There's an ongoing debate in the applications development world on whether front end or back end testing is the most effective method. However, the discussion shouldn't be just about where the testing takes place, but rather about the ease of use and effectiveness of the tool. Traditional testing[…]

Installing Citrix XenApp 7.5 on Windows Server 2012 This blog will demonstrate my process of installing XenApp 7.5 on a Windows Server 2012. It is important that the account being used to install XenApp is part of a domain, this is necessary in order to manage Citrix Studio. In this article the[…]

A few years ago, one of the companies I worked with created a "Production Application Support Team", or PAST.  These were the sysadmins and programmers intended as the next line of support after the helpdesk, who could triage some problems and perhaps actually fix them.

By Matthew Heusser Hello; I am Matt Heusser, a risk management consultant and sometimes writer.  You can learn more about me at xndev.com. The folks at NRG Global have asked me to start blogging for them because their place in the community aligns with mine.  We are both interested in minimizing[…]

It’s here!  It’s here!  If you are reading this, then the Test Competition is finally here!

The class where I learned method-R performance tuning also taught me something else, something I call the consultant's gambit. This is that story.

On March 11th, 2013, registration for the test competition closed.

If you've been following me talk about Method-R, you might wonder how I learned it.  In my case, I learned it the "right way", the "official way":  My employer brought in a consultant to teach a three-day class in performance tuning.  Method-R was the method he taught.

It hasn't been easy to organize our first test competition. We've had to look for collaboration tools, make sure they scale, plan the scoring, find a way to record the bugs, figure out what to test ...

Every week on "The Apprentice" may be different, but we know one thing:  Donald Trump is going to walk in, ask questions, fire someone, and drive on.

Last week I posted The Killer App, the story of a real software project with a cliff-hanger, pick-a-path ending.  It's time to close the loop.

Last week I put out the Black Swan In The Enterprise, which argued that most uptime planning comes from the ability to predict the future -- and sometimes, the future is wildly different that you would have predicted.  Things fall apart; the centre does not hold -- and they fall apart very[…]

When the staff at NRGGlobal asked me to start blogging for them, they asked what we had in common, and what they could do for the test community.

Recently, I was invited to observe a colleague’s monthly stress test exercise. There is a large room filled with mangers and technicians, experts in various aspects of the system, general network specialists, application specialists, customer support representatives and a collection of people with[…]

Amazon’s Service level agreement for it’s cloud computer service is 99.95% uptime for a service region (that’s a data center) during a one year period.

A few years ago, I worked a performance project.  You probably know the type:  Customers were upset, executives were upset, technical staff were asking for specific direction (and not getting much) ... nobody was happy. The code was already in production, and there was no obvious 'roll it back to[…]

If you've done any performance testing, or even seen a demo, you are probably familiar with the “big line graph” that is created as the test runs. A Typical Response Time Graph The typical scenario is simple:  Have the load tool start with one simultaneous user running a script.  Then add a new[…]

Expanding with .Net application through Citrix Portal

Steve Sutphin, an Oracle expert for over 20 years, had this to say about using AppLoader for regression testing.

You have a client server application used through the web and another used through a fat client. Every month you need to install required automatic updates on different Windows Operating Systems and some application patches. Your users use the application on different Operating Systems and use[…]

If you are starting or thinking of starting your Eclipsys 5.5 upgrade, you are probably wondering what approach to take when testing the upgrade and what issues others have uncovered during testing.

Testing Java application to uncover Java Virtual Memory - JVMs compatibility:

1. Test from the end user's perspective