[dba-VB] [AccessD] OT: Functional Testing: CTE classification-tree editor

jwcolby jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Thu May 29 11:19:47 CDT 2008


I had a very interesting conversation with my tax guy this 
morning.  He had previously worked at Lowes Hardware in 
their accounting department.

The upshot of the conversation was that Lowes has to 
interface to a huge number of legacy systems, systems from 
suppliers, banks, systems from companies they purchased 10 
years ago and inherited etc.  His comment of interest is 
that in many cases they did not do testing.  Or more 
correctly they threw data at the live system and looked at 
what happened, and then used a feedback loop to work around 
to what the system at the other end would accept.

Sounds like poor Roz at her current assignment.

I have to tell you that I have experienced this same thing. 
  My disability insurance call center software has to 
interface to about 10 (so far) completely different 
insurance companies.  Each company has dozens of legacy 
systems.

We get "specs" for how to receive and transmit data to these 
mainframe systems.  I write code to meet the spec, then we 
send data.  We then get feedback from them about how to 
change the program to meet the "REAL spec" which is never 
the printed spec.  Iterate until the feedback stops and they 
start accepting what we send without complaint.

In one case they had specified how to output claim data that 
they wanted to enter into their system.  In this one 
(admittedly extreme) case it was in a vertical report 
format, which we did.  Some six months later we discovered 
that the format was designed to allow some key entry person 
to key it into their system manually, and the "report order" 
was the order that the data entry fields appeared on her screen.

I got a chuckle out of that one.

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com


Gustav Brock wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> A local computer paper brought attention to this work related to Daimler-Chrysler but useful in many areas:
> 
>   http://www.systematic-testing.com/functional_testing/cte_main.php?cte=1
> 
> <quote>
> This page contains papers on the classification-tree method CTM and the classification-tree editor CTE. The classification-tree method is a testing method for the systematic design of test cases on basis of the specification. The classification-tree editor is a graphical editor supporting the application of the classification-tree method. CTM and CTE are widely used in industrial practice.
> </quote>
> 
> The CTE software is free to download and use and the page contains links to a bunch of documentation.
> Here's an intro:
> 
>   http://www.systematic-testing.com/documents/eurostar2000.pdf 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 



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