Conarc Staff Blog

3 Solid Reasons to Not Bother with Unit Testing

January 26, 2010 – 7:00 pm

Feel free to argue with me, but for the return on invested time, money, & resources, Automated User Interface Testing (AUIT; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUI_software_testing) is a far more accurate measure of how software will perform in the field especially when developing a web application.

Unit Testing (UT) does great at ensuring all methods (individual software actions) have proper results now and as code evolves, but if your concern is for the end-user experience (and it should be), AUIT provides the best results for the programming man-hour outlay.

Here are 3 solid reasons to go with AUIT over UT:

1) Automated User: A clinical review of all the end-user interaction with the various functions, buttons, fields, URLs, etc should be tested after each production build. Users enter all kinds of random garbage into web forms. Plug in some of the crazy stuff from your support/ticket system.

2) Volume: Automated volume testing will show how the software and server combination will handle 100, 1000, 10000 hits/minute. This will ensure the experience is fluid and request-to-response rates are acceptable.

Side Note: Users won’t wait more than 10 seconds before freaking out and clicking again or leaving a page. Keep it under 6 seconds or at least give them a UI clue that processing is underway. This is a topic for a later post.

3) Legacy Code: Where code exists that wasn’t designed with testing in mind (be honest, there’s a lot out there), AUIT is the only real solution.

We use a combination of WatiN (http://watin.sourceforge.net/) after compilation for our automated testing. Then, manual testing occurs once a month before the release. Based on the specifications detailed our iChannel Projects entry, we validate that new features fit the intended business process/workflow which is something that can’t be automated.

Use automated testing judiciously. If copious resources are available, add Unit Testing, but put primary testing efforts as close to the end-user experience as possible through Automated User Interface Testing.

Mike Chu
Developer
www.conarc.com

By mchu | Posted in the Blog | Tagged Definitions, Programming, Software | Comments (0)

Enterprise Content Management vs. Web Content Management

January 22, 2010 – 3:11 pm

Yes….believe it or not, there is a significant difference in both Enterprise, and Web Content Management. Sparking this enlightening editorial was a demonstration of iChannel I performed this am for a Hospital, who was looking for WEB CONTENT MANAGEMENT, all along. I think they were hoping that I was saving the best for last, the juicy web related content goodies.

Web Content management is software that will manage HTML content. It’s used to primarily control and manage Web-related material. I see a pattern here folks…..THE WEB! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_content_management

iChannel is a tool for the Enterprise, to be used as a Content Management tool.
Content = Documents, Emails, Contacts, Projects, Activities, Reminders, Calendering etc…

Yes, iChannel is delivered as a Web/Browser Based application and tool, this still doesn’t give it the title of a Web Content Manager. Yes, somewhat confusing, but not really if you do a little homework. Our strengths lie in creating a single, browser based “go to” portal, for all that is your clients. We eliminate the need to run multiple applications to get your daily activities accomplished when it comes to your client, no matter what industry you are in. Give us a call, we’ll show you how to better your business process when it comes to the most important part of the business, your customer.

Jim Keenan
Vice President Sales
Conarc, Inc.
770-849-0508 ex.116

By jkeenan | Posted in the Blog | Tagged Definitions | Comments (0)

Blogging Our Ideas, Goings-On, and Killer Findings

January 21, 2010 – 11:21 am

Conarc has been so focused on vetting and converging architectures of best of breed technologies for more than 10 years that we haven’t spent time on giving back to the wealth of information on the Internet. Thus, the birth of this blog.

Here, we’ll write up and/or video some of our favorite technologies, processing/work-flow ideas, developed platforms, best practices (yeah that seems to be a old fad word does it?), and new features/directions for the future.

Our entire staff will contribute when they come into some really cool information that we know you’d love to know about. This blog will not censored by Management, run through Legal, etc, but will be an honest location for professionally-presented and intriguing content that we really think is worthwhile.

It’s social so feel free to join in and become part of the process. We always love to hear from and respectfully collaborate with our existing and future clients.

When we can solve some really tough problem with a slick solution, it makes us happy. We’re all geeks at heart and love this stuff from front to back.

- Mike Chu

By mchu | Posted in the Blog | Comments (0)