New Year's Greeting

As we come to the end of the calendar year it seems to be shaping up that 2008 will have been a really tough year for a lot of people. So we're doubly thankful that for eValid it has been a fairly good year.

Recall that the Chinese word for "crisis" is composed of two symbols: one for "danger" and the other for "opportunity."

Crisis = "dangerous opportunity" is the way that's usually interpreted. And, we aim to take advantage of the opportunities that the current situation presents!

So this may be a good opportunity for those of us who are in the quality and productivity business. It seems to us that products and technologies that make life easier, get the work done quicker and more efficiently, make better use of resources, and do the job better are going to be extremely important as the world economy gets back on track.

Here is a summary of what you can expect from eValid in the coming days and weeks:

• V9 Release, sometime after the first of the year with many new features and performance improvements. (All V8 support will be ending a few months after V9 is released.)
  
  

• There'll be several special offers for regression suite creation, for package pricing involving server loading work, and for monitoring script development.
  
  

• Realigned product bundle compositions that will see the EPI feature added to both the WebMaster Bundle and to the Regression Test Bundle. Look for other changes in product composition and organization, too.
  
  

• Revisions of some of the pricing, including introduction of SAAS-type pricing and special virtualization support.
  
  

• Enhanced DOM programming support: you'll now be able to do ANYthing you can imagine doing with DOM scripting based on "from life" recording.
  

We wish you all the very happiest of New Years celebrations, and we wish for the very best for everyone in 2009.

Simplified Cost Per User Calculation

Users of the eValid functional testing and server loading solution often ask about the actual costs over time "per simulated user". (Remember, eValid has no "virtual users" -- only simulated actual users.) So we made up a little table that reflects a typical eValid installation.

Machine Configuration -- Number of Master SLBs	1
Machine Configuration -- Number of Slave SLBs (Playback Only)	9
Minimum simulated user capacity per machine (XP)	125
Total simulated user capacity	1,000
Normal business hours in a year (40 hours/week, 52 weeks).	2,080
Total simulated user hours available in a year.	2,080,000
Average cost per simulated user hour based on a $10K investment in eValid.	<0.5¢

The point is this: eValid offers a potential average cost of < 0.5¢ per simulated user hour when spread out over an entire year. If you spread out the work to the full 168 hours per week the costs per simulated user hour drops even more!

About JavaScript Regressions

We've had a number of questions recently about problems that arise from changes that happen at the JavaScript level. The main point that users find is that a page that PASSes all their tests without difficulty suddenly beings to FAIL the test. Yet a visual inspection of the page shows no differences!

We know of an increasing number of applications which have different JavaScript depending on which browser version you're using (e.g. IE 6, or IE 7, or IE 8), or which operating system you're using (e.g. XP, Vista, NT2000, W2003S). The underlying server delivers different JavaScript based on what it knows about the client, and if your tests are engineered for one combination they may need some modification to work on another combination.

Here's our detailed explanation about how to handle JavaScript Regression.

Conferences of Interest

Three conference announcements that are worthy of considering are:

• TAP: Tests And Proofs 2009: Maybe testing and proving -- which have traditionally had diverging goals and methods -- will be able to merge?
• ISSTA: A long running conference that promises even more-focused technology in the upcoming rendition of this event.
• 7th Workshop on Software Quality: A workshop on a wide range of software quality issues, intended to be part of widely-respected ICSE 2009.