Tejas Software Consulting Newsletter

February/March 2004, vol. 4, #1

Q: How many Imagineers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Does it have to be a light bulb?
I read this in the book Walt Disney Imagineering that I bought while at Walt Disney World a few days ago. Okay, it's a trite joke, but I like the way it captures the idea of out-of-the-box thinking.

With this issue, I celebrate the third anniversary of founding my business. If you've been a reader for a while, you know that means there's just no telling what might be inside. So please read on and find out!

Are you a member of the elite corps of newsletter subscribers? Signing up is as easy as typing your email address in the form at http://tejasconsulting.com/newsletter/.

-Danny R. Faught, Software Alchemist
faught@tejasconsulting.com -- http://tejasconsulting.com/ -- +1-817-294-3998

Contents

Tejas Newswire

I recently attended the Fifth Annual Austin Workshop on Test Automation (AWTA), which had "Open-Source Test Tools" as its theme. You can follow the link and go to Bret Pettichord's blog entry for details about the tools that were presented. I got to meet the authors of several tools I'd heard about, and I got to see an old colleague for the first time in years (his new mohawk is unfortunately not visible in the official photo). This was a very valuable networking experience for me.

The latest Open Testware Reviews feature is a survey of open source scripting languages, plus an index of the 16 features published in 2003. Based on market feedback, I lowered the price of a one-year subscription to US$40 to make it more widely accessible. Also, I have started opening feature articles and blotter entries to the public nine months after their original publication. The first two reviews are now available - "ALLPAIRS Test Case Generation Tool" and "OpenSTA (Open System Testing Architecture)," plus the first two surveys - the "Defect Tracking Tools Survey," and the "Black Box Test Driver Survey." To get announcements both about new subscriber-only content and additional features that are released to the public, sign up for the Open Testware Announcements mailing list.

I've agreed to be a regular columnist for StickyMinds.com. To start out, my article, "What is this 'Testing' Thing?" has been republished under the title "Dear Aunt Fern." It got some interesting feedback that you can find on the page below the article.

I've been working on a book tentatively titled The Software Testing Resource Guide, an update of the FAQs that I used to maintain and now are outdated. I plan to solicit some community help in getting it done, so let me know if you're interested in helping out.

Feature Article
Out of the Terrible Two's

My business has survived the terrible two's and has safely become a three-year-old! Two-year-old children are typically fiercely independent, possessive, and don't like to clean up after themselves. This year I resolve to collaborate more, share more, and maybe, just maybe, I'll clean up my office. Two-year-olds also explore and learn rapidly. Here are some of things I encountered over the past year.

A year ago I announced a startup online publication called Open Testware Reviews. Since then, I've published 17 feature articles about a variety of free test tools.  I was surprised by the international response - I have subscribers from Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Japan, South Africa, and the U.S. I've had to learn more about international banking than I thought I'd ever have to, and how the fluctuation of the South African Rand could affect my business. I've learned that PayPal doesn't work in many of the countries where I need it to, so I've added to the payment options recently. I managed to get those Rands, but there are some Egyptian Pounds and Indian Rupees I'm still seeking. More importantly, I'm getting feedback from people with very diverse backgrounds.

Publishing Open Testware Reviews also introduced me to some other business dealings, such as advertising. So I got to learn about CPM pricing (cost per mille) and how expensive advertising can be. Bartering helped make advertising more feasible in several cases. Like with consulting, it turns out that the best marketing approach for my publication is networking, writing, and word-of-mouth buzz. I was also happy to pay Texas sales tax for the first time this year, which means I had Open Testware Reviews subscribers in my home state, including my first customer of any sort in my home county.

Speaking of advertising, I decided that putting ads up on testingfaqs.org would not fundamentally harm the dot-org feeling of the site. Having seen and bought text ads on wilwheaton.net (why not? they're cheap :-), I decided that text ads were the way to go. Interest has been increasing somewhat, and you can see how they look on the site now. I also added a link to donate money to help support the growing costs of hosting the site, and I'm very thankful for the people who have given me a vote of confidence with their donations.

Now for the numbers. Traffic increased on the testingfaqs.org and tejasconsulting.com web sites by about 50% over last year, with half a million page views and 13 gigabytes of data sent out to readers across the world. My newsletter subscriber base also increased by 50%, and membership on the metro-sqa mailing increased by 80%. The number of subscribers on the swtest-discuss mailing list dropped in half, however. When the former sponsor shut down swtest-discuss and lost the subscriber list, I tried to reconstitute it on Topica. This was a good way to clean up abandoned email addresses and keep only the people who really wanted to be subscribed.

To be in line with my advocacy of free test tools, I've done the best I can to use free software for many of the things I do. I have to admit that I'm running Windows XP on my new laptop, because I have trepidation about installing Linux on a newly released piece of hardware. My plan to buy a laptop with Linux pre-configured was dashed when I had to replace my trusty eBay special a day before a business trip. But I do have two versions of Linux running under VMware, and I use Cygwin extensively. My web servers run on Linux, and I plan to install FreeBSD on a spare machine to act as a file server and an additional test platform.

I've been using OpenOffice for my mission-critical word processing and spreadsheet work. Whenever I have trouble importing or exporting to Microsoft formats, I get to hone my bug reporting skills and make my contribution to the OpenOffice project. I'm not using AbiWord as much any more because OpenOffice is a more complete solution, but I do use AbiWord for some text file editing chores because it's lightweight. I use Mozilla sometimes, but prefer to trust my email to Netscape Messenger.

Having been a reader and contributor to Better Software magazine through four name changes, I'll finally get a picture published with one of my articles, in the edition that's rolling off the presses right now. In the picture I'm sporting the shortest haircut I've had in twelve years, plus a new choker that I'm quite fond of. The last time we had a photo shoot at the house, my daughter Alex got to be in the picture, so this time she was jealous. She tried unsuccessfully to sneak into the background of the shot, and then when I wasn't looking she somehow convinced the photographer to take her picture too.

As much as I'd like to reminisce about every poignant moment from the last year, I know I shouldn't wear out my welcome. I've tried not to mention too many things that have come up in my newsletter before. So I invite you to browse the archives if you didn't get a chance to read the previous five issues over the last year. See you next time around!

Feedback

I enjoy reading Robert Rose-Coutré's comments at least as much as he enjoys reading my stuff. Here's his feedback about the December 2003/January 2004 issue.

In your newsletter you mentioned your review of The Grinder. As a subscriber to your freeware evaluation service, I have to say the review was *highly* impressive. It told everything anyone would need to know before deciding whether to try it out, and how to go about trying it out. Your freeware tool review is like an advanced Consumer Reports for testers and QA, along with "how-to" tips. I hope more people will subscribe and support your effort so you can keep it going.

Thanks for your comments, Robert. I do consciously try to emulate the depth of coverage that I see in Consumer Reports™, and I'm glad you saw the similarity.

On your feature article "Books in the Pipe": The second best book I've read in software testing is one you mentioned, Lessons Learned in Software Testing. I read it in one sitting, as it was impossible for me to put it down. The three authors' personalities and different styles make it a more colorful and interesting read, plus all three are experts with excellent experience to share. The *best* software testing book I've read is Lee Copeland's A Practitioner's Guide to Software Test Design, which I edited.

I reviewed a few of the chapters of Lee's book before it was published. I felt that its coverage of the topics at hand was too superficial. However, I do have to give him credit for including chapters on pair-wise testing and exploratory testing.

Dot Graham sent this response to my "Books in the Pipe" article.

Just had a quick scan of your latest newsletter, and looked for our book on test automation [Software Test Automation] and didn't find it mentioned. Is this because:
 - you have never heard of it?
 - you have already read it so it's already out the back of your pipeline?
 - you have never been given a copy?
Hope you don't mind me enquiring! ;-)

I have your book on my shelf, having recognized it as one of the first that focuses on test automation, but it's never bubbled to the top of my stack since I've got a fairly good handle on automation already. Once I do finally get around to reading it I'll probably find that I was mistaken in that last opinion. :-)

Dot also pointed out that her book has some coverage of keyword-driven testing. I even found excerpts from Linda Hayes's The Automated Testing Handbook, perhaps reducing the desire to get Linda's book if you have Software Test Automation.

I want to mention an omission from my "books I want to read" list - Critical Testing Processes by Rex Black. I had reviewed some of the material that ended up in the book, but I never knew it was being published in the book until Rex handed me a copy. It looks like one I need to spend some time with. Luckily, I've actually finished one of the books that I had been reading, and I've only started two others that weren't on the list in the interim....

Pete TerMaat continues a thread started in the August/September 2003 issue.

I've heard of both Convex and Cigital. :-) When I worked for the FSF on the GNU Project, one of my assignments was to merge in a Convex port for gdb, the debugger. I then worked for Cray from 1990 to 1995, and Convex was a competitor.

Ah, the enemy. At we had "affordable supercomputers" at Convex  :->  I'm envious of your stint with the Free Software Foundation. Pete continues -
Cigital I knew of back when it had a different name, Reliable-something-or-other.
You're trying to think of Reliable Software Technologies. Nice to finally get to meet you at AWTA, and welcome to the Convex/Cigital granfalloon.

Copyright 2004 by Tejas Software Consulting
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