PowerPoint 2010 Beta: What’s New that Will Make a Difference to You</h1> <article> <h1>PowerPoint 2010 Beta: What’s New that Will Make a Difference to You</h1> <p>Steve Kang — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:51:00 GMT</p> It’s the Little Things that Just Might Make a Big Difference Microsoft’s ubiquitous Office suite is back in a free public beta, available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/en/default.aspx . PowerPoint 14 continues to evolve, and this version, although it does not include any groundbreaking improvements, contains a number of thoughtful additions that should help users create and view presentations more easily with more robust and useful content. PowerPoint 2010 now uses...(<a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/blogs/printer/archive/2010/02/25/powerpoint-2010-beta-what-s-new-that-will-make-a-difference-to-you.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>Outlook 2010: Formatting an HTML Email for Printing</h1> <p>Steve Kang — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:59:00 GMT</p> Formatting an HTML email for printing can provide an interesting challenge in Outlook 2010. HTML nominally formats to fit the width of the display device. There is a significant disparity between the size of a printed page and an open email on a 1280 pixel wide display. The pictures and text in the screen captures below, from the upcoming release of the ATS-IF file OT4T51CM, are centered on the page. The WordArt position is an absolute position to the right of the column. The print engine will move...(<a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/blogs/printer/archive/2010/02/22/outlook-2010-formatting-an-html-email-for-printing.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>Microsoft Outlook 2010 (RC1): Major Changes to Charts</h1> <p>Steve Kang — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:19:00 GMT</p> Microsoft made a significant change in how charts are handled in Outlook 2010. Charting in Outlook 2007 saved the charts as an image on completion. This did not allow for any changes to the structure or data of the chart beyond the picture formatting controls. Outlook 2010 maintains the embedded connection to Excel, allowing the charts to be updated and modified at a later date or the underlying data to be examined on receipt, as demonstrated in OT4TH1C3 as part of the Outlook 2010 ATS-IF. The type...(<a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/blogs/printer/archive/2010/02/12/ats-if-development-update-microsoft-outlook-2010-rc1-charts.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>Microsoft Excel 2010 (RC1): Column Size Distortion</h1> <p>Steve Kang — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:24:00 GMT</p> Excel in the Beta and RC1 releases has been stable and very functional. One major issue that we have encountered is the distortion in the column size between Normal and Page Layout views. The Excel 2010 ATS IF file EX4TH1C3.xlsx uses absolute measurements to help printer manufacturers discern distortion in their printer drivers, but in this case the file illustrates the problems associated with switching between Normal and Page Layout. Below are two screen captures showing the column size in Page...(<a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/blogs/printer/archive/2010/02/05/ats-development-update-microsoft-excel-2010-rc1-column-size-distortion.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>What's New in PageSense 7</h1> <p>Steve Kang — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 19:13:00 GMT</p> The latest release of PageSense, Version 7, includes support for the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system, as well as Windows Vista SP2 and Windows XP SP3, all in 32- or 64-bit configurations. PageSense 7 currently supports 15 of the latest, most popular software applications, and 10 more are coming soon. Support for a number of legacy applications, such as Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer 6, has been removed from PageSense 7. Supported Applications PageSense 7 currently supports 15 applications...(<a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/blogs/printer/archive/2010/02/02/what-s-new-in-pagesense-7.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>Microsoft Access 2010: Print Anomolies</h1> <p>Steve Kang — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:04:00 GMT</p> Print Anomalies In a previous blog, we reported a black background being displayed on transparent picture controls using an HP Color LaserJet 4700n PCL5 driver. We’ve continued to see a similar anomaly presented in the Pivot Chart printed output. Rendered on screen, the chart looks like the image to the right. When printed using the HP Color LaserJet 4700n PCL5 driver, we get the output shown to the left. This print anomaly only appears to occur when using the PCL5 driver. When printed with...(<a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/blogs/printer/archive/2010/02/01/microsoft-access-2010-ats-if-updates.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>Microsoft Excel 2010 (Beta): Expanded Picture Tools</h1> <p>Steve Kang — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:50:00 GMT</p> Microsoft has expanded the control and effect the user has on images. The Excel 2010 ATS IF file EX4TG1D3.xlsx explores the many modifications that can be applied to images. Below is an example of the built-in artistic effect available. The selected image has been changed to look like a chalk sketch by simply selecting the desired effect from the drop-down window. Each artistic effect can then be customized. For example, the chalk sketch allows for changes in pressure and transparency. Many of the...(<a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/blogs/printer/archive/2010/02/01/ats-development-update-microsoft-excel-2010-beta-picture-tools.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>Microsoft Office 2010 Word (Beta): Improvements and New Features</h1> <p>Steve Kang — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:17:00 GMT</p> Microsoft’s ubiquitous Office suite is back in a free public beta available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/en/default.aspx . Word continues to evolve, and this version 14.0 (13 was skipped due to triskaidekaphobia ) includes a number of improvements (like enhanced themes), some brand new features (the navigation pane and Office Backstage), and at least one veteran abandoned in Office 2007 returns with a new luster in the 2010 version. No, not Clippy. The Office button...(<a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/blogs/printer/archive/2010/01/27/native-ats-if-updates-microsoft-office-2010-word.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>Microsoft Excel 2010 (Beta): Sparklines</h1> <p>Steve Kang — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:43:00 GMT</p> The most noticeable charting addition to Excel 2010 is Sparklines. Sparklines is a simple graph that is imbedded in a single cell to provide the user with a quick visual reference to nearby data. A Line, Column, or Win/Loss graph can be added to a cell and the range for the data is defined in the familiar method for Excel Charting. Below is a screen shot of EX4TC1DC.xlsx from the upcoming Excel 2010 ATS-IF release, which includes an inline Win/Loss Sparklines that allows you to see at a glance the...(<a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/blogs/printer/archive/2010/01/27/ats-if-development-update-microsoft-excel-2010-beta.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>Microsoft Access 2010 (Beta): Beta Bugs</h1> <p>Steve Kang — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 02:05:00 GMT</p> Microsoft has streamlined the capability of Access to publish content online, including to SharePoint. They’ve also made minor changes to the interface, including new MRU (Most Recently Used) file list and a new “File” button which replaced the circular button found in their previous release. As is customary with ATS-IF development, printing of all of the Microsoft Office Access 2007 ATS-IF files from Access 2010 was performed. Access 2010 backwards compatibility, at least with...(<a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/blogs/printer/archive/2010/01/26/native-ats-if-updates-microsoft-access-2010.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>New Internet Explorer Test Pages (ATS-IF)</h1> <p>Steve Kang — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:55:00 GMT</p> Internet Explorer 8 continues the evolution of Internet Explorer as a more standards compliant, java savvy, and user friendly web browser. One of the printing features we found especially interesting is the new Page Setup dialog, which is significantly different from the IE7 dialog. There are more header and footer options than there were in IE7. Also, Background Printing of Colors and Images and Enable Shrink to Fit is part of the dialog in IE8. (Print Background Colors and Images was only addressable...(<a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/blogs/printer/archive/2010/01/20/new-internet-explorer-test-pages-ats-if.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>Load Testing Flash Remoting Applications in SoapUI</h1> <p>JoshGraham — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:41:00 GMT</p> <p>Recently, I performed a load test on a Flash remoting application using SoapUI. Currently, SoapUI doesn’t have support for the AMF format used to communicate with the gateway, but fortunately a <a href="http://www.eviware.com/blogs/oleblog/?p=861">helpful blog post</a> illustrates a good starting point. The first step is to add AMF related classes to SoapUI. I downloaded BlaseDS, Adobe’s Flash remoting platform. After extracting the package, the jar files from the resources\lib directory were copied into \bin\ext in the SoapUI install directory. <br />At this point, I tried modifying the code example in the above blog post:</p> <p style="padding-left:30px;"><br /><code>import flex.messaging.io.amf.ASObject;<br />import flex.messaging.io.amf.client.AMFConnection;<br />def amfConnection = new AMFConnection();<br />amfConnection.instantiateTypes = false<br />try<br />{<br /> amfConnection.connect( "http://my-flash-remoting-gateway/" );<br /> def result = amfConnection.call( "some-method", … )<br /> return result.toString()<br />}<br />finally<br />{<br /> amfConnection.close()<br />}</code></p> <p>I didn’t have any Java classes to match the objects that would be retrieved, so I removed the call to registerAlias from the original sample code. This worked great on one server, but not on another. It turns out the rubyamf gateway requires the content type to be specified whereas amfphp doesn’t. That problem was solved by adding a Content-type header to the AMF connection:</p> <p style="padding-left:30px;"><br /><code>amfConnection.addHttpRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/x-amf");</code></p> <p><code></code><br />AmfConnection.Call returns an ASObject containing the AMF response. ASObject is derived from Java’s HashMap, so it is a simple matter to extract returned data. The tricky part here is knowing what data the server expects. <a href="http://www.kevinlangdon.com/serviceCapture/">ServiceCapture</a> was a great deal of help here.</p> <p> </p> <p> </p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Web Services API Testing Books</h1> <p>Jim Zuber — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:49:30 GMT</p> <p>Here are a couple of books that you might find useful when developing your web services API testing strategy...</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Art-Application-Performance-Testing-Programmers/dp/0596520662/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255664504&sr=8-1" target="_blank">The Art of Application Performance Testing</a> by Ian Molyneaux - This book was just released and I found it an outstanding conceptual overview of performance testing a web based application. The book does a great job of reviewing the various types of performance testing, the key performance indicators, and the various steps needed throughout the performance testing process. I particularly liked the various checklists. A short book, at around 130 pages, I'd rate it 9 on a scale of 10.</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/How-Break-Software-Practical-Testing/dp/0201796198/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255664539&sr=1-1" target="_blank">How to Break software</a> by James Whittaker - This is software testing 101 put in the context of a series of attacks on a software application. The book presents about 20 attacks, which cover most of the fundamentals of testing, such as "Find input that may interact and test combinations of their values". About 170 pages. An easy to read, well organized, although I found the "attack" notion a bit distracting. I'd give this a 9 on a scale of 10.</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/How-Break-Web-Software-Applications/dp/0321369440/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255664592&sr=1-1" target="_blank">How to break Web Software</a> by Mike Andrews and James Whittaker - I was a bit disappointed in this book in that I thought that it was primarily covering functional testing and had a dedicated chapter on Web Services, but in reality 99% of the book covered security testing. However, the security testing was covered quite well using the same "attack" approach as noted in the previous review. I'd give this one an 8 on a scale of 10.</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Testing-Applications-Web-Planning-Internet-Based/dp/0471201006/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255664631&sr=1-1" target="_blank">Testing Applications on the Web</a> by Hung Nguyen, Bob Johnsonm, and Michael Hacket - This book is a bit dates, with the last revision in 2003. Nevertheless, it thoroughly and extensively covers almost all the basics of Web technology and web testing in its 600 plus pages. It does not deal with some of the more recent web developments such as Ajax, mashups, Web API's, and Flash. I'd give it a 8 out of 10 due to its dated nature, otherwise it would easily get a 10.</p> <p>Although not a book, I found a publication on a proposed framework work for security testing web services published by SIFT Information Security Services. This is pretty amazing document with very detailed test cases documenting a very wide range of threats to web services. I actually found this more useful than any of the books above with respect to security testing web services. Click <a href="http://www.sift.com.au/assets/downloads/SIFT-Web-Services-Security-Testing-Framework-v1-00.pdf" target="_blank">here</a> to download.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Web APIs - Growth, Management, Protocols, Testing Tools</h1> <p>Jim Zuber — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:52:00 GMT</p> <p><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size:small;">Over the past month I have had the opportunity to look at a number of web services testing tools, the structure of various publicly facing Web Service APIs, and a number of companies who are offering web services API management.</span></span></p> <p> <span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">Web API’s have long been used to allow programmers access to functionality via a well defined interface without the need to understand exactly how that functionality is implemented. A web API (more generically referred to as a web service), extends this notion to the interaction between a client and a server. </span><span style="font-size:small;">There are a variety of motivations for implementing a Web API. Perhaps the most compelling reasons include:</span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;"></span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;"></span></p> <ul> <li style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">Consolidating common functionality shared across many entities </span> </li> <li style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">Harnessing the creativity of your partners (Think Google Maps)</span> </li> <li style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">Extending your reach (think YouTube or Flickr)</span> </li> <li style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">Monetizing your existing data</span> </li> <li style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">Driving traffic to your web site via embedded links in the Web Services data</span> </li> </ul> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;"></span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">The web site</span><a href="http://www.programmableweb.com/"><span style="color:#0000ff;font-size:small;"> programmableweb</span></a><span style="font-size:small;"> provides some interesting statistics on the momentum of the trend towards Web APIs. The site lists over 1400 published APIs and almost 5000 mashup websites that leverage these APIs. While some of these APIs are from high profile sites like Google Maps, others are from more enterprise focused companies.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:small;">Another indicator of the growth of Web APIs is the number of venture capital funded companies the focus on helping companies manage their Web API offerings. This management includes metering access, obtaining access keys, ongoing uptime monitoring, security, and analysis of customer usage. These companies include the following:</span></p> <ul> <li style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo2;" class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.mashery.com/customers/"><span style="color:#0000ff;font-size:small;">Mashery</span></a> </li> <li style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo2;" class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.3scale.net/"><span style="color:#0000ff;font-size:small;">3scale</span></a> </li> <li style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo2;" class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.strikeiron.com/"><span style="color:#0000ff;font-size:small;">StrikeIron</span></a></li> <li style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo2;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#0000ff;font-size:small;"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.sonoasystems.com/">Sonoa</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.apigee.com/">Apigee</a><br /></span></li> <li style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo2;" class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.directapi.com/"><span style="color:#0000ff;font-size:small;">DirectAPI</span></a> </li> </ul> <span style="font-size:small;">A company that decides to implement a Web API must make two critical decisions. First, what protocol will they use to exchange information between the client and the server. Rest and Soap are the most popular, but there are many other options including developing a JavaScript library that hides the web services interaction from the client programmer (this is what Google Maps does). </span> <p><span style="font-size:small;">The second decision is to decide what data format to use when returning information to the client. The most popular data formats are XML and JSON, but there are many other formats supported by big players such as YouTube, which supports the Atom data format. The following table provides a view of the protocols and formats supported by the 10 most popular Web APIs (data obtained from <a href="http://www.ProgrammableWeb.com">www.ProgrammableWeb.com</a>).</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;"> <p> <table style="border-bottom:medium none;border-left:medium none;border-collapse:collapse;border-top:medium none;border-right:medium none;mso-border-alt:solid black .5pt;mso-yfti-tbllook:1184;mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;mso-border-insideh:.5pt solid black;mso-border-insidev:.5pt solid black;" class="MsoNormalTable" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow:0;mso-yfti-firstrow:yes;"> <td style="border:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"> <p><span style="font-size:small;"> </span></p> </b></td> <td style="border-color:black black black #f0f0f0;border-top:1pt solid black;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="text-align:center;margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal" align="center"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:small;">Protocols </span></b></p> </td> <td style="border-color:black black black #f0f0f0;border-top:1pt solid black;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="text-align:center;margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal" align="center"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:small;">Data Formats </span></b></p> </td> </tr> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow:1;"> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black;border-left:1pt solid black;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:small;">Google Maps </span></b></p> </td> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black #f0f0f0;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">JavaScript</span></p> </td> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black #f0f0f0;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">XML, VML, JSON, KML</span></p> </td> </tr> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow:2;"> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black;border-left:1pt solid black;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:small;">Flickr </span></b></p> </td> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black #f0f0f0;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">REST, SOAP, XML-RPC</span></p> </td> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black #f0f0f0;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">XML, JSON, PHP</span></p> </td> </tr> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow:3;"> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black;border-left:1pt solid black;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:small;">YouTube </span></b></p> </td> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black #f0f0f0;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">GData, Atom</span></p> </td> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black #f0f0f0;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">GData, RSS</span></p> </td> </tr> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow:4;"> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black;border-left:1pt solid black;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:small;">Amazon eCommerce </span></b></p> </td> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black #f0f0f0;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">REST, SOAP</span></p> </td> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black #f0f0f0;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">XML</span></p> </td> </tr> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow:5;"> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black;border-left:1pt solid black;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:small;">Twitter </span></b></p> </td> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black #f0f0f0;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">REST</span></p> </td> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black #f0f0f0;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">XML, JSON, RSS, Atom</span></p> </td> </tr> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow:6;"> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black;border-left:1pt solid black;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:small;">eBay </span></b></p> </td> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black #f0f0f0;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">REST, SOAP</span></p> </td> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black #f0f0f0;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">XML</span></p> </td> </tr> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow:7;"> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black;border-left:1pt solid black;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:small;">Microsoft Virtual Earth </span></b></p> </td> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black #f0f0f0;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">JavaScript</span></p> </td> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black #f0f0f0;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">KML, GeoRSS</span></p> </td> </tr> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow:8;"> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black;border-left:1pt solid black;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:small;">Del.icio.us </span></b></p> </td> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black #f0f0f0;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">REST</span></p> </td> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black #f0f0f0;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">XML</span></p> </td> </tr> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow:9;"> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black;border-left:1pt solid black;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:small;">Google Search </span></b></p> </td> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black #f0f0f0;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">SOAP</span></p> </td> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black #f0f0f0;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">XML</span></p> </td> </tr> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow:10;mso-yfti-lastrow:yes;"> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black;border-left:1pt solid black;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:small;">Yahoo Maps </span></b></p> </td> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black #f0f0f0;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">REST, JavaScript, Flash</span></p> </td> <td style="border-color:#f0f0f0 black black #f0f0f0;border-right:1pt solid black;border-bottom:1pt solid black;padding:0in 5.4pt;background-color:transparent;width:159.6pt;" valign="top" width="213"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;">XML</span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </p> </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;">The primary focus of my peak at Web API test tools was to determine the level of support for REST web services in these tools. As noted in previous posts, we recently completed a large REST testing project using SoapUI and we were interested in what other tools were out there. The following is a brief synopsis of what we found:</span></p> <ul> <li style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size:small;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><a href="http://code.google.com/p/rest-client/" target="_blank">RestClient</a></b> – A free java tool with a simple GUI that will let you do very basic ad hoc functional testing of REST web services. There is no provision for test cases or validation of returned results.</span></span> </li> <li style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size:small;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><a href="http://www.soapui.org/" target="_blank">SoupUI</a> </b>– A very robust open source functional test tool, with some load testing capabilities. This tool supports both SOAP and REST web services. A professional version sells for $349 with support for more enterprise specific features. Previous blog posts have document our use of this tool for both functional and load testing.</span></span> </li> <li style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size:small;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><a href="http://www.crosschecknet.com/" target="_blank">SoapSonar</a></b> – A commercial SOAP functional test tool with capabilities similar to SoapUI, but with extremely limited support for REST web services. There is a crippled free version and the commercial version is $750 for a single user license.</span></span> </li> <li style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size:small;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><a href="http://www.manageengine.com/products/qengine/" target="_blank">QEngine</a></b> – This is a commercial SOAP functional and load test tool. A single user license was around $1000. There was no REST support. One interesting aspect of this product was that it used a Web client interface rather that a Java GUI as most of the others tools do.</span></span> </li> <li style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size:small;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><a href="http://www.webinject.org/" target="_blank">Web Inject</a></b> – This is a free open source functional test tool for SOAP or REST web services. The implementation is rather primitive with hand coded XML scripts for test cases. </span></span></li> <li style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size:small;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><a href="http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter/" target="_blank">JMeter</a></b> – An open source load testing tool for any web UI or http protocol including REST and SOAP. Very robust capabilities, but with a somewhat complex architecture and awkward inteface. Books have been written on this tool and classes are offered by a number of companies. Will probably use this tool for our next Web API load testing project.</span></span> </li> <li style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size:small;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><a href="http://www.automatedqa.com/products/testcomplete/" target="_blank">Test complete</a> </b>– This is a commercial functional and load testing tool that costs about $1000 with a wide range of testing capabilities, but no specific support for REST web services. It did have support for SOAP. Note that QualityLogic uses TestComplete for its PageSense product line.</span></span></li> <li style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size:small;"><a target="_blank" href="http://grinder.sourceforge.net/"><b>Grinder</b></a> - This is a Java based open source HTTP/HTTPS load testing tool. The open source project has been dormant for many years and there is no GUI interface to the tool. Nevertheless, there are a number of posts on the Internet stating that this tool has been used successfully for Web services testing.</span></span></li> <li style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size:small;"><b><a target="_blank" href="http://www.codeplex.com/WebserviceStudio">WebService Studio</a></b><a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/controlpanel/blogs/posteditor.aspx/"> </a>- A nice open source ad hoc query tool for SOAP based web services. Point it at any WSDL and it provides a very easy to use GUI based interface for making calls and looking at results.<br /></span></span></li> </ul> <p><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;">There were a number of tools capable of doing Web API testing that were outside of the scope of my investigation due to cost and other factors. These included: <span style="font-size:small;"><a href="https://h10078.www1.hp.com/cda/hpms/display/main/hpms_content.jsp?zn=bto&cp=1-11-126-17^8_4000_100__" target="_blank">HP’s LoadRunner</a>, <a target="_blank" href="http://www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/tester/soa/">IBM's Rational Tester</a>, <a href="http://www.spirent.com/Solutions-Directory/Avalanche.aspx" target="_blank">Spirent’s Avalanche</a>, <a href="http://www.itko.com/" target="_blank">iTKO’s Lisa</a>, <a href="http://www.ixiacom.com/products/aptixia_ixload/" target="_blank">Ixia’s IxLoad</a>, and <a href="http://www.parasoft.com/jsp/products/concerto/home.jsp" target="_blank">Parasoft’s Concerto</a>. </span><span style="font-size:small;"><a href="http://seleniumhq.org/" target="_blank">Selenium</a>, a very popular open source functional tool for Web sites, was also deemed out of scope as it is exclusively GUI centric. <a href="http://www.opensta.org/" target="_blank">OpenSTA</a>, an open source load testing tool, was also not evaluated as it appears to have been dormant since 2007. This was a commercial product put into open source by Cyrano.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;">At QualityLogic we are excited about the opportunity to leverage our many decades of API testing experience in the Web API domain. For more info on QualityLogic's Web API testing services, click <a href="http://www.qualitylogic.com/Contents/Enterprise/Products-Services/Web-Services-API-Testing.aspx" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Load Testing REST Web Services with SoapUI</h1> <p>Jim Zuber — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 04:30:00 GMT</p> <p>Over the past month I have used SoapUI to load test a REST web services implementation. This testing occurred during the transition of SoapUI between versions 2.5.2 and 3.0. Unfortunately, 2.5.2 had known issues with load testing and 3.0 still wasn’t 100% stable during this time frame. Nevertheless, I was able to successfully utilize the 2.5.2 version of SoapUI to complete the load testing project.<br /><br />As our customer was hosting their test environment on Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing platform, we also put up an EC2 instance to host SoapUI. In this environment we had almost no round trip delays communicating with the customer’s test environment. We did have some concerns that a single instance of SoapUI would not be adequate to generate the desired traffic volumes, but that proved not to be the case. During load testing, we used Windows PerfMon to monitor processor, memory, disk, and network utilization to ensure that SoapUI was not resource constrained.<br /><br />To create a load test you must first use SoapUI’s scripting tools to generate a functional test case, and then create one or more load testing scenarios that use this functional test case. When we first ran our load tests, it appeared that the transactions per second shown in the statistics were far higher that if you simply calculated the value using the count of REST calls and the length of the test. The cause of this disparity was twofold. First, the test case had a ton of assertions and property references which consumed a bunch of time not calculated in the request/response cycle, so we simplified the test case. Second, we found a load test configuration setting “Calculate TPS based on actual time passed” that we enabled.<br /><br />The primary way traffic load is controlled in SoapUI is the number of concurrent threads executing the functional test case. SoapUI provides a number of strategies to vary the number of threads during the execution, but we ran into various issues with all but two of the methods. The “simple” strategy allows you to specify a fixed number of threads for the duration of the load test. The “script” strategy allows you to control the number of threads using a groovy script (version 3.0 supports JavaScript as well). Here is an example of a script we wrote to generate a spike of traffic 1 minute out of every 10 during our load testing (note that we set the strategy interval in options to call this script once every 15 seconds):<br /><br /> // check if time is set<br /> startTime = context.getProperty( "startTime" )<br /> if( startTime == null )<br /> {<br /> startTime = System.currentTimeMillis()<br /> context.setProperty( "startTime", startTime )<br /> }<br /> <br /> //time passed in Minutes<br /> int timePassed = (System.currentTimeMillis() - startTime)/60000 + 1<br /><br /> //One minute in every 10 increase threads<br /> //Make sure strategy interval is set to 15 seconds<br /> if( timePassed%10 == 0)<br /> return 3<br /> else<br /> return 1<br /><br />I made extensive use of the SoapUI Pro DataSource and DataSourceLoop test steps. This allowed me to store thousands of characteristics in a text file and then iterate through them in my load test. In addition to a text file, you can pull data from a MySQL or SQLServer databases amongst other options, although I was not successful connecting to a local instance of SQLServer(not sure why). I also found the Pro DataSink test step to be very helpful in extracting content from responses and automatically storing them to a file. These datasets (file or database) can be shared across load test threads; however we did run into an issue with restarting the shared dataset, which was resolved by stuffing the data file in a ram disk.<br /><br />We also ran into a variety of SoapUI memory challenges while running tests. Some were resolved by turning off the configuration option to update statistics for each test step and others were resolved by increasing the JVM heap space used by SoapUI (you can tweak the flags in the SoupUI.bat file).<br /><br />There are a large number of configuration settings located in Test Case Options, Load Test Options, and Data Source Options that all impact the behavior and results of the load testing. It was challenging to sort out the meaning of some of these options and their interaction with each other.<br /><br />As commented in my previous post, the support I received from Eviware as a SoapUI Pro user was excellent. They really went to great lengths to try to help me through the various load testing issues I encountered during this project. While they were willing to invest time to drill into many of the issues I encountered, my project timeline forced me to opt for work-arounds most of the time. It’s possible that some of the issues I encountered were of my own doing.<br /><br />Perhaps the most significant deficiency with SoapUI’s load testing capabilities was the absence of any way to coordinate the execution of multiple concurrent load tests from within the GUI. I found myself madly pushing buttons in the GUI to fire off more than one load test at a time. I know that PushToTest attempts to address this issue with a distributed environment that will run SoapUI scripts, but my brief attempt to use the product resulted in nodes hanging during test execution and I just didn’t have time to chase down the problems. I’ll try to take a second look at PushToTest down the road and post on my experiences.<br /><br />The SoapUI load test reporting also left a lot to be desired, although the 3.0 version of SoapUI improved this somewhat. For the most part, I manually transferred test results from the SoapUI load test statistics table into custom reports that I generated in Excel. As an aside, I really liked the 3.0 reporting for functional test execution and provided these reports to our customer as a deliverable for that portion of the project.<br /><br />From a big picture perspective, SoapUI is a powerful functional testing tool and I wouldn’t hesitate to use it on future functional test projects. From a load testing perspective, I found the robust test case scripting capabilities of SoapUI to be enormously helpful in constructing complex load test scenarios. However, the load test execution piece of the product only became acceptable when I clearly understood the products idiosyncrasies and issues.<br /><br />Eviware appears to put considerable development effort behind SoapUI with frequent updates. My hope would be that some of that development effort gets channeled into making the load testing a bit more robust and stable with more of a full featured capability.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Functional Testing REST Web Services With SoapUI</h1> <p>Jim Zuber — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 01:22:00 GMT</p> <p class="MsoNo<font face=">As part of a customer contract, over the past 6 weeks <a target="_blank" href="http://www.qualitylogic.com/Contents/Enterprise/Products-Services/Web-Services-API-Testing.aspx">QualityLogic's</a> web services testing team utilized <a target="_blank" href="http://www.soapui.org/">SoapUI</a> to develop an automated functional conformance test for a REST API that provides account management services to a variety of related web sites. The 100 resource paths in the API all used http POST requests with an XML fragment contained in the body of the http message conveying the desired actions and/or response. One particular challenge with this project was that we were sharing the test environment with other groups and could make no assumptions about the availability static values in the back-end database. </p> <p class="MsoNo<font face=">Before jumping into how we approached this project, let me make a few general observations about SoapUI. </p> <ul> <li> <div class="MsoNo<font face=">It is an amazingly high quality open source test tool. The use of <a target="_blank" href="http://groovy.codehaus.org/">groovy</a> scripts, <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPath">xPath</a>, and dynamic <a target="_blank" href="http://www.soapui.org/userguide/functional/propertyexpansion.html">property expansion</a> created a very robust development environment. Although not being Java programmers, it was initially a bit confusing to sort out where Groovy stopped and Java began. A good book, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Groovy-Action-Dierk-Koenig/dp/1932394842">Groovy in Action</a>, solved that problem. </div> </li> </ul> <h1></h1> <ul> <li> <div class="MsoNo<font face=">We found test case development a bit more tedious than expected with a test cases consisting of a dozen steps and within each step perhaps a dozen assertions. It was just a lot of detail, with lots of mouse clicking to drill into things. We wrote some helper routines to consolidate a lot of the assertion checks which helped to some extent.</div> </li> </ul> <h1></h1> <ul> <li> <div class="MsoNo<font face=">We wound up buying the Pro version of SoapUI as we needed some technical support and this turned out to be a great decision. The support was excellent, we were more productive using the Pro version, and the code remained compatible with the open source version of SoapUI as long as we stayed away from certain Pro features. </div> </li> </ul> <h1></h1> <ul> <li> <div class="MsoNo<font face=">The SoapUI <a target="_blank" href="http://www.soapui.org/userguide/index.html">documentation</a> was quite well written, but initially it was a challenge to sort out which things applied specifically to REST based testing. </div> </li> </ul> <p class="MsoNo<font face=">The project proceeded as follows…</p> <p class="MsoNo<font face=">1)We created a SoapUI project, a rest service within the project, defined each of the 100 resource paths within the service, and created an empty test suite.</p> <p class="MsoNo<font face=">2)We decided to use test suite properties as a set of global variables. Some properties were used to store dynamic data that was stored and retrieved by various test steps, while other properties contained static content that represented various possible values for customer records. Referencing these properties in a variety of ways throughout the test suite was simple. A few examples…</p> <ul> <li> <div class="MsoNo<font face=">Simple Property Expansion: <br /> ${#TestSuite#password}</div> </li> </ul> <h1></h1> <ul> <li> <div class="MsoNo<font face=">Dynamic Property Expansion where multiple comma separated values are stored in one property: <br /> ${=context.testCase.testSuite.properties["accountNumber"].value.split(",")[1]}</div> </li> </ul> <p class="MsoNo<font face=">3)We made extensive use of random numbers for generating values that had to be unique. Yes, there was a remote possibility that we might get a test case failure as a result of a random number collision, but from a practical perspective, this was a non-issue. </p> <p class="MsoNo<font face=">4)We structured our test suite to run sequentially, with the following initialization routines:</p> <ul> <li> <div class="MsoNo<font face=">Generate unique “random” values and store in properties</div> </li> </ul> <h1></h1> <ul> <li> <div class="MsoNo<font face=">Use REST calls to populate the data base with sufficient framework data to register a customer. Example, define the various valid address types such as home, business, other, etc.</div> </li> </ul> <h1></h1> <ul> <li> <div class="MsoNo<font face=">Use REST calls to register a set of customers using characteristics pulled form test suite properties. These customers will not be modified during test execution and will be used exclusively for “get” and “search” customer related testing.</div> </li> </ul> <h1></h1> <ul> <li> <div class="MsoNo<font face=">Define a series of test cases that register customers for subsequent record updating. These can be called from other test cases as needed. Note that we encountered problems exporting and importing test cases that used the Goto Test step (they reference a GUID not the name of the test case), so we chose to call the test cases from a groovy script…</div> </li> </ul> <blockquote> <p class="MsoNo<font face=">def testCase = testRunner.testCase.testSuite.testCases["Another TestCase"] <br />def properties = new com.eviware.soapui.support.types.StringToObjectMap() <br />def async = false <br />testCase.run( properties, async )</p> </blockquote> <p class="MsoNo<font face=">5)Once the basic plumbing was in place we needed to grind out hundreds of test cases that when completed represented thousands of REST API calls and many thousands of test assertions.</p> <p class="MsoNo<font face=">6)Perhaps a note on assertions is warranted. There are a multitude of ways to validate that you get the expected values in a response using SoapUI. We utilized the following methods…</p> <ul> <li> <div class="MsoNo<font face=">Contains assertion – On the surface this is a simple text comparison, but we also used regular expressions to accept multiple values such as (?s).*ALREADY.*|.*SUCCESS.* as well as property expansions.</div> </li> </ul> <h1></h1> <ul> <li> <div class="MsoNo<font face=">Script Assertion – This was our most common assertion tool, which allowed to use the getXmlHolder object provided by SoapUI to easily query and assert conditions within a groovy script, such as..</div> </li> </ul> <blockquote> <p class="MsoNo<font face=">def groovyUtils = new com.eviware.soapui.support.GroovyUtils( context ) <br />def holder = groovyUtils.getXmlHolder(messageExchange.responseContent) <br />def xPath = "//statusLabel[../SystemLabel='" + \ <br /> context.testCase.testSuite.properties["SystemLabel"].value.split(",")[1] \ <br /> + "' and ../statusLabel='SUCCESS']" <br />assert holder[xPath] == "SUCCESS"</p> </blockquote> <ul> <li> <div class="MsoNo<font face=">xPath Match – This was nice tool in that I could use an xPath statement to grab a parent node, then compare expected results using both wild cards and property expansions child elements. The only gotcha that I found was that if I wasn’t very careful with my xPath statement and multiple parent blocks were returned, xPath Match would compare the first instance, which wasn’t always what I wanted. But with simpler scenarios, this was definitively a very quick and dirty way to check a bunch of response values.</div> </li> </ul> <p class="MsoNo<font face=">As most of our assertion testing involved comparing large sets of known values stored in test suite properties to API responses, we wrote some rather elaborate helper routines that simplified the assertion process. We did run into one obstacle in that we couldn’t find a clean way to “include” these routines in the assertions. The Pro version has a common library capability, but we didn’t want to lock ourselves into that. The open source version does allow a Jar file to be included in the the soapUI\bin\ext folder , which would have addressed the issue, but we wanted the test suite to run on a generic install of SoapUI. </p> <p class="MsoNo<font face=">So, the utility routines were pasted into assertions throughout the suite (yuck). Just as the test suite was being finalized we discovered that there was a bug in the helper routines (not zero stuffing MD5 hash values) and were faced with editing 147 instances of the helper routines in the test suite (nightmare!). Fortunately, we were able to pull the entire SoapUI project into <a target="_blank" href="http://www.altova.com/products/xmlspy/xmlspy.html">XMLSpy</a> and globally edit the routines. This notion of editing the project from outside SoapUI might open up some interesting productivity opportunities.</p> <p class="MsoNo<font face=">We are now moving on to using SoapUI to load test this implementation and I will share our experiences with this effort in a week or so. </p> <div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style"><b>Share: </b><a class="addthis_button_email"></a><a class="addthis_button_facebook"></a><a class="addthis_button_twitter"></a><a class="addthis_button_favorites"></a><a class="addthis_button_print"></a><span class="addthis_separator">|</span> <a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&pub=lposson" class="addthis_button_expanded">More</a> </div> <div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Windows 7 Logo program adds XPS and HD imaging certification</h1> <p>Steve Kang — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:28:00 GMT</p> Microsoft has expanded the Windows 7 logo programs with HD Imaging Additional Qualification for those HW manufactureres that can process XPS and High Definition (HDPhoto or JPEG XR) high fidelity content. This program addition rewards those manufacturers who have invested into XPS nad HDPhoto processing either as a consumer or producer. Here's more information from MIcrosoft's logo certification site: New Windows HD Imaging AQ Microsoft has added an additional qualification (AQ) to the Windows...(<a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/blogs/printer/archive/2009/06/08/windows-7-logo-program-adds-xps-and-hd-imaging-certification.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>Mindtouch Open Source Wiki</h1> <p>Jim Zuber — Sat, 02 May 2009 03:29:00 GMT</p> <p><a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/web-site-testing.metablogapi/7522.lh_5F00_2.jpg"></a>When I am not toiling away on QualityLogic's testing projects, my passion is hiking in the outdoors. As part of that passion, about 5 years ago I developed a classic ASP web site (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.localhikes.com">www.localhikes.com</a> ) that has now become one of the most visited outdoors sites on the Internet. </p> <p>The model behind the site was to recruit volunteer reporters around the country to post hikes on the web site, and in order to facilitate this I developed a desktop application called HikeReporter that allowed reporters to post information to the site via web services. </p> <p>While this scheme did result in thousands of hikes being posted to the site, it really wasn't very scalable. If a reporter became inactive and his posts needed updating, I'd need to find a volunteer reporter in the reporters area familiar with the hike he posted. I have long wanted to port the site over to a Wiki framework to facilitate a broader base of volunteers with out the need to provide a desktop application for posting hikes. </p> <p><a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/web-site-testing.metablogapi/2248.lh1_5F00_2.jpg"></a>While I had prototyped a state of the art ASP.NET update to the Localhikes site, including the latest AJAX controls and Google maps, I never cut the prototype over live as I didn't have the Wiki solution that I had envisioned.</p> <p>Then I had the good fortune to discover an open source Wiki from a company called <a target="_blank" href="http://www.mindtouch.com">Mindtouch</a>. At first I considered using their Wiki as a back-end for reporters and simply pull hike data from the wiki using their REST web services for display on the outward facing web site. But as I drilled into the Mindtouch product I discovered its rich scripting language, DikiScript, a robust configurable architecture, and an awesome framework for simplifying mashups. </p> <p><a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/web-site-testing.metablogapi/3821.mt_5F00_2.jpg"></a>I became convinced that the Mindtouch Wiki platform could also serve as my outward facing consumer web site. Over the next couple of months, I plan to use this blog to chronicle my experiences porting the LocalHikes site over to this new environment and sharing with you my insights into the implementation and testing challenges we face along the way.</p> <p> </p> <p><a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/web-site-testing.metablogapi/3821.mt_5F00_2.jpg"></a></p> <div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style"><b>Share: </b><a class="addthis_button_email"></a><a class="addthis_button_facebook"></a><a class="addthis_button_twitter"></a><a class="addthis_button_favorites"></a><a class="addthis_button_print"></a><span class="addthis_separator">|</span> <a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&pub=lposson" class="addthis_button_expanded">More</a> </div> <div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Web API Testing Blog Welcome</h1> <p>Jim Zuber — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 02:41:00 GMT</p> <p>Welcome to the Web API Testing Blog! In my role as QualityLogic's CTO, I provide guidance to our engineering and testing services groups on testing strategies for web APIs. My intent is to use this blog to share my insights into web API testing as well as occasionally review interesting test tools that help accelerate our web testing efforts. We encourage readers to comment on the blog posts, particularly if you see testing needs that QualityLogic might be able to offer to help you with your web site deployment.</p> <p>I should also note that my favorite pastime is hiking and that I am the developer of <a target="_blank" href="http://www.localhikes.com">LocalHikes.com</a>, the largest free hiking related web site on the Internet with almost a half million unique visitors each month. I'm currently transforming the site into a Wiki with a heavy mashup component, so I will be blogging about my development and testing experiences with LocalHikes as this effort progresses.</p> <p>If you have a specific product or service inquiry please direct it to <a href="mailto:info@qualitylogic.com"><span style="color:#3366cc;">info@qualitylogic.com</span></a>.</p> <p>Regards,</p> <p>Jim Zuber</p> <div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style"><b>Share: </b><a class="addthis_button_email"></a><a class="addthis_button_facebook"></a><a class="addthis_button_twitter"></a><a class="addthis_button_favorites"></a><a class="addthis_button_print"></a><span class="addthis_separator">|</span> <a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&pub=lposson" class="addthis_button_expanded">More</a> </div> <div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>ISO 24734 and 24735 Support in PageSense 6.2</h1> <p>Steve Kang — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:46:00 GMT</p> QualityLogic is proud to announce support for ISO 24734 and 24735 performance measurement standards for printing and copying in the upcoming PageSense 6.2 product. To provide our customers with a sneak preview into this feature, we have written this white paper . This white paper discussed key concepts in ISO 24734 and 24735 standards and how customers can use PageSense 6.2 to generate ISO 24734/24735 printer performance metrics for their printers and copiers. This new ISO standard is starting to...(<a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/blogs/printer/archive/2009/04/08/iso-24734-and-24735-support-in-pagesense-6-2.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>PC Magazine's use of PageSense Printer Performance Automation System</h1> <p>Steve Kang — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:45:00 GMT</p> PageSense is the defacto standard in measurming printer performance from "click to clunk". PageSense system is produced by QualityLogic and has been used by PC Magazine and printer companies for many years. Recently, David Stone from PC Magazine recently published an article about how he has upgraded to PageSense 6.1 software to do all of his printer testing. His article highlights use of Windows Vista on his printer testing and PageSense 6.1 software. Here are some interesting excerpts...(<a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/blogs/printer/archive/2009/03/23/pc-magazine-s-use-of-pagesense-printer-performance-automation-system.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>New FaxLab 7 Product for T.30 and T.38 Fax Interoperability Testing</h1> <p>Steve Kang — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 20:43:00 GMT</p> QualityLogic is pleased to announce a major upgrade to the FaxLab fax interoperabilty testing tool. FaxLab is used by device manufacturers, network equipment providers, and carriers to simplify the process of fax device compatibility testing. It tests how well a particular fax device operates by emulating normal operation and error conditions for a wide variety of different fax devices, as both caller and receiver. FaxLab allows users to replace a room full of fax devices with software, saving time...(<a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/blogs/fax/archive/2009/03/13/new-faxlab-7-product-for-t-30-and-t-38-fax-interoperability-testing.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>Effective PDF Testing Strategy for PDF Printers and Applications</h1> <p>Steve Kang — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:42:00 GMT</p> This white paper presents an effective PDF testing strategy for PDF printers and applications. It includes a discussion on some of the most common misunderstanding about how ineffective testing can be using just PDF files that are produced by common applications. Here are the main topics covered in this white paper: Introduction to PDF Overview of Interoperability Testing Overview of Conformance Testing Explanation of PDF coverage from Office Word 2007 application Explanation of PDF coverage from...(<a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/blogs/printer/archive/2009/03/04/effective-pdf-testing-strategy-for-pdf-printers-and-applications.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>Automatic Analysis of PDF, XPS and PCL test files</h1> <p>Steve Kang — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:01:00 GMT</p> QualityLogic is proud to announce brand new version 2.0 of TestJob Builder automation product now featuring: Now supports PDF, XPS, PCL5e/c, PCLXL and ATS-IF files. Live analysis of customer PDL test files including support for adding PDF, XPS, PCL5e/c and PCLXL print files. Improved search reporting including automatic filtering of found PDL attributes. Integration with PDF and XPS viewers including Acrobat, XPSViewer and others. Bundling of searchable databases for QualityLogic test suites. Simplified...(<a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/blogs/printer/archive/2009/02/19/new-testjob-builder-v2-0-with-live-analysis-of-pdf-xps-and-pcl-files.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>ISO 24734 Approved - Will RTA, TFP, and TLP really be replaced with FSOT, ESAT, and EFTP?</h1> <p>Dave Jollota — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:18:00 GMT</p> For as long as I can remember, printer performance has been reported using terms like Return to Application (RTA), Time to First Page (TFP), and Time to Last Page (TLP). Over the past few years, RTA has disappeared from many reviews as processing power on the PC has increased and returning access to the PC during a print job has become a non-issue. These age old terms may be about to change. The same sub-committee of ISO who recently released several toner and ink yield standards that have been adopted...(<a href="http://community.qualitylogic.com/blogs/printer/archive/2009/02/12/iso-24734-approved-will-rta-tfp-and-tlp-really-be-replaced-with-fsot-esat-and-eftp.aspx">read more</a>) </article> </main></body></html>