Denim Group, Ltd. Blog

Search Software Quality: Expanding Cloud-Based Technologies - Application Performance Issues

By Dan Cornell

Search Software Quality published another of my answers to reader questions:

The cloud changes the application performance management picture, depending on how much or how little data is managed through cloud services. What are the implications of the broadening use of the cloud on application performance issues?

You can see my full answer online where I talk about the different concerns you should look into for Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) application components (sorry - registration required). For those looking for a quick preview, I lay out situations where you should (hopefully) be able to rely on your vendors to meet performance goals - backed up by your SLA, of course - as well as situations where you have to focus on crafting an infrastructure setup to meet your performance goals yourself. I also briefly look at current performance management tools and situations where you might need to roll some of your own solutions to gather the data you will need..

Contact us for help building mobile, web and cloud application with critical security and performance requirements.

--Dan

dan _at_ denimgroup.com

@danielcornell

Search Software Quality: Requirements Management Process - Security and Application Performance

By Dan Cornell

Search Software Quality published another of my answers to reader questions:

Why is it important for organizations to include security and application performance considerations in the requirements management process, and how can they most effectively do this?

You can see my full answer online where I talk about the importance of capturing these critical requirements early to save time and money later on (sorry - registration required). For those looking for a quick preview, I talk about the cost savings associated with laying out these important classes of requirements early. The focus is on coming to an understanding and making this understanding explicit so that all interested parties can agree up front on the requirements and tradeoffs that must be made in order to meet them.

Contact us for help building mobile, web and cloud application with critical security and performance requirements.

--Dan

dan _at_ denimgroup.com

@danielcornell

Search Software Quality: Migrating Legacy Apps to the Cloud

By Dan Cornell

Search Software Quality published another of my answers to reader questions:

What does it take to migrate current applications running on in-house hardware to run instead on the cloud?

You can see my full answer online where I talk about some of the key steps involved in the process of moving applications from their legacy hardware into cloud environments (sorry - registration required). For a quick preview, I talk about the need to understand the performance characteristics of applications, have a target architecture and to do extensive testing before the rollover is considered complete. Moving legacy applications off old hardware and into cloud environments can provide a number of benefits, but these projects have to be managed correctly or you run the risk of service disruption and worse.

Contact us for help modernizing the legacy applications in your application portfolio.

--Dan

dan _at_ denimgroup.com

@danielcornell

QASL 1.0 Released!

By Dan Cornell

QASL (Quality Assurance Scripting Language) 1.0 has been officially released.  QASL is a lightweight scripting language that Denim Group uses to do automated functional testing of web applications.  It has a basic syntax that allows a programmer or QA person to control a web browser and run tests on a web application.  These tests can then be bundled together to provide a comprehensive set of functional tests for an application, as well as a robust reporting framework that indicates test failures and provides additional debugging information such as screenshots of unsuccessful test cases.

QASL has been released under an Apache License.  Here are the relevant links:

• Sourceforge site
• Download page

Many thanks to all the Denim Group folks who have been putting in long hours over the past six months to refactor QASL, test it, document it and make it release-ready.  You all have done a hell of a job.

--Dan
dan _at_ denimgroup.com

Application Performance Resources

By Dan Cornell

I saw a great post over on the Microsoft ACE Team blog about integrating performance testing into the Software Development Lifecycle.  Check it out -  there is a list of phase-by-phase resources as well as a list of great performance testing tools.

--Dan
dan _at_ denimgroup.com