Work Term Update-November 2014

Through the month of November I worked on three major things. I installed and tested the newest version of the check recognition software we use. I fixed some failing unit tests on older versions of passport and I began executing regression tests.

New Check Recognition 

Since I am familiar with setting up drivers I was assigned the task of testing the new version of the check recognition software we use. The version we had been previously using was no longer supported and needed to be upgraded. I installed the new software by closely following a technical document that one of our information engineers put together. This ensured not only that the software could be upgraded but also that the technical instructions were correct and clear. Once the software was installed I scanned a variety of checks and made sure they were recognized correctly. I tested this change on not only the newest version but several previous versions to make sure that you can make the upgrade on any of our supported versions of passport.

Fixing the Failing Unit Tests

In my down time in November I worked on fixing the failing unit tests in many of the older versions of passport. I enhanced my research skills by looking through the subversion check-ins to see what caused the test to fail. I also compared the code to the most recent version (if the tests were passing in the most recent version) to see if it had already been fixed. I'm still working on my coding skills, but I was really happy with the learning progress I made in researching a problem.

Regression Testing

Towards the end of November our regression test cycle began. I was assigned over 300 test cases to execute. I also was assigned some SSE testing to do so it was a challenge to balance the work from both teams. December looks like it will be the same as the end of November, I will be working on testing for both the SSE team and the R&D team.

Work Term Update-October 2014

This month I worked on one major task all month long. I did intensive testing on the previously mention Driver Verification page. One of our customers wanted the driver verification feature added to an older version. This proved to cause lots of problems in terms of when the page should appear and when it shouldn't. I wrote many more test cases to document how this feature is supposed to behave. I had the opportunity to be a part of calls with the customer and it was neat to be the expert in the room on the feature. I'm looking forward to more testing and fixing some failing unit tests in November!

Work Term Update-September 2014

The month of September marked the beginning of work term number two for me. I am still working at NCR for this work term and I'm really enjoying getting to see what staying at a company for a long period of time is like.

During the month of September I worked on three major assignments. All the assignments had to do with testing and included french regression testing, regular regression testing and testing the driver verification feature again.

French Regression Testing

I was assigned the task of testing the French version of Passport again. This time around I got to create my own set of tests to execute. I feel like planning the test cases in advance really helped me to test the french version more efficiently. I raised a lot of issues related to the French version, I was surprised that it was more issues than last cycle, but I think that had to do with me planning out the test cases more intentionally. Through testing the French version I really learned where the problem areas are and how to better plan the test cases in the future

Regular Regression Testing

I also had several regular test cases to run during this regression cycle. They came from a wide variety of features including administration, driver, alerts and many others. I liked that during this cycle I got to learn about more new features and increase my knowledge of the product.

Driver Verification Testing

The final assignment I had during the month of September was to help test the driver verification page for a fix that was going to one of our customers. This task really challenged and increased my understanding of this feature since I had to understand what their bug was and how to test it. Because of these problems, I created more test cases to make sure that the driver verification feature works in the future.

I'm excited for what the month of October will bring. I'm not exactly sure yet what my tasks will be, but I'm sure they will challenge me.

Work Term Update-August 2014

During the month of August I worked in both development and testing. The first half of the month I worked on two main development issues and the second half of the month I worked on regression testing again. Here are some more details about my work during the month of August:

Development Improvements

The development work I did this month was mostly around some improvements. There were two major improvements I worked on. The first involved updating some different reports from last month. The other involved adding a new configuration to one of the configuration files. This improvement was a challenge but I felt so accomplished when I figured out the issue and got it working correctly.

Regression Testing

During the second half of the month of August I worked on regression testing again. I was assigned some of the same areas to test as last cycle as well as some new features, or at least features I hadn't looked at in depth before. I really enjoyed getting to do something I am good at. One challenging thing this time around was setting up my testing environment with an Oracle database. 

This post ends my first official work term at NCR. I am continuing my co op at NCR through to December, but I will be on my second work term of five.

Work Term Update-July 2014

This month I had a wide variety of tasks assigned to me. Here are a few of the things I worked on during the month of July:

Tested French Version

I was asked to test the French version of Passport during the beginning of this month. I spent a week selecting various test cases to run and I found 25 issues. This really tested my knowledge of the product because I needed to rely on my memory to navigate the application, since I am not fluent in French. After I had found the issues, I worked with another coop student who was fixing the issues. I also verified that the issues had been fixed for the hotfix release. I really liked being challenged to think of an efficient way to test the French version.

Development Assignments

This month I was assigned a couple of improvement development tasks. Specifically I was assigned one having to do with reports. I needed to add some information to the header of a few of the reports that were missing the information. I learned a bit more about jrxml files and how to use i-report. This was the first time I’ve gotten to fix an issue so far this work term and I felt very accomplished when I had finally figured out the problem and checked in the code.

Meeting with the Automation Testing Team

This month I also selected two test cases from the Driver Verification feature that I had previously tested to be automated. I was part of a meeting with the automation test team from India to demo the new feature to them to help them gain a better understanding of how the feature works.

Verified Customer Raised Issues

I also worked with the SSE Tester and assisted in verifying the issues that had been ported to the most current version of the code. This was challenging because some of the issues are difficult to reproduce on our Virtual Machines, so it can be challenging to figure out ways to verify that the issues have been properly resolved.

This month brought lots of learning experiences and I am really looking forward to having more development tasks in August.

Work Term Update-June 2014

My job this month mainly focussed on testing. Since I worked at NCR last summer as a tester, this was a very comfortable area for me, which may have been why I liked it so much. Here are some of the assignments I had for the month of June:

Completed testing on Driver Check

I completed testing the newest Driver Check feature which I mentioned in my last work term update. I also demoed the new driver check to solutions management and did a demo during the product update training. This was a great opportunity to work on my presentation skills and I am very glad I had the opportunity.

Assisted in Regression Testing

This is what took up most of my time this month. The testing team ran about 700 test cases and I got to run a good portion of them. I raised a few issues I found using JIRA. I also had the opportunity to run several test cases to certify different browser/operating system/websphere combinations. The regression testing was fun for me.

Continued work on Oracle Unit Test Failures

In the down time I had this month I worked on the Oracle Unit Test Failures I was assigned from last month. I was not able to complete and submit my code changes but hopefully I will be able to commit the changes in July.

At the end of the month we had a team picnic and played cricket as a team. It was a lot of fun and a really good team building experience.

Work Term Update-May 2014

This month I had three major things I worked on at my work term at NCR. Two were related to development and the other was related to testing. This post will describe in detail what I have been working on in May and what I have learned so far.

Set up my development environment

My first week and a half of this coop work term at NCR consisted of setting up my development environment. Through setting up my environment I began to learn how use several new tools. These tools include maven, myeclipse10, svn repositories, Microsoft SQL Server Express and GlassFish. I used MS SQL Server Express last summer, but I didn’t gain experience in the setup process. Setting up my development environment proved to be a complicated task. I ran into a lot of issues, but I learned a lot about how Passport is set up and what to do when problems do occur.

Oracle Unit Test Failures

I was assigned a task to fix some problems with the nightly oracle unit tests. About 200 unit tests had been failing because of sequence numbers being hard-coded into the unit tests. My job was to figure out a way to reset the sequence numbers in Oracle as part of the unit test setup. This way each unit test that was run would start with a completely clean database, so we would not have to go into each unit test and fix the hard-coded sequences. The unit test setup already cleaned the database, but the sequences are not automatically cleared in an Oracle database. Through my investigation into the problem I found two different ways to reset the sequences:

DROP the sequence and then CREATE it again

Change the way the sequences are originally created in the database to include a MINVALUE. Then to reset the sequences you can do the following:

SELECT the current value

Reset the sequence with the negative value of the current value as the increment

SELECT nextval so that the negative increment takes effect

ALTER with +1 as the increment

 I found that the best way to reset the sequences was to drop them and then recreate them. This is because it is simpler and doesn’t require changing the way the sequences are originally created, which would require lots of regression testing to ensure nothing broke. I have not finished writing the code or testing the code for this improvement yet but it should be done early in June.

Tested New Driver Check Mechanism

The final major thing I did this month was test the new driver check feature. I wrote, executed and demoed test cases that tested when a user would be contacted to download a scanner driver. This increased my understanding of Passport and also refreshed my test case writing ability from last summer. This also increased my knowledge of HP Quality Center, which is where the test team writes and executes their test cases. This assignment also taught me how to deploy builds on a WebSphere environment, a skill I didn’t get to learn last summer. Learning to deploy builds introduced me to a new tool, BeyondCompare, which helps when copying the configurations from the old build over to the new build.

In June I am really looking forward to completing the fixes for the Oracle Unit Test Failures as well as regression testing the new driver check mechanism.