Challenges of Testing in the e-business Space

Mon, May 1 6:00pm

Presentation Overview:

While testing, per se, is not a Java-specific challenge, the explosion of Java on the Internet brings a tremendous influx of ebusinesses, managers and programmers into the Java world. Old and new players alike are looking for new tools as well as tried-and-true ways to prepare their products for use in the real world. Anyone who has read the news lately realizes the growing importance of software reliability and the impact that buggy software has on all of us.

Chuck Paglicco, of Segue Software, Inc. joined us to speak on testing challenges unique to today's ebusiness world. With obvious experience in system-level testing, he described the needs for various levels of testing, warned us - with graphic examples - of the pitfalls of too little testing, and gave numerous examples of failures which could have been prevented or ameliorated with the right type of testing.

For client-side Java, i.e. Applets, he stressed the importance of testing old versions of browsers as well as different types of browsers. Many of today's users, he cautioned, do not know how to upgrade and live for a long time with the browser that came installed on their systems. Because of JVM changes, therefore, it is very important to have a policy of testing with a certain number of previous releases, especially if your users come from the general population.

Testing which might easily be overlooked for various types of implementation were discussed: how caching and cookies can impact the performance of Applets, how the use of servlets can increase hardware needs, and how delivery of full-fledged applications can affect customer support. The affect of architectural choices on testing was touched upon: such as how choice of ODBC vs JDBC, RMI vs CORBA or use of 3rd party JavaBeans, or even level of security, raised different testing and scalability issues.

Stress testing is something that is not done enough, but is extremely important to ebusiness applications. An application which performs well for long periods of time may ``melt down'' under high load conditions, such as those generated by a sales promotion or holiday traffic. Long running times increase the possibility of resource leakage, causing unexpected long term failures of the software.

Chuck's recommendations for stress testing included:

Using a mixture of browser types
Mixing access protocols, where relevant
Including pauses such as think times, coffee breaks and lunch breaks
Using or surpassing the maximum number of concurrent connections
Varying the types of transaction, where applicable
Including some functional end-to-end testing along with load testing to look for undesirable - but non-obvious - side-effects such as returning the wrong customer's data

Chuck finished up his presentation with the delivery of free copies of ``Gain eConfidence: The e-Business Reliability Survival Guide'', a publication of Segue, which discusses the risks which can be reduced by a well-thought-out testing plan and a set of guidelines to follow to reduce that risk.

Presenter Bio:

Chuck Paglicco of Segue