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Get Fit

Fit is a framework that helps the business get involved in specifying the requirements that end up being the testing.  When the business can use Word and Excel to generate their own test cases, connected to a simple fixture and can be run by developers, customers and managers on demand, the potential for something great arises.

Encouraging the business to get involved at an early stage means that the business refine their requirements further.

Fit Tests can tell us useful things.  Where a FIT test fails, its an indicator that we need more code to cover business requirements.

Fit complements xUnit, the fixtures are similar but the test data, state and structure is all defined in the business supplied doco’s.  The fixtures are simply glue from these documents to the tests.

Automating Business Value with FIT and Fitnesse from InfoQ

Fit: Framework for Integrated Test

And when regular XP wont do, get Industrial XP.  Nothing to do with FIT, just a site mentioned in the first link.

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Now for something Obvious

In this presentation about FIT, the presenter, David, takes a look at the meaning of the term ‘the build is broken’.  What it is now compared to 10 years ago.  He states that as technologists we should be proud that we’ve evolved the meaning from the literal code broke, won’t compile, to now a meaning saying that the tests are broken. 

Given that in Eclipse, I’m told in almost realtime where compilation errors occur as I write them, and how this acheives high build success rate, I wonder if Eclipse can precompile and debug JUnit tests so that as we are changing code that is used in a test class, the test runs and the results are fed back in almost realtime, allowing us to pickup on even more potential hazards.

Lots of pitfalls for the cynical but its so crazy it just may work.

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The Credit Card Gateway for organisations who don’t use Credit Card so much.

Problem:

  • Small organisation takes credit card transactions using a manual process.
  • Many of these transactions are Diners and Amex.
  • Paypal Website Payments Standard only takes Visa and Mastercard.

Options:

  • Get a Internet Merchant Account with bank, a gateway provider and process as required.  Cons: Expensive, Two suppliers, two sets of fees before getting your cut.  Pros: Fast, Instant, Dont have to hold onto cc details.  Can take Amex and Diners.
  • Find a much cheaper MOTO (Mail order Telephone order) or CNP (card not present) merchant account solution with a bank and either:
    • get an SSL cert, allow people to provide details online, but process them manually.
    • Use a slightly more expensive man in the middle to do the same thing (securely get your cc details via a nice nice api).  Still cheaper than a Internet Merchant account, no per transaction fee or cut.
    • Pros: Validate transactions before you process.  Cheaper, esp to take Amex and Diners.  Cons: Still have to automate.
  • Find an alternate gateway/merchant/secure page supplier that takes Amex and Diners.  This page provides a comparison on some services but it is a little dated.
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Comparison of Some Online Services

Service Accepts AMEX & Diners Setup Fee Annual Fee Transaction Fee Chargebacks Must be registered user of their site in order to pay Needs seperate gateway Redirect to their SSL page Other Features
Moneybookers y $0 $0 8% Absorbed by them! yes no y  
WorldDirect (Special Offer) y $0
Save $200		 $430 3.95%, normally 4.5% 

Settlement: Settlement in AUD for a AU bank account is AUD 7.00.  Min Settlement is $230

 $30 fee incurred by you per chargeback! no no y Free Internet Terminal to make one off transactions taken via fax, post worth $140.
Free Fraud protection worth 16c per transaction.
eWAY yes but merchant accounts need to be set up individually.  Diners $99, AMEX special offer $50 $0 $199 first year
$349 subsequent years		 .50c ??? no yes optional
offer xml interface if you have ssl cert ($19 per yr)		 Many others
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Download Vista 32 and 64 bit

So did your OEM vista didn’t come with Vista install media?  Never fear, you can obtain media for free from these sources.

Some claim that if you use your OEM license (say sticker off the bottom of your laptop with Vista Ult 32bit) to do an install, it might not accept, but its worth trying.  The main benefit will be to do a repair install, something you can’t do when you only have OEM image CD’s.

There are whispers that if you have Vista Ultimate 32bit license, you can install 64bit version with the same key but on retail media, not if you have OEM license.

References:

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/08/windows-vista-free-direct-download-link/

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/12/22/64-bit-x64-windows-vista-official-direct-download-links/

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/10/how-to-make-vista-bootable-dvd-with-wim-downloaded-files/

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Get Your Command Line Groove On

Commonly forgotten Windows DOS prompt shortcuts

Key What it Does
F1 Fills in the letter from last command you entered, one letter at a time.  Useful for fixing a typo on a command you just entered. 

For example, if I enter cd "My Docements" which wont work, I can then press F1 10 times (or hold it down) to get cd "My Doc then press the u to correct the typo.  Then hold F1 to get the remaining characters of the last command.  cd "My Documents"
F2 Prompts the user for a letter and fills in the last command up to the letter you entered.  This saves  you holding down the F1 key to get to the dodgy letter.

Using the last example again, if I press F2 then press e, the line buffer is filled to cd "My Doc.  You can then enter u and then press F2 followed by " to get to the rest of the entry.  cd "My Documents"
F3 Fill last command from current cursor position to the end of the line.

So taking from the previous example, after you enter u, you can press the F3 key to fill in the remainder of the line.
F4 Delete forwards up to a specified character. 
With the cursor positioned at the beginning of the line cd "My Documents", pressing F4 then u, will delete up the first few characters, leaving you with a line uments"
F5 Go back through history. Equivalent to the up arrow
F6 ????  CTRL+Z
F7 Display the command history, use the cursor keys to navigate and hit enter to reuse the relevant command.
F8 Go back in history
F9 Re-issue a previous command.  Prompts for the command number (from the list that appears when you press F7)

 

References (and some other tips)

http://www.labnol.org/software/tutorials/useful-keyboard-shortcuts-for-the-dos-command-prompt-in-windows/2629/

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Hard Links, Soft Links (Junctions) and Symbolic Links in Vista

Ok, so mklink is now my favourite Vista command line tool.  Well not really, but I’m glad Vista comes with a tool out of the box that allows you to create symlinks.  This includes hard links (links to other things on the same partition), soft links or junctions to anywhere and symbolic links (reparse points) that do the same job but in a different fassion.

References:

http://wesnerm.blogs.com/net_undocumented/2006/10/symbolic_links_.html

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/22/create-symbolic-links-hard-links-and-directory-junctions-in-vista-with-mklink/

http://windowsconnected.com/blogs/joshs_blog/archive/2006/09/28/Windows-Vista-Junction-Points.aspx

http://www.svrops.com/svrops/articles/jpoints.htm