As the previous post might have suggested, I downloaded tomorrow’s edition of SD Times today and figured I should actually read the last three month’s worth.

Unfortunately, they have put up a login-wall to the various issues so direct links are out, but here is the backissue link.

October 1, 2008

  • LDRA‘s operations director Ian Hennell – By providing customers with a comprehensive set of tools for requirements traceability through to unit testing, LDRA’s tool suite portfolio takes developers much closer to the goal of zero-defect software development.. Aside from zeo-defect software being a myth, they look like they like have some interesting tools that look like they are aimed at the CMMi crowd. Their tools appear to also be for C/C++ and Ada which is an area that seems to get overlooked these days.
  • ReplayEngine seems like a pretty cool debugging environment by letting you step through execution forwards or backwards.

October 15, 2008

  • Rational AppScan Build Edition embeds Web application security testing into build management in order to automate the security test function. About time.
  • The article Lost in Translation is ok I guess and has lots of quotes from big companies about managing the gap between what the customer wants and the developers deliver. It’s best point I think is made by BJ Rollison: one leading cause may be that many companies overload developers and testers with the added responsibility — and burden — of pretending to understand the customer’s needs as well as the marketing people or program managers [do].. Talking to customers and getting accurate requirements from them is a black magic skill a lot of developers (and testers) lack.
  • David Linthicum lists the traits of a good SOA architect in his column, but I think they apply to any architect or senior role (including tester)
    • Can speak the language of business and IT
    • Understand how to work with complex technologies in challenging environments
    • Can drive toward a strategy through effective tactical implementations
    • Are experts in the available SOA technologies and in SOA best practices
    • Can work effectively with the resources they are given

November 1, 2008

  • SAFECode (The Software Assurance Forum for Excellence in Code) has two papers available on their site on Software Assurance: An Overview of Current Industry Best Practices and Fundamental Practices for Secure Software Development which might be interesting reading if I didn’t have a huge list of things already.
  • Is it just me or is ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) the next hot buzzword? Of course, if you rely on a single vendor / toolset for your entire lifecyle you lose the ability to use the tools that best solve your specific needs and not just the ones that will solve most of most people’s problems.

November 15, 2008
Nothing really of note except this almost throw-away blurb: IBM has created Rational Test Lab Manager, a software product that helps monitor energy use in a business. IBM executives said Rational Test Lab Manager configures and manages the use of physical and virtual machines to conserve energy by using analytics and reporting from Telelogic System Architect. Someone from IBM should contact me to integrate a lab’s carbon footprint into their application next. 🙂

December 1, 2008

  • I didn’t have a name or a reference for the standard that avionics software is measured against. Now I do: DO-178B, Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification.
  • The feature article, Agile for a New Age is about scaling Agile techniques to enterprise levels and might be interesting to people who have been told they must make their teams ‘Agile’ but have more than 5 people working for them that are geographically dispersed.

December 15, 2008
For Java folks with large legacy code bases (in the Michael Feathers style; so no unit tests), Pillar Technologies wants to help with their Verde product. It will record what the VM is doing and save that as unit tests. Could be pretty trick.