Handling Security Issues in Vista

We've heard from some users that Vista's enhanced security is interfering with some eValid test playbacks, and with some eValid site analysis runs. We're certainly in favor of Vista's enhanced security, but for production purposes in case you wish to modify that here is the way to do it.

Here's a writeup on how to do this: How to Suppress Vista Security Pop-Up Windows.

Current Conferences of Interest

From time to time it's important to take note of goings on in the software testing community. Here are some recent conferences that may be of interest:

• International Conference on Software Testing and QA, Bilbao, Spain, 29-31 October 2008.
• Automatic Program Verification: APV 2009, Argentina, 14-15 February, 2009,
• Workshop on Testing Techniques and Experimentation, part of the ICST 2009, 1-4 April 2009, Denver, Colorado, USA.
• 19th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, 11-14 November 2008, Richmond, Washington, USA.

Product Updates

Wouldn't you know it: just when we have everything running smoothly, something changes and, well, it doesn't run smoothly any more! The happened in the last couple of weeks when users of eValid on Vista experienced license problems. We traced the issue to changes due to the latest Vista SP, and now it's 100% resolved in the current eValid build.

Manwhile, we checked out the latest IE8 Beta2 release and found that all's well with eValid with that version of IE installed. Perhaps more important, it does appear that on some web sites eValid does behave noticeable faster that before when using the IE8 Beta 2 DLLs.

Finally, there have been some across-the board product performance enhancements and some new capabilities.

• ExitNow has been reworked so it really is definitive: eValid hard-exits on this command.
• The option to encode password details (to keep out prying eyes) has been extended to the AuthenticateUser command.
• Changes were made to several of the "startup" dialogs to improve readability.
• The maximum length of the name/value pair (query string) section of URLs has been modified to account for arbitrary length URLs (very long strings were failing randomly).

Automated Verification Technology Conferences

Announcements for these two events arrived almost simultaneously the other day, and maybe that's significant? Two events focused on automated technology for verification of software systems.

The ATVA 2008 Conference is set for Seoul, Korea, 20-23 October 2008, and aims to promote research and dvelopment on theoretical and practical applications of automated analysis methods...with an emphasis on applications in East Asia.

The AVOCS'08 Workshop is set for 30 September to 01 October 2008, Glasgow, Scotland, and also focuses on trying to find out how to get automated analysis and verification systems into practical use, with an emphasis on applications in the European theatre.

Both worth checking out.

About Warnings Vs. Errors

Many eValid users don't understand what Warning messages mean. Here's a quick rundown:

• If you are using the Playback Data Dialog, you'll only see a Green Screen when the playback runs to completion without issuing any playback flags at all, i.e. no Warning, Error, Timeout, Alarm, or Failure flags.
• You'll see a Red screen on any Error, Timeout, Alarm or Failure flags.
• You'll see a Yellow screen when there are any Warning flags. The most common reason for a Yellow screen is that the Adaptive Playback system had to adjust the playback behavior to overcome minor changes (regressions) in the web page.

Here's a full explanation of eValid's Error Reporting Process.

EPI-Based Program Implements Gmail Example

As an illustration of the power of the eValid EPI (eValid Programatic Interface) we've worked up the CPP programs for the Gmail Example that itself shows of the capability of eValid's DOM Access Capability.

The main things to appreciate in this example are that (1) the pure-playback eValid script does not require direct access to the desktop, all of the activity being performed at the DOM level, and (2) the corresponding EPI-based CPP program runs the same identical script as a windows direct executable.