Risk analysis like –

Risk - Condition that result in loss to an organization

Threat- Trigger that causes risk to become a loss

Control- Threat Eliminator

Vulnerability- Flaw that enables threat to be exploited

Risk Analysis- Evaluation of risks, threats, controls, vulnerabilities

[Me]: - What are the risks that impact testing?

[Guruji]:- Many. I will list out a few for you.

Budget, No.of Resources, test environment, Tools and procedures, Sequence/Increments of code delivery, Low reusability, New technology, Complexity, end user expectations, software risks, security risks and quality risks.

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