Intepreting Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch

Once again I am giving a link to a very good article that has been posted in CIglobal blog


Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta2 was released in March. LightSwitch is a new addition to the Visual Studio family. LightSwitch helps you solve specific business needs by enabling you to quickly create professional-quality business applications, regardless of your development skills. The technology is designed to make building line of business applications easier through pre-built templates and custom business data types with the ability to deploy to the desktop, the web and the cloud.


For further read, here is the link:


http://ciglobal.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/microsoft-visual-studio-lightswitch/

Test Automation

Here is the link to our corporate blog which talks about Test automation using QTP where our team is sharing some code snippets too as part of the knowledge share.


http://ciglobal.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/qtp-code-snippets-part-1/

Automation Framework for Software products

Here is the extract from Ramya' blog on Software Automation Framework, which is one focus area for CI for its clients.

http://ciglobal.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/building-test-automation-famework/

Extensive software testing before the product hits the market is essential for any company to maintain its brand and position among clients and partners. With the increasing adoption of agile methodologies, frequent number of revisions makes testing more sophisticated over time and becomes a larger proposition as the product nears completion. Reusable test automation frameworks coupled with test automation tools are key to shrink test cycle times. Such frameworks ensure consistency of testing, maximize re-usability and provide an outline of overall test structure.




Frameworks are built at each level of testing. Before building a test automation framework, detailed analysis for the need for automation based on the scope in order to define the expectant results, is necessary. In this newsletter, the focus is on defining the test automation / framework objectives and looking at some of the best practices towards choosing the best tools or test automation frameworks for the project at hand.



Define automation framework / objective – Designing a framework for test management including test design, automation, execution, test report management and test data generation. The framework should be easy to use, encourage re-usability, make maintainability easy and reduce the total execution time.

Identify testing scope – Based on the nature of product under test, scope for the framework is defined. The need for automation for the product is also analyzed.

Choosing the tool – Based on the scope and type of testing involved, feature checklist for the shortlisted tools is prepared while ensuring that the automation objectives are met.

Based on the functional comparison of the tools the best suited tool can be chosen to architect the framework. The tool selection and framework design pave the path towards test automation. Implementation (and the team that does the implementation) is the key towards successful test automation. CI has leveraged its years of product testing experience, its expertise on automation tools and created an easy to use automation framework.



(Reference: Software Test Automation Book by Mark Fewster and Dorothy Graham)

Product Engineening

For readers' sake I am posting the link to the Part II of getting your applicaion ipv6 ready posted by Ramya

http://ciglobal.wordpress.com/2010/11/10/getting-your-application-ipv6-ready-part-2/

getting your application ready for ipv-6

Here is another interesting post on ISVs from Ramya

http://ciglobal.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/getting-your-application-ipv6-ready/

Saas Enablement & ISVs key challenges

I am linking the post about SaaS enablement and the ISV challenges posted by Ramya from CI for the readers benefit

http://ciglobal.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/saas-enablement-isvs-key-challenges/

Ajax frameworks - contd

In this post, I am going to talk about the 3 major framework created by the big Corporations - Microsoft, Google and Adobe - each offering their own version to enable their Evangelists and followers to continue to use their technology. I am reproducing below the writeups from each of these corporates - my aim is to provide a single page where all the information is available.

Google Web Toolkit (GWT)

GWT promoted by Google looks at allowing developers to quickly build and maintain complex yet highly performing JavaScript front-end applications in the Java programming language.

How Google Web Toolkit works

With Google Web Toolkit (GWT), you write your AJAX front-end in the Java programming language which GWT then cross-compiles into optimized JavaScript that automatically works across all major browsers. During development, you can iterate quickly in the same "edit - refresh - view" cycle you're accustomed to with JavaScript, with the added benefit of being able to debug and step through your Java code line by line. When you're ready to deploy, GWT compiles your Java source code into optimized, standalone JavaScript files. Easily build one widget for an existing web page or an entire application using Google Web Toolkit.

ASP.NET AJAX from Microsoft

ASP.NET AJAX is a free framework for quickly creating efficient and interactive Web applications that work across all popular browsers.

ASP.NET AJAX is built-into ASP.NET 3.5. It is also available as a separate download for ASP.NET 2.0. With ASP.NET AJAX you can:

• Create next-generation interfaces with reusable AJAX components.
• Enhance existing pages using powerful AJAX controls with support for all modern browsers.
• Access remote services and data from the browser without tons of complicated script.
• Take advantage of the improved efficiency and ease of use in Visual Studio 2008, with its built-in support for ASP.NET AJAX, improved JavaScript support, and a new Web page designer interface.

What is ASP.NET AJAX?

ASP.NET AJAX refers to new components in ASP.NET that allow for building rich AJAX styled web applications using the design patterns familiar to ASP.NET developers. ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 was available as a separate add-on for ASP.NET 2.0. With the release of ASP.NET 3.5, the AJAX components have been integrated into ASP.NET (no separate download required). AJAX components in ASP.NET integrate cross-browser script libraries with the ASP.NET server side Web application framework. This integrated architecture empowers developers to rapidly create pages with sophisticated, responsive user interfaces and more efficient client-server communication by simply adding a few server controls to their pages.
It allows developers to choose their preferred method of AJAX development, whether it is server-side programming, client-side programming, or a combination of both.

Server-side AJAX Programming
Developers familiar with ASP.NET's server-side programming model can add AJAX functionality using the familiar server controls, and the convenient drag and drop gestures. For example, partial update functionality can be added to ASP.NET applications by wrapping sections of their websites in the AJAX server control 'UpdatePanel', which enables the server controls to update without a post back. This is as simple as AJAX programming gets. Developers don't have to learn about the underlying scripting or browser technologies. Based on the ASP.NET server side design patterns, developers continue to get key advantages such as a clean declarative model of specifying web page UI, an event-driven programming model, and a rich set of APIs from the .NET Framework.

Client-side AJAX Programming

Developers with a basic understanding of JavaScript can leverage client-side AJAX framework, that allows building client centric AJAX applications. For example, the client AJAX Framework allows developers to build rich client side components and controls and make calls to remote servers, including web services and then updating the Web page with the response. The response can be an HTML snippet or an XML document, allowing for simple or extensive updates to the Web page. The Client side AJAX Framework works well with ASP.NET. The ASP.NET team also ships this framework independently as Microsoft AJAX Library. Since this framework is not tightly coupled with ASP.NET, it can be used with other server side technologies as well such as PHP and Cold Fusion.

ASP.NET AJAX Programming

ASP.NET AJAX shines in its ability to combine the best of server-side and client-side AJAX programming, providing Web applications with a user experience similar to the richness of traditional desktop applications. Watch some of the following videos to learn how simple it is to get started with ASP.NET AJAX programming.

Spry framework for Ajax from Adobe

The Spry framework for Ajax is a JavaScript library that provides easy-to-use yet powerful Ajax functionality that allows designers to build pages that provide a richer experience for their users. It is designed to take the complexity out of Ajax and allow designers to easily create Web 2.0 pages.

The Spry framework is a way to incorporate XML, JSON or HTML data into pages using HTML, CSS, and a minimal amount of JavaScript, without the need for refreshing the entire page. Spry also provides easy to build and style widgets, providing advanced page elements for end users. The Spry framework is HTML-centric, and easy to implement for users with basic knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The framework was designed such that the markup is simple and the JavaScript is minimal. The Spry framework can be used by anyone who is authoring for the web in their tool of choice.

Happy programming viewers.