Tag Archives: Mindfire Solutions

ISQTB Certification

Tips for ISTQB Certification Exam

Software Quality, Thoughts, , , , Sudeep Pattnaik

ISQTB CertificationWhen we think of certifications, most of us think that “Do I really need a certification?”, “Is it worth putting the labour and money(a good amount most of the times) for just a piece of paper from some XYZ organisation?” , “Will it help me at a later stage of my career?” These thoughts flood sometimes our brains so much and leave us so confused that we take a lot of time only to decide that whether we should go for a certification or not, leave the preparation part aside.

All of us during our careers might have surely felt the need of certification in some way or the other. The need may be as simple as gaining more knowledge or as complecated as the determination to become one of the best certified resources available in the field.

Continue reading Tips for ISTQB Certification Exam →

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I am Google Search and I am 12 something.

Stories, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Subhendu Pattnaik

“Rehaan!!, Where are you?”

A voice buzzed near me. The pitch of the voice was high, and i could feel that it must be piercing through the walls into the green playground outside. The voice grew muffled – ” What i am to do with this kid! He just does not ……… ” I could not hear anymore..

But this story is not about Rehaan or his mom. It is about me.

I never talk to myself. I just give Gyaan. I am not intelligent. I am just efficient. But because i am efficient, i just am not able to get any rest. Who am I? I am Google. Google Search. I would have helped you so many number of times but sorry i dont know your name since you have not logged in. If you want, just click Sign in and say Hello. But yes, even though you will just tell me your userName, i will come to know about all your secrets because you know i am very good in archival of history. But dont be scared. I dont tell anyone – I am very secure and based on how you treat me or use me, i help you get to your results better with this archival based on your preferences.

I am Google Search
I am Google Search

When i was born,  I dont remember much of the exact date – (Please – No need to search Me for this) but my parents were very happy. I did not look as beautiful as i look today and I was small and was barely able to walk, let alone search. My dad told me, “Google, Dont worry. You are my most beautiful child. A day will come when everyone in the world will know you and you will be praised by everyone alike”. I had only learnt to listen to it and think it being daddyish love.

I had heard stories when i was playing with text searches, I often heard daddy talk over the phone to someone – “So what if Altavista can do …. ?” I would look at dad and think if I can help him but i could not- I was just a kid. At times in the middle of the night, i would wake up when someone typed something and i counted that to my memory. I dont know how but dad always used to come running to me to see the hit counter of mine. And this continued for days, months and years.

When I was about a year old, one day my dad drove me into a house where i had to “Live”. Dad told me that everyone calls this house as the Internet explorer. I cried a lot since i was going to be live for the first time but dad said you will manage it just fine. At times when i fell sick, dad used to come and repair me. But i was not allowed in the garage home anymore. Dad said i am grownup now and have to live with the IE.  I recall one day when someone came and typed Altavista on my face and I showed him a few results. The guy just shouted – ” Man, I dont believe this.. Altavista is just gone.. There is nothing getting returned from this. I could know that something happened to the other search engine.

From then on, i could see myself getting sick very much very often. I would often be taken to the garage home and dad and his friends would give me medicines. I never cried – I was a brave boy and dad told me that you would be one of the finest gentleman of all time. I believed him and took all the medicines which he gave me. Some of them I could not bear and i crashed out! Some i gave random results out but then dad loved me so much. Only when i was stable, he would take me to Internet Explorer house.

I was getting more and more loved by all people who came to this house. Everyone came to this house, met me always, typed on me and i gave them good results and slowly people loved me more. In IE, there were a few friends which i made. There was one called Lycos, he did similar things as i did but still i liked him somehow. And people did like him too.  Then Dad said, “Google – From today you dont have to climb the stairs to go upstairs if someone calls you. I have made a Google Search Toolbar and pasted it in front of the house – IE. So users will find it easier to find you and then you will have to answer them. Will you get tired son? ”

I said, “No Dad. I love to work. I will be the best search engine. I will fulfill your dreams to the best of my abilities”. Dad said nothing. He just smiled.

Blogger-Picasa
Blogger-Picasa

I dont remember how many years went by. But in a couple of years, i had so many of friends, and brothers and sisters which dad sent to my IE house. There was this guy called Picasa, who captured photos of everything whenever someone smiled, he used to archive that photo.  Then there were the google office kids – Google Docs and Google Calendar. Someone told me that you dont know – dont go by their looks, they are trying to do something on cloud which much older people are doing on the desktop clients. To this i would always feel, “Well, Yeah – Its all inside me but i will know only when someone searches me! ” Couple of years back – Dad brought home two guys into IE saying they will be my companions – One guy – God he talked so much.. He just kept on talking and talking. His name was Blogger. Then i later knew – my dad adopted him. Then there was this cool hunk – You Tube. Picasa was always jealous of him because youtube showed the exact emotions, exact video that just photographs. But I was cool with everyone because everyone loved me.

Years later, Dad took us all into a new house altogether. We all love it. It is our own house. We call it the Google Chrome.  Till today we also go to the older house of ours IE and at times to the garage home too but we all love chrome. We also have a marketplace where we meet other people belonging to the Chrome app store or Google app store. All these new members too love me. I am the darling of all – I am google search. Today I remember what Dad used to say..

Son, You are the most beautiful of all searches. You have to work hard and always keep focussed. You cant complain for the pain which you will have to suffer in the interim period. You cant cry out loud. Learn to be patient. Dont worry if you cant be the cynosure of all eyes overnight. A day will come when all your efforts will pay off. A day will come when the entire world will just love you like anything. And i could know that this is the day which dad was talking about. I love you Dad.

“…… Where are you hiding?!!” Rehaan’s mom’s voice slowly faded in. She stood near my world. Started at my world’s screen and the screensaver and said,” God, the laptop has been on all this time!” and switched me off.

I was not scared.

I knew that this is the time to take a power nap to get ready for more efficient searches when my world sees the new sunshine! After all, I have to live my dad’s dream and make him proud.

Author – Subhendu Pattnaik

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Blind Bard

A day @ Bhima Bhoi Blind School

Thoughts, , , , Sudeep Pattnaik
Blind Bard
Blind Singer

It was the evening of 1st July 2011,when the daily official routine was heading towards an end,I just thought of checking my GPS hoping for a message from Soumyanwesh regarding salary. I was even happier to discover the message count showing “1”. But it was not a message from Soumyanwesh,it was not a message from the Finance Department nor a message related to salary.It was a message from a Mindfirean named Asish Tripathy and was related to the “Corporate Social Responsibility” what we term as CSR in short.

Continue reading A day @ Bhima Bhoi Blind School →

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Attending Asia’s Biggest Software Testing Conference

Software Quality, , ,

Software Testing ConferenceThis was really a nice opportunity for me to attend a ‘International Software Testing Conference’. As a ‘Software Tester’ this is really great forum to meet to all great software testing experts and muster knowledge and expertise from them. This is really a huge canvas to expand our network for knowledge concerns. We came across this international event, & finally two of us were selected for the conference.

We zipped our baggage and flew to Bangalore on 11th May 2011 to attend the conference on 12th and 13th May 2011. On 12th May 2011 we had reached the conference spot with vibrant curiosity which was at ‘Hotel The Chancery Pavilion, Residency Road, Bangalore, INDIA’ for the quest of knowledge.

Attending The Software Testing Conference

We completed the registration process successfully and entered the conference hall. At 9 AM the conference just started with a welcome note. After the welcome note we were given with some highlights of the events for that day.

So this way the conference just started with a huge a surprise. On 12th first event was a KEYNOTE by Rob Lambert, Software Testing Club, UK. “Narrowing the Gap between Requirements and Testing: Feedback Loops, Agile and Communication”. Rob was explaining about the Agile process, and gap between requirements and testing. In normal testing life cycle we follow certain standards about writing testcase and executing the testcases in real time. Which takes a lot of time. But Rob explained that we don’t need
to bother about writing all the test cases where we can make a checklist and only need to check them while testing in agile process. Well some debates were there on this concept but at last we were able to understand to the importance of the process which was explained by Rob. I spoke to Rob about this concept and got some concepts cleared about agile software testing and methodology in real time testing.

The second event was “Define and Build Enterprise Automation Framework”, Speaker(s): JayaKrishnan Sashikumar & Preeth K P, Infosys. In this event they explained their own enterprise automation framework. Which was a requirement in of their projects. They were just explaining the architecture and model of the framework.

“Delivering Business Value through Test Automation” Speaker: Maruthi Sivakumar, AppLabs was the third event. Where MR Marithi Sivakumar was explaining about benefits of Test Automation and how test automation can help manual testers to do their job in better way so that the repetitive task can be done within less human interaction.

After three consecutive events we had a small energy break. And after the energy break the fourth eventjust started.

The fourth event was a KEYNOTE by Julian Harty, eBay, UK. “Pushing the boundaries of User Experience Test Automation”. Julian was explaining about the user experience test automation. Now a days usability is the most important factor for all kinds of application. So Julian was explaining about the ‘User Experience’, and ‘Usability’. How to automate Usability testing while observing the user experience. I had a long discussion with Julian about the ‘User Experience’, ‘Usability’, and ‘User Interface’. In the end I got my doubts clarified by Julian.
The fifth event was “Test Automation Rule Radial Hybrid Framework” Speaker: Velu S. P, IBM. Mr Velu has created his own Framework for test automation for his current project testing. After this there was a lunch break.

The sixth event was “Accelerating Regression Test Automation using Ready-to-use Test Automation Framework” Speaker(s): Chandrashekar S, Pallavi Jain & Vidyadhara C.A, Infosys. In this event the speaker has illustrated how test automation helps in regression testing. The seventh event was “Robust Automation Framework using Database for Test Data” Speaker(s): Sriharirao
Kuchi and Merral Crasto, IBM. In this event the speakers has shown how to use database for data driven testing. Instead of using a flat file or excel sheet for data driven testing they have just explained how database can be used for this purpose and how it is helps as compared to the other file formats which is very very dynamic in nature.

After this we had a small tea break. And after the break we had a Plenary Session by Pradeep Soundararajan, Moolya Software Testing, India “Achieving Personal Excellence as a Tester”. This session was really interesting where Pradeep was explaining what should be the true nature of a software tester. How a ‘Software Tester’ should be in ideal form. How to gain knowledge in Software Testing, and how to communicate with other testers and software testing experts all around the globe. Pradeep has suggested the ideal approach for testing and test management.

“Data Driven Automation Testing of Web Application using Selenium” Speaker(s): Navaraj Javvaji, Anand Sathiyaseelan, UmaMaheswari Selvan, AVA Corp was the eighth session. In this session the speakers were explaining about the selenium tool and how to use it for data driven testing.

So in this way 12th May is over and in the end I had a talk with experts for some real time problems in my early projects.

On 13th May 2011 we have reached the conference spot in the same way. After the registration the conference just started with a welcome note. After the welcome note we are given with some highlights for the events for that day.

The first session was about KEYNOTE by Sai Chintala, Applabs, India “Effective Performance Testing”. In this session Mr Sai from Applabs has explained about the basic concepts of Performance testing and how to do effective performance testing.

“Basics on Security Threats, Challenges and Countermeasures” Speaker: Narsimha Reddy, Infosys was the second session where Mr Narsimha from Infosys has explained core concepts of security threats for any application. Where in this session the discussion was for SQL injection, XSS attacks, Script inject and so on.

In the third session we had “Perform Fuzz on Application’s Web Interface”, Speaker: Aniket Kulkarni, Symantec. Mr Aniket Kulkarni works in Symantec as application security researcher. He was explaining about fuzzing techniques to test any application for security and load testing. How to fuzz any application and crash/break the application and check the logs for the crash. So in this way one can encounter about the security holes in the application. Also Aniket has explained how to capture packets transmitted
and analyze the packets for security threats. Overall this session was really nice and helpful.

“Benefits of Automated Security and Performance Testing of SAP HCM Applications” Speaker(s): Abhinav Gupta, Chandrashekar.S, Shahbaz Ali, Sharita Priya Castelino, Infosys was the fourth session. This session was all about SAP based application.

KEYNOTE by Mahesh Saptarshi, Symantec India, “Software Security – Technical Challenges”. This session was all about software security and negative testing. How can negative testing can lead to software security threat and business risk factors.

The sixth session was on “Performance Testing: A Catalyst for Swift IT” Speaker(s): Ashish Tyagi, Siddharth Joshi, Vivek Bal, Capgemini. Mr Siddharth explained about the performance testing and its implementation in web based application.

“Issues during Performance Testing and Solutions using various Tools and Tricks” Speaker: Amitabh Kaushal, IBM was the seventh session. In this session Mr Amitabh was explaining about the various tools and their usage. Some commercial and open source performance and load testing tools.

All sessions were really informative and useful. However I came across these things which I have learned and which will really add value to my current and future testing work:

• Agile methodology
• Automation testing and creating own automation framework
• User experience Test Automation
• Regression testing using automation testing
• Data driven testing using database, excel sheet, and flat file
• Data Driven Automation Testing of Web Application using Selenium
• Effective performance testing
• Application security threats, challenges, and countermeasures
• Fuzzing technique for web based interface
• Software security testing
• Various tools and tricks for performance testing of application

Likewise attending the sessions I got the prospect to meet, share, and interact with different technology experts from different other companies. We shared our views and work procedure on software testing and methodology we follow. This conference helped me in building my network in the world of Software testing,which will help me getting support and sharing opinions with these experts on different problems from time to time that we face in our day to day work life.

This conference was really a wonderful experience for me. I got to know so many new concepts, tools, techniques, and methodologies which is really going to help me in my work. In fact I have started working in the manner as we have learned from this conference. Well in this international conference I have got the exposure to real time industry experts and their views.

I feel lucky to be a part of Mindfire Solutions, not only for allowing me such a huge opportunity to explore knowledge. This is the beginning of opportunities and there is a long way to go with Mindfire on the path of success. This is really a grand experience for learning matter.

Mindfire is our company which always promotes, enables, and supports in all the initiatives for the career growth of all its employees. I feel good when I get these kind of opportunities. Well this makes me feel special in Mindire. I am also looking forward for the opportunities like this in the future to sharpen my skills and expertise in the Software QA Testing and Quality Assurance.

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