Software design and embedded system tools.

UAT (User Acceptance Testing)

UAT is a sort of testing that usually done at the last step of software development process (before release the software to the market).UAT is done by user (the person who will use this software or person who possess requirement of software).It is the way to increase reliance and ensure that the software was designed correctly based on requirements.

Before doing UAT your software need to pass Unit Testing,Integration Testing,System testing and must solved the defects found in each of these testing phases (in practical, the defects relate to technical or logic of software should be fixed before sending to UAT).The defects concern with appearance or color of software are acceptable during doing UAT.

Test Case is also need in UAT because it help doing UAT more effective. Otherwise the test case should be designed on the perspective of Bunsiness Flow and Business Logic that based on requirement. The tester will emphasize on testing the software like they are real user.

Procedure for doing UAT.
One important factor you must focus on while you doing UAT is Test Environment.The test environment should be similar to Production Enviroment as much as possible.

Basic step of doing UAT are as follow…

-Make the testing plan for UAT.
-Design the test cases for UAT.
-Set up testing team for operate UAT in accordance with test cases.
-Operate UAT.
-Record Bug or Defect found during operate UAT and hold a meeting in order to summarize anything we have to modify.
-Fix bug or defect found in previous step and then do Regression Testing.
-Finish UAT, sign off.

UAT is classified as Black box testing.The test cases for UAT normally designed according
to requirements of user (after finish requirements definition phase). Business Analysis
team or System Analysis team are also provide the inputs used for creating the test cases
and it should be described using simple language which easy to understand because the
tester may be the person other than programmer or tester and they don’t know the
technical phrase.

Visit these site for more information about UAT (User Acceptance Testing)
-Wikipedia
-eHow
-Exforsys INC

Reference for this article:
-http://www.welovebug.com/user-acceptance-testing/what-is-uat/#more-1503

Thank you,
Jitkasem Pintaya.

The article for today is about white box testing.I had written article about white box testing in this blog but that time it was only introduction of white box testing.This article concern with how to do white box testing.

The procedure of White box testing is normally saparated into 3 topic as follow

1.Statement Coverage
It is the testing to verify that all instructions or code must be executed at least one time.We can specify one or more than one test case for doing statement coverage testing (there may be a chance that one test case is not cover all the code we need to test).Below is an example demonstate how to do statement coverage testing.

Suppose you have a piece of code to test like this

Code1

If you determin ‘C’ as the test case then the coverage reach 100% (pass through all line of code) and only one test case is sufficient for doing Statement Coverage for this code.

Advantage of Statement Coverage.
1.To ensure that all source code can be reached at least for one time.
2.It is suitable for making Performance profiling because it can be applied directly to object code without processing source code.

Disadvantage of Statement Coverage.
1.It is insensitive to logical operators such as OR (||),AND (&&) etc.
2.If your source code have a lot of IF-ELSEIF-ELSE statements or contain consecutive switch labels then the test case used for doing Statement Coverage will be increased respectively.

2. Branch Coverage (Condition judgment Coverage)
It is the testing to verify that all branches and instructions must be executed at least one time (Concentrate on testing to cover every branches or decision points in the code).It is the easiest way to perform testing of path or workflow of program.

Please consider the code below and its explanation to understand the operation of Branch Coverage testing.

code2

In the above code we need only two test case to cover all the branches (also all instructions too), they are…
Test case #1 : Input n1 = 1 , n2 = 1
Test case #2 : Input n1 = 2 , n2 = 0

Advantage of Branch Coverage.
1.To validate all branches in the code can be reached and ensure that no branches lead to abnormal of the program’s operation.
2.It eliminate problems that occur with Statement Coverage testing.

Disadvantage of Branch Coverage.
1.There may be other condition that can be used for decision making.For the example, statement “if((b == TRUE) || functionA())”, in this statement we can define only test case with “B = TRUE” and this test case is cover this branch but functionA() isn’t tested.

3.Condition Coverage/Multiple Condition Coverage

It is the testing to verify that all condition expression within each branch will be tested (the true and the false condition of each sub-expression within the decision branch must be tested at least one time ).
It is more intensive testing than Branch Coverage and Statement Coverage.Multiple Condition Coverage has detail of testing more than Condition Coverage.Its test cases are larger than test case of Condition
Coverage because it ensures that all possible combination of conditions of sub-expression within each branch must be tested.

Please consider the code below for Condition Coverage testing.

code3

If you want to test above code by using Condition Coverage you must specify two test
cases to cover all sub-expressions in this branch.The test cases are as follow…

Test case #1: Input n1 = 60 , n2 = 70
Test case #2: Input n1 = 40 , n2 = 110

If you want to test above code with Multiple Condition Coverage you must specify four
test cases to cover all combination of possible condition of sub-expressions in this branch and the test cases look like these

Test case #1: Input n1 = 60 , n2 = 70
Test case #2: Input n1 = 60 , n2 = 110
Test case #3: Input n1 = 40 , n2 = 70
Test case #4: Input n1 = 40 , n2 = 110

Advantage of Condition/Multiple Condition coverage.
1.It is very thorough testing and the bugs are normally found by this kind of testing.

Disadvantage..
1.If the decision branch contain lots of sub-expressions or has very complex boolean expressions , the tester will have to define a large number of test cases.

Thank you,
jitkasem pintaya.

Reference site:
1.MindBlaze Blog
2.Bullseye
3.The paper from utwente.nl by Arnold Zanderink

CASE tool (Computer-Aided Software Engineering)

CASE tool is the software that support system development or facilitate in system development.It
has an ability in building various kinds of document during analysis and design the system.For the example such as building the UML diagram,the screen interface (Graphical User Interface),form and report etc…
Furthermore some CASE tool can automatically generate source code too.In system maintenance can use CASE tool to make the operation smoothly,quickly and correctly.CASE tool also help you to decrease the time in document improvement or source code improvement.So at the present time CASE tools have an important role in system development and system maintenance.

Formerly CASE tool was separated into two groups as follow…
1.Upper CASE tool is the software that used in the step of analysis and design the system.This CASE tool make various diagram such as DFD (Data flow diagram) . DFD is used for design the component of the system such as the input of system , the mechanism of system , the result of the system etc.Other diagrams such as ER diagram (Entity-relationship diagram),layout (the screen that used for bring the data into the system or screen of the report). The example of CASE tool in this group are ERwin and Visual UML.

2.Lower CASE tool is the software that can build the source code or program automatically from condition or determinate procedure such as we can write the program for manage the vacation of our employee from the specific workflow or we can write the database structure command by select from the menu.The example of CASE tool in the group are Ecore Diagram Editor and dzine.

3.Integrated CASE tool is software that fulfill the usability from system analysis,system design to the system implementation (writing the source code) and system testing.It is the software that combine Upper CASE tool and Lower CASE tool into one software.The example of CASE tool in this group is Rational Rose from IBM.

The story of CASE tool is not finish by this article.In the next article I will write about the review of CASE tools that are well-known nowadays such as MagicDraw, Visual Paradigm,Poseidon UML and the suggestion about Commercial CASE tools and Open Source CASE tools software list.

for more information please visit these sites
1.UML Modeling Tools
2.Wikipedia
3.CASE tool index

Thank you,
Admin

White Box testing
Another name of White box testing is Glass-Box testing or Structural Testing.
It is the test in the system.The tester have to specify the test case that will be used
for test the system.They must have an ability in programming and well understand in
software testing theory.Their task it to assign the test case to every line, every
statement or every path of the program being tested. You can compare white box
testing with the measurement of electronics circuit (In measurement of electronics
circuit,you have to measure the electric current and voltage in every node existing
in your circuit).

White box testing can be applied for testing in Unit testing,Integration testing
or System testing but in commonly the tester apply White box testing in Unit testing phase
of software development.

The advantage of White box testing.
1.The process of White box testing can increase te quality of source code and can make
the pieces of source code work more efficiency because it is the testing in the system
(In the function and in every branches of the code)

2.In White box testing we can look for an error by give an input to the system and monitor
the output from the system.Otherwise it also can look for the internal error that existing
in the mentioned system too.

The disadvantage of White box testing.
1.This kind of testing require high skill in software coding to assure the high-quality of
source code.

Black Box testing.
Another name of Black-Box testing is Functional Testing.It is the testing
that disregard internal mechanism of the system (don’t test the internal component
of the system such as source code or function).This testing method is focus on the
output that come out from the system after we sent the input to it (Output that
come out after the system responded to the input data).

In Black-Box Testing, the tester will not look for the code to test, so the code
is considered to be “Black Box” that we can’t see the content inside the box.The
tester know only they must send the input to the “Black Box” and then it will release
the output to the tester.

The tester usually use the requirement specification document (Requirement
Knowledge) to build the test case, so they know what is the outcome that the system
will send after they send the corresponding input to it.

Now I can summarize the black box testing as follow…
– It is the testing that disregard the source code or command
in the program.
– It is testing of function of system base on the requirement documents.
– The tester must assume for output that will come out from the system
after sending the various input pattern to the system (The output must match up with
the input).

Now I can summarize White Box Testing as follow…
-It is the testing that examine the structure or the work-flow of the program .
-The tester must build the specific test case used for testing in each specific condition.
-The test case must contain the case that can be executed normally and abnormally.
-Try to execute every statement in the function at least 1 time.

In the next article I will write about Test first method (Software testing part III).
You can see more information about Black box and White box testing at these websites below
1.Software Testing Fundamentals
2.Testing and Code Coverage

Reference site: lenovoblogs

Thank you,
Jitkasem Pintaya.

There are no commercial software released to the market without testing.
Testing is an important process in software development.The big or
well-known software company place importance on software testing equal to
software implementation.
At present there are many type of software testing method but I summarize the
widely used testing method as following…

1.Unit test
Unit test is the testing functional
(Or testing in detail of each function in the system) to ensure
that each individual function in the system can work well.
Unit testing is very important in software development because
it is the method for finding the functional problems (It can decrease
the time in finding bugs in the posterior process).
2.Integration test
Integration test is the testing that take each unit to
combine altogether and then test the coherence between each unit to
ensure that the communication between each unit in the system can
be done correctly.
3.System test
System test is the testing of the whole system to ensure that
the totally work-flow of the system is correct.It is also
an important test that have to do in software development process
(Normally system test is done as the last test of all
testing procedure).
4.Acceptance Test
Acceptance test is the testing of customer or user who will
use the developed software.It is the test for satisfaction of the
user or customer.This testing is done after System test.

The important testing that you must emphasize on them are
Unit testing and Integration testing because many defect or bugs
can be found by these two testing method.

Testing is not necessary to be done by tester but developer
can also do the testing.Normally the Unit testing is done by
developer because the majority of this testing use the test case
that depend on the implementation, so nobody can do this testing
better than developer.However the real tester have a responsibility
for doing the Integration test and System test because…

– These two kinds of testing must do in long time.

– To prevent the bias if the developer is also the tester at the
same time.(The developer who write the code maybe
rather sure that the code they wrote is correct and will
ignore some minor part of code that have to test)

– The real tester has more time to design the test document
and test case. He/She must know clearly in the target system
that will be tested,so He/She can do the testing better than
developer.

This is part I of software testing story.In the next part (part II)
I will write about black box and white box testing,test first method and
how to design the test plan.

Thank you very much,
Jitkasem Pintaya.

Mind Map is the map of ideas. It is used for represent the word or the ideas of
the human that spread out from the center .To imply by using text and the picture
to look alike the ramification of the tree. This theory is getting from the brain of the human.
Mind Map was built to be the source or the beginning point of developing the project
or doing the tasks.

Mind Map can simplify everything especially the complicate one such as.
– Make from the abstraction to be concrete object.
– It help in learning everything.
– It can be used for solving the problems in daily life.
– It is used in decision-making in case that there are alternative ways to solve the problem.

You can use mind map to apply to many tasks such as…
– Brain storming
– Project planning
– Use for summarize the meeting(Meeting minutes)
– To analyze the strategy of our company.(Strategic thinking, SWOT Analysis)
– To specify the strategy of marketing (Marketing Plans)
– Use for Teaching
– Use when you want to describe something or teach someone(Training)
– To control the new product development(Product Development)
– To gather the data,the knowledge and the ideas(Capture tacit knowledge)
and much more…

Mind Mapping Software

Nowadays there are many software that use for build the mind map.
The mind mapping software in the world today can be separated into
two groups as follow…

-Commercial Mind Mapping Software is the software that was built by
private company for the purpose of business or commercial only. You have
to pay for this software.

-Open Source Mind Mapping Software is free Mind Mapping software.
You don’t have to pay for these software.It is open source so may be
you can download the software together with its source code.

Commercial software list

MindManager
MindManager is commercial software.You can download it for free trial
from Mindjet here.It is easy to use software that combine many
tools necessary for build Mind map.This software can link with Microsoft
Office such as MS Word,MS PowerPoint,MS Outlook, MS project, etc.
It also can export your Mind map into image file (support various type of image file),
PDF file,”.doc” file and “.html” file.It can use under Windows and MAC OS X.

ConceptDraw
ConceptDraw is software that can design Mind map,Brainstorming,Project Planing.You can download
the free trial for 30 days from here.

NovaMind
NovaMind is the popular Mind map building software.You can download the trial
from here.

Another Commercial Mind mapping software that I know is as follow…
-Inspiration
-SmartDraw
-OpenMind
-Visual Mind
-BrainMine
-Visual Concept
-MindMapper

Open source or free Mind mapping software.

FreeMind is a good open source Mind mapping software.It was written in JAVA.
It is licenced under GPL (General Public License) so you can download it for free
without paying for it.With FreeMind you can download the source code for modify
some features but you must licence it under GPL only.Look for it at here.

CUMindMap is the free software for build Mind map.It was developed by
Faculty of Computer engineering , Chulalongkorn University, Thailand.
It also support both Thai and English language.It can run only on Windows.
I had ever used it and I think it is easy to use.
You can download it for free at here.

WikkaWiki is a flexible, standards-compliant and lightweight wiki engine written in PHP, which uses MySQL to store pages. Forked from WakkaWiki. Designed for speed, extensibility, and security. Released under the GPL license.Click here to look for it.

Another software in this group is as follow…

– vym ( view your mind)
– Kdissert
– DeepaMehta

The below is some pictures of Mind map

Reference site : www.arnut.com
Thank you
Jitkasem Pintaya,

V-model

V-model is software development model.It is improve from the waterfall model. V-model is normally used for manage the software development project in the large company (Japaneses company).

V-model is also called verification and validation model (V&V). It has a very intensive testing in order to eliminate the bug/error that may be occur during each stage of development project using V-model.

You can see the picture of V-model as below…

V-model

V-model_2

*The picture above is come from here http://tensai-lab.engr.tu.ac.th/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/slide03a-sw-eng.swf

For the detail what is each stage in the V-model do, I suggest you find the information on these sites.

1.www.bucanac.com/documents/The_V-Model.pdf

2.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Model

3.www.v-modell.iabg.de/kurzb/vm/k_vm_e.doc

4.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Model_%28software_development%29

Advantage of V-model.

- The defect or bug can be found in the early stage.

- It is trustworthy software development model that used widely in the big company.

- V-model can be done parallel in each side of “V” (Left and right side),
that mean the testing (Right side) is acting like planning (Left side). The tester must design the test case and the testing team is joined early in the project development life cycle ,so they will receive a good
understanding of the project at the very beginning .

Disadvantage of V-model.

- Use a lot of money and resource to implement the complete V-model

- Suitable for the large project which have to do for long term (not suitable of short term project because it need to review at each stage).

- Test is important , by ignore any one of test phase may affect the quality of product.

- No prototype software can be made because the software is developed in
the implementation phase.

- It is rigid and least flexible (if something happen or change in during the middle stage of V model,
the requirement document and the test document is also need to update)

This article is the continue version of the last article (Agile Software development model I)

The technique for development using Agile is as follow.
-Agile model driven development (AMDD)
-Code Refactor : is the method to redesign code that is to modify the code immediately and then
the design is also change.
-Pair Programming : Combine the two developers to work together for the same project.
These two developers work at the same location and
also use the same computer.Share the computer in the way that one
person implement the code and another person has a responsibility for
checking the correction of implemented code.
-Test Driven Development(TDD) : is the technique for writing the test-case and write the test
case before implement the code.

The format(pattern) of Agile.

Agile methodology has many patterns that can be used for developing the system such as Scrum, FDD,
XP (extreme programming), DSDM, RUP, etc…But the popular pattern in my opinion is XP (extreme programming) because XP is the pattern that emphasize on the satisfaction of the customer and XP can change the system easily when the customer change the requirement.

Addition aspect for Agile.
– When we have the old project that can be used for additional development.It mean that
we have the asset that can be used as the base system for develop the new project,
so if the new project arrive then we can send the old project to the customer before sending
the new one.
– In the first step of developing new project,we can also deliver the things such as the screen,
the prototype,infrastructure to our customer without the software (because we have not written
the software yet)
– We also can think about Agile as the modifier of the former software development process such as
– Use Agile for rearrange the importance of the project development activity ,
which activity should be done and which should not be done.
– Use Agile to control the former project and look at some part of former project.The part that
is important for use with the development of new project should be done ,
the unimportant part will be ignored.

Agile

Agile is the new idea for software development
that try to scrape through the old methodology to shorten
the development process.
It is the principle of new software development methodology
that emphasize on the following topic.

– Rapid and flexible response to change
– speed up the development process
- don’t stop, do the development continuously despite
of the things that will affect the development process
- when there is a change, we can support this
alteration rapidly and flexible

The objective of Agile
1.Emphasize on the aptitude of each developer.Try
to commune with each other more than impress on the
tools and methodology.Such as the programmer have a chance
to talk with the customer and can do the project in agreement
with the customer’s requirement.
2.Do the project by concentrate on the result or final
software.The old methodology is concentrate on the document
but Agile is not,the purpose of Agile is that we have a
ready software to send to the customer on the definited time.
3.The main point of Agile is communication.Agile is not
prefer the contact but Agile is stress on the communication
between the customer and developer.
4.Accept the changefulness.The old methodology is must do
follow the plans (gantt chart) but Agile is not necessary to follow the plans.
But Agile must able to respond to the change.

The model of Agile is as follow.

– choose only some methodologies for developing project.
– the chosen methodolgy must be able to use the
priciple of Agile to manage the documents and the existing
system.
– In Agile,It must consist of
– value (result)
– principle
– practices

The three things above are the part of Agile model that
can be use for develop the project efficiently and have
less overhead.

That’s all for this article but the story of Agile is not finish.
In my next articles I will write about technique of development using Agile and other
addition aspect for using Agile.

This article is about Software Process.

What is software process.

The software process is the process that applied to the developing
of software and accomplish the software development project.
The fundamental of software process can be devided into the 4 process
as follow
1.Software Specification
2.Software Design and Implementation
3.Software Validation
4.Software Evolution

Software Specification is the method to defind the characteristic of software we
want to develop.

Software Design and Implementation is the method to build or develop
the software to agree with the Software Specification

Software Validation is the method to check for the accuracy of the
developed software or check the function of the software whether it
match the customer’s requirement.

Software Evolution is the method to improve the software.Make the software
flexible for the alteration of customer’s requirement or to make the software
ready for support the changing of technology.

What is Software Process Model?

Software Process Model is the model of software development
of the 4 topic I mentioned above. We can write a graph or picture that easy to
understand for represent the Software Process Model.Today there are
so many software process model such as Waterfall model,V-model,Agile,
Extreme programming, Lean, etc…

I will show you only the important Software Process
Model that normally used today.

It is the V-model and agile but I will write them for my next articles.
For more information about it , you can look for it
at www.wikipedia.org or other site such as www.answers.com.