Work Term Update-August 2016

Edit Deposit Changes

The month of August was busy. My first task was to modify CMD Server so that we can update the expected amount of a deposit from the mobile app. This was one of the moments where I realized just how much I had learned this semester. This task was much easier then a similar task was earlier in the semester.

New API Call 

I also worked on a new API call in CMD server. This was the first time I had added anything completely new to the server. I liked how I was able to apply my knowledge from earlier in the semester to make this task easier.

Wrapping up my last work term

During my last week at NCR I wrapped up all my tasks and gave lots of knowledge transfer sessions in order to prepare for my departure. 

This semester was by far my favourite. I was given so many opportunities and I learned so much. I became a better developer and tester and I am so thankful for my co-workers who helped make that happen.  

Work Term Update-July 2016

Regression Testing

The month of July involved another round of regression testing. During this round of regression I tested reports while running our system in a Linux environment. I wrote many documents for other testers since I had some knowledge about certain features that not everyone knew. I also gave knowledge transfer sessions to members of the testing team. I also tested the different languages we offer and updated some of our out of date test cases.

Work Term Update-June 2016

Bug Fixes

During the month of June I made several bug fixes. This was a great learning experience. I learned how to ask better questions to the testers so that I could get to the root of the problem faster, I also learned how to narrow down the location of the bug in the code faster.

Item Reclassification in CMD

The item reclassification in CMD was much more involved than my team first anticipated. Once we had the feature implemented we realized that we also needed to bring over more features from the web application in order for item reclassification to work seamlessly. I made changes on both the server side and the client side.

Work Term Update-May 2016

I worked on three things during the month of May

CMD Reclassification

I worked on the CMD Server to allow items to be reclassified. This was a really fun experience. I really enjoyed the learning that took place in changing the REST API.

CMD Tablet UI Work

This month I also got to make some changes to the CMD Client so that we can support tablets in addition to phones. This was my first experience with Angular JS and it was really enjoyable. This experience also helped me with the bug fixes I did this month.

Bug Fixes

I also made many bug fixes this month. I learned a lot and became better at narrowing down the root cause of issues.

Work Term Update-April 2016

The whole month of April was spent working on a request for a customer. We had a high performance report but it was missing some information included in one of our other reports. I added the missing information and did some code refactoring during this time. This was a challenging month but a really great learning experience. I learned how to debug issues more effectively and explain features more clearly. A lot of issues from this month were due to unclear explanations I had given.

Work Term Update-March 2016

Regression Testing

Most of the month of March was spent doing regression testing in preparation for the release. I executed test cases in HP Quality Center and also performed French, Spanish and Portuguese testing. It was a busy month but it was fun learning about different features as I tested them. This time the team focused on ensuring features were understood. Instead of just automatically raising a bug we were encouraged to talk to developers and business analysts to ensure that we understood the feature correctly. A lot of unnecessary bugs were prevented by ensuring the requirements were understood.

Work Term Update-February 2016

Authentication Adapter Work

During the month of February I mainly worked on an authentication adapter for CMD Server. There were three main components that I worked on.

Mock

Since we didn't have an authentication system running to test our adapter it was necessary to create a mock authentication service that would behave in the same way as the authentication system. We already had a mock that was working and that the testers knew how to use so I created one that behaved the same way for this authentication system.

Basically a user would specify their username like this
au:50,false,ENROLL,SUCCESS,1200,

the au indicates that the user should be authenticated
50 indicates the number of days left until their password expires
false indicates whether or not they want to change their password
ENROLL indicates that they need to be enrolled in security questions
SUCCESS indicates that the operation should be successful
1200 is the error code (in this case 1200 means successful)

Change Password & Forgot Password

In addition to the mock I worked on functionality for the change password and forgot password operations.

Work Term Update-January 2016

Development Environment Setup

My work term began with setting up my development environment. This work term I worked both on the passport web application and the commercial mobile deposit (CMD) mobile application. It was a nice challenge setting up my development environment for CMD. CMD consists of a server and a client. The server is written in Java and the client is written in angular JS.

Story Planning

During the month of January I also participated in Story Planning for the next release. It was very interesting starting a coop term at the begining of a release instead of coming in during the middle of the release. I really gained an appreciation for how much planning goes into the release. We created the stories and then sized them using story points.

Work Term Update - June 2015

June started off with some major excitement! I got married and took a honeymoon in Costa Rica! Then it was back to work where I had many different roles throughout the month.

Sales Server

I was put in charge of the sales server for a week. It was an interesting and very stressful experience. I have a lot of respect for the person who regularly keeps the sales server up and running. I learned how to debug issues quickly and also how a complex system is setup compared to our test environments.

Performance Testing Scripts

In the month of June I also worked on adjusting the performance testing scripts so that they would work in our environment. I learned a lot about how JMeter works and how to resolve issues with scripts faster.

Regression

I also executed a lot of test cases during our regular regression cycle. I really enjoy regression testing and I was happy to be able to help out when needed.

July's focus will mainly be on performance testing, and I am really looking forward to learning about debugging performance issues.

Work Term Update-May 2015

May was a month where I moved between teams a lot. I mainly switched between CxP testing and Performance testing. Here is what I did this month:

Performance Testing

I started running the performance tests for the different segments of the product. I learned a lot about the different features of JMeter. I also started increasing my knowledge of databases. I am getting more and more comfortable with them. I spent a short amount of time trying to fix one of the scripts that was no longer working but I didn't have much time to dedicate to it so I will have to continue working on it in June. 

CxP Testing

I was asked to help test the second factor authentication that had undergone some major changes this quarter. I really enjoy testing so I was happy to help out. I found CxP very interesting because it was a part of the product I have never really tested thoroughly before. I created test cases and documented them using HP Quality Center and I was asked to perform some demos as a review before we could sign off and say the feature was done. All in all it was a really good learning experience.

These two tasks took up all of my time in May. I'm looking forward to being a part of the regression test team in June and working more on the performance testing.

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.