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People often equate load testing with performance testing. Load testing is seen as a way of answering the question “How fast does the system respond?” This view then tends to mean that load testing is seen as an end of project activity. Only at the end of development will we have the final implementation for performance testing and so we can confirm only then that it performs quickly enough in the real world and smoothly transition into live service.

Wrong approach! This is extremely risky and misses out on the many benefits of starting load testing early and applying it throughout the project. With this approach does the system sail through load testing and transition smoothly into service? Occasionally yes. But more frequently the system starts to fail as load starts to be applied, even with small increases in volume.. For the first time there are concurrent demands on the system and arbitration over resources is required. Paths through code that have never been executed are triggered, situations arise that nobody really thought through. Transactions fail. Systems crash. After these problems are fixed and more load is applied in a test, we then encounter problems like resource exhaustion, buffer overflows, timeouts and inconsistent behaviour. The real work needed to turn a functional pre-production system into a robust solution has only just begun.

Examples abound of products that failed when load testing started and, after lots of effort, stress and expenditure, have been shelved. Worse still are the ones that missed load testing altogether and failed dramatically during live operation. An internet portal developer recently stopped development of a new service, one that had completed functional development, when load testing revealed fundamental structural problems and inefficient coding which led to a poorly performing and unstable system.

So what should you do to avoid these risks? We all know it is better to find faults early when they cost far less to fix yet load testing is still left until as late as possible. The types of faults it finds frequently need architectural changes and major rewrites which are by then are hugely expensive to implement. The answer is that you should start early. Different forms of load testing should be repeatedly applied throughout the project to identify problems early and to check that the system is not going off track.

This is a natural extension of the practice of test led development. Test led development, where automated tests are written first and code must pass these tests as it is developed, offers major benefits. However, in its current form, the focus of this testing is on functionality. As it evolves the functional status of the software is always known and hence manageable, functional faults are nipped in the bud avoiding high cost fixes, the functional risk is greatly reduced. Not so other risks. If a project performs early and continuous load testing it gets much wider and comprehensive risk reduction. To make this effective:

1. Study the system and perform a risk analysis to help to order the threats to the system, this will help you to prioritise load testing activities.
2. Collect data to allow comparison of the efficiency of different builds. This permits monitoring of the long term trend, “Is the system using more and more processor time to do the same work?” This data can be used to predict resource requirements at different levels of demand and so support scalability predictions.
3. Execute tests that aim to assess the behaviour of the system and to trigger faults under load. Use workloads that simulate expected patterns of demand to observe the aggregate behaviour of the system. Use specially targeted extreme workloads to probe the vulnerabilities of the system.
4. Include the full spectrum of load tests into the test suite. This means performance testing with typical and busy period work loads; stress testing to check both atypical demand spikes and resource exhaustion impacts; endurance testing that uses both operational period and cumulative operation tests; reliability testing that runs lots of transactions and then checks whether occasional transactions fail; concurrency testing of two users working on the same account at the same time.
5. Design measurement activities as scientists would design an experiment, design them to provide data that can be analysed. Sample the system under different steady state workloads to provide multiple data sets to support interpolation. Chose the workloads to permit estimation of the resource costs for each transaction type.
6. Target the middleware first with generic activities and evolve the suite as functionality is developed. Start early and then test each incremental release of the system, firstly with the previous suite and then with a modified suite that addresses new functionality.
7. Invest the time and resources to work at a representative scale. Maybe the test bed can’t be full scale but it should not be two orders of magnitude smaller than the intended system. Be smart and innovative to use resources effectively to provide an appropriate scale test bed. The costs that will be incurred if this is not done will far exceed the cost of providing the test bed.
8. Don’t delay; test an increment as soon as possible. Don’t skip one or you’ll end up skipping them all. Compare the measurements and behaviour with the previous one, is it better or worse?
9. Provide a background load for functional testing. Features that work offload may fail when the system has other things to think about.
10. Consider occasional events such as server failures and reconfiguration of the system. Do these need to be tested under load?

In conclusion, you need to incorporate load testing throughout the development process. Leaving load testing until the final run in to live service is a recipe for disaster. If this became common practice then a lot more applications and systems that work would be delivered on time and to budget.

© Acutest Ltd 2005 – http://www.acutest.co.uk

M Trellis is an experienced consultant working in performance testing, scalability testing and load testing. He is a principal consultant with Acutest, an independent testing consultancy. For further information visit: www.acutest.co.uk or www.acutest.co.uk/performance-testing.html

A modern job search campaign is by nature quite intricate. While the web has offered a variety of new channels, it also creates increased competition for choice jobs and possible challenges for job hunters.

Job hunting needs to be thought of as a personal, highly directed marketing operation where you are the product. Your resume is an ad. Your extended network of contacts is your source for information.

So where does the net fit in? At AA-Careers, we recently posted a job on a popular job site and got 600 plus applications in a calendar week. For a single opening. That’s increased competition for job openings.

Had the right person contacted us before we ran the ad, they could have landed the job before running in to all that competition. How? By knowing an employee at our company who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone was aware of the job for at least 9 days before it was posted. Who in your network might know of a job that’s coming available soon?

Be sure to check your cover letter and resume carefully! When we did an analysis of the 650 resumes, we found a large number of errors. 63% of the applicants were easily taken out with a fast triage process. How? The same way any HR professional would. By eliminating resumes where the objective didn’t match our position description. By rejecting prospects whose cover letters gave us grounds not to hire them, like "I know I’m overqualified but I really need a job". By eliminating job hunters whose documents that didn’t open properly. And by passing over job hunters who didn’t trouble to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.

So the great news is that job boards give you a feel of what companies are hiring, and for what kinds of positions. But once those positions are posted, the competition is intense. You can still try, if you have a well thought out resume, designed to appeal directly and clearly to the recruiter. And if you have practiced interviewing – so you don’t stumble at a critical point.

Another downside to be aware of is how quickly you can be looked up on the internet. As we Googled several candidates, we ran into some Facebook comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing crazy, but enough to sway our thoughts about who to hire.

AA-Careers provides a encompassing set of services for Bay Area job seekers, providing our clients a personal career consultant, a managed job hunting campaign, modern tools like a personal website, video, highly targeted resume, and much more. Let us know if we can help you.

Be careful out there, and good hunting!

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IBM Lotus Notes with Domino email server is traditional document workflow management solution for large corporate business, where you need audit trail on approval cycle and decision making. Microsoft Business Solutions CRM is very cost efficient solution to automate sales process. It might be surprising, but we see good strata of clients who are willing to deploy and integrate both systems: MS CRM and Lotus Domino. In our opinion these clients are balancing ERP platform risks and trying to protect and deploy investments into Lotus licenses, while deploying new and already leading CRM solution – Microsoft CRM. In this small article we’ll give you the integration example – European division of one of the well known machinery manufacturer dealership network.

• Custom Lotus Database. In our case client had custom database, which was designed back in the beginning of 1990th. Some dealers had Lotus Notes Domino 4.0 and some of them had 6.0 and 6.5. Technical excurse – in Lotus Notes Domino 6.0 you can use Java 2 agents, and it seems to be platform independent (Microsoft Windows Server, IBM AS/400). To synch all the dealerships – the decision was made to upgrade across the network to Lotus Notes Domino 6.0 (to be a bit conservative)

• Domino Messaging. Obviously you have to have just one email server assigned to your url domain, and as traditionally Lotus Domino was the email server – the replacement with Microsoft Exchange 2003 (which is natural choice if you purchase Microsoft CRM) was not an option. With Alba Spectrum Technologies MS CMR Lotus Notes Domino connector you can switch email messaging to Lotus Domino

• Lotus & MS CRM events synchronization. IBM and Microsoft software designers designed CRM & Lotus events differently. Second phase of the project implementation will synchronize appointments, calendar events, etc. between Lotus and MS CRM.

• MS CRM ODBC lookups to Lotus database. As the second phase we plan to implement lookups from MS CRM Account to cases with custom fields and Lotus notes lookup tab. This tab will be realized as web .net application, integrated into MS CRM web interface. This web application will have machine serial number, warranty & service info. As you probably know in MS CRM 3.0 you can deploy custom table in link it to MS CRM object as one-to-many. The most important is that it will be synchronized by MS Outlook and will allow you as a salesperson to work offline.

You can always have us help you with MS CRM customization, implementation, support & MS CRM SDK data conversion. Give us a call: 866.528.0577 or 1.630.961.598, help@albaspectrum.com

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#5 All your hardware components like Printers, PCs etc come under various maintenance contracts with different maintenance vendors. Do you know which batch of PCs are under warranty & for what number of PCs is the warranty about to expire (so that you can plan for an AMC)? Can you split up & tell how much AMC charges do you pay for each hardware component & how much for each vendor? Can you re-calculate the costs if an AMC with a vendor is to be renewed?

#4 Typically your company gets hardware parts and accessories from different vendors. Is your purchasing done centrally? Can you get the information of all vendors & the products they offer on a single click? Can you compare prices & other information before placing an order? Can you modify a purchase order (PO), have a revision history & email the vendor the updated PO? Can you track POs till all the items mentioned in a PO arrive?

#3 You might have entered into contracts with various vendors. Do you maintain & keep track of all your maintenance & support contracts in one place? How about having soft copies of actual contracts that are available to you through a web browser and is always a single click away?

#2 Your company has a variety of hardware like PCs, printers, scanners, OHPs etc and a plethora of software ranging from MS Office to Adobe Photoshop (all of various versions). Are you still using spreadsheets & manually tracking all these assets? Can you tell whether all the software you have comply with licensing? Can you tell how many of these hardware components & software copies are available with you at any instant? Can you tell how much of these are under utilized or not utilized at all?

#1 Your employees come up with different service requests ranging from “Not able to print from my PC” to “Cannot send mail”. How do you ensure that such requests are taken care of by your support staff, that too efficiently? How do you ensure none of the requests fall through the cracks? Is there a Knowledge Base which can offer self-help for the employees? How do you keep track a high volume of requests?

AdventNet’s ServiceDesk Plus offers to solve all the above & has much more to offer. The product is available at a very affordable price starting at $495 (there’s a Free Edition too) backed by a company that has set a benchmark for customer care & support. For further information, mail to sales@adventnet.com or visit our website http://www.servicedeskplus.com

Natarajan Aravind
Market Analyst
AdventNet,Inc.
http://www.servicedeskplus.com

Researchers can now breathe easy. Research work and methods have become efficient and non-cumbersome with the development of survey software. The first step to any research is data collection, and one of the methods of data collection is conducting surveys. For a survey on any topic, a good number of responses are required to analyze data meaningfully. Here arises the problem of finding and contacting the appropriate number and kind of people who would agree to take part. It is indeed tedious, expensive and time-consuming to reach people and conduct surveys. The survey software has solved these problems in a blink, and further development of online survey software has beaten all forms of survey methods.

The online survey software takes just a few minutes to launch, does not need to be downloaded and is interactive to respondents as well. All one needs to do is use the survey wizard in the web browser and get started. The first step to build a survey is to select from the given templates, where questions and answer choices can be selected. Questions can be single, multiple response, matrix type or open ended. An entirely new survey design can be created without any programming skills. A ‘branching’ option is available, where respondents are asked or skipped questions depending on the previous answers they give.

Once a survey is created, a ‘publish survey’ link is available to distribute it as a web link through emails and is also automatically hosted on the vendor’s website. Results are automatically collected and analyzed. Data can also be exported into other programs for analysis.

Vendors offer facilities for customization, such as adding company logos, graphics and images, and changing the background, fonts and colors. Options are also available for running multiple online surveys at a time. Online surveys guarantee that important questions are not left unanswered before the survey is submitted. Instant email invitations can be sent directly from the server using the flexible email tool. Options are also available to limit the number of respondents and prevent them from taking the survey more than once. Passwords can be given to respondents in invitation-only online surveys.

The online survey software is available at yearly subscriptions from many vendors. Some provide the options of starter and professional versions. Starter versions are free with limited features and ideal for budding entrepreneurs or students, whereas professional versions are paid and include all features possible.

The online survey method has many clear benefits over other methods of surveying. But as simple and easy it may sound, it also can have certain limitations. For instance, this method may not give a representative sample, as everybody does not have access to a PC and the internet. In some cases, online survey software should be used to complement other methods, and not as a total replacement of conventional methods.

Survey Software provides detailed information on Survey Software, Online Survey Software, Email Survey Software, Free Survey Software and more. Survey Software is affiliated with Tax Preparation Software.

Spyware is a term that has become quite common to hear.

The term spyware refers to a broad category of malicious software designed to intercept or take partial control of a computer’s operation without the “known” consent of that machine’s owner or user. Spyware is as a term is being used quite loosely and includes a number of different programs. The thing they all have in common as spyware, is that they monitor the computer and/or user and share information with a third party. With or without the consent of the computer’s owner.

Semi spyware has become widely used and they manifest themselves as software, plugins or help files to other programs you want or need, and if you accept their policies and term of usage, you also accept the fact that these semi spyware programs will be installed and used.

They are normally not directly malicious as the secret spyware, but they do send out information from your computer to a third party. Most commonly some kind of habit tracing or statistics of surfing or similar. In most cases the information is completely anonymous and do not pose any kind of threat to you as an individual.

Spyware – a virus or not?

Spyware differs from viruses and worms in that it does not usually self-replicate. Like many recent viruses, however, spyware – by design – exploits infected computers for commercial gain.

Typical tactics furthering this goal include delivery of unsolicited pop-up advertisements; theft of personal information (including financial information such as credit card numbers); monitoring of Web-browsing activity for marketing purposes; or routing of HTTP requests to advertising sites.

These things are very hard to keep track of and know if a spyware is alive in your computer or if pop ups and other changes in your surfing programs behaviour should occur.

The only reliable way to know if an evil spyware is living and thriving inside your computer, is to install and use a good spyware removal program.

How does spyware infect?

Spyware does not spread like a computer virus or worm. Instead, spyware installs on your computer through deception or exploitation of software vulnerabilities.

Spyware Trojan horse!

A Trojan horse, by definition, smuggles in something dangerous in the guise of something desirable. So spyware often hide as an add on to some other program you really want.

Bundled Spyware

Spyware can also come bundled with shareware or other downloadable software, as well as music CDs. The user downloads a program (for instance, a music program or a file-trading utility) and installs it, and the installer additionally installs the spyware. Although the desirable software itself may do no harm, the bundled spyware does.

Manipulating Security Features

Another way of distributing spyware involves tricking users by manipulating security features designed to prevent unwanted installations. Internet browsers like Internet Explorer for example are easy targets t this method. Everybody has them and use them online almost daily. The way you protect yourself against this, is to always keep your operating system up to date when it comes to security updates.

Use Microsoft Update regularly (and often).

Examples of Spyware

As with computer viruses, researchers give names to spyware programs which frequently do not relate to any names that the spyware-writers use. Researchers may group programs into “families” based not on shared program code, but on common behaviours, or by “following the money” or apparent financial or business connections.

For instance, a number of the spyware programs distributed by Claria are collectively known as “Gator”. Likewise, programs which are frequently installed together may be described as parts of the same spyware package, even if they function separately.

It is also important to know that different anti spyware program creators and big antivirus software creators may have different names for the save spyware. This can cause you to believe that you have 2 or more spyware products installed when you actually only have one, but mentioned with different names.

* CoolWebSearch, a group of programs, installs through the exploitation of Internet Explorer vulnerabilities. The programs direct traffic to advertisements on Web sites including coolwebsearch. To make this happen, they display pop-up ads, rewrite search engine results, and alter the infected computer’s hosts file to direct DNS lookups to these sites.

* Internet Optimizer, also known as DyFuCa, redirects Internet Explorer error pages to advertising. When users follow a broken link or enter an erroneous URL, they see a page of advertisements. However, because password-protected Web sites (HTTP Basic authentication) use the same mechanism as HTTP errors, Internet Optimizer makes it impossible for the user to access password-protected sites.

* 180 Solutions transmits extensive information to advertisers about the Web sites which users visit. It also alters HTTP requests for affiliate advertisements linked from a Web site, so that the advertisements make unearned profit for the 180 Solutions company. It opens pop-up ads that cover over the Web sites of competing companies.

Toolbars from any other then the big players like Google, Yahoo, Msn and similar very often contains spyware to some degree today.

And even the big guns have started to incorporate “spyware like” statistics gather from their toolbars. They do tell you about them, and ask for your permission to install or active these routines. But they often do it in such a convoluted way, no one actually understand it.

So start out the day by cleaning your computer and then working. Make sure you have a restful safe day, download, scan and clean your computer from any spyware today …

Kenth “The Designer” Nasstrom writes about spyware, adware and other non wanted software. You should find out how to remove spyware and adware from your computer now and reduce the risks.