Whoops

I just created one-shore.blogspot.com thinking that this blog had been deleted. Basically, I wanted to say what I'm working on (in my spare time) these days:

One Shore -- my company website for consulting (not actively working on it)
QA Site -- my project for building hosted tools for testing
CuencaTravel -- a portal site based on Joomla started in Ecuador (currently on hold)
PM Site - a spin off of qa-site.com geared towards tasks and requirements instead of bugs and tests

And my new project, code named "fluffy", researching Flex testing tools and strategies. I'm working with Nate on this. He's kind of mentoring my learning Flex. We brainstormed the
idea at a BBQ last Monday. I set up a repository and QA site with all the regular tools: bugzilla, projectpier, trac, blogs, and forum.

So far, I've:

• set up the QA Site
  
• downloaded FlexBuilder 60 day trial and installed the FlexBuilder plugin for Eclipse 3.3
  
• did a couple of tutorials and checked out a bunch of books on safari
• installed FlexUnit and did a couple tutorials with it

I'm pretty impressed with FlexBuilder. It seems well put together. It's impressive for an Eclipse plugin, and I did a lot of work with custom plugins at Varolii. FlexUnit seems to be a half-measure, but probably gets the job done, as far as testing ActionScript at the component level. ASUnit is another project (open source) in the same area.

On wordpress

I've been doing most of my posts on Wordpress lately at http://fijiaaron.wordpress.com and http://oneshore.wordpress.com. Because I like the theme there and I have built up quite an archive. I'm going to resolve to give Blogger another shot.

Like I mentioned on my last post there, At least it has a bigger text area. But adding images is a real pain on blogger. Pointing at custom URL like http://blog.cuencatravel.com is easier with blogger, but hosting my own is easier with wordpress.

Requirements as versioned documents

A requirements document is almost always under revision control. Any requirements management process worth it's salt has a change process. But individual requirements as versioned documents... Again, requirements can be tied to code releases. And it should make the change process easier, as well as querying for requirements. A requirements compatibility matrix could be generated (based on versions of each requirement.) Requirements implemented in this release is just another generated document, based on the source control logs.

Tests as versioned documents

A test under version control could also be branched with a code release. A versioned test suite could change to meet new requirements. A tag of tests could be a suite. Versions could even keep track of test completion status and actual results, but that might be going too far.

Bugs as versioned documents

A bug that is a document under version control could have the heading and description edited without worrying about affecting credibility. Previous versions of the bug would contain the original text. A bug under version control could be branched, and branches could be tied to certain code branches or tags.

Document centrism

A test is a document
A bug is a document
A requirement is a document
A task is a document

A document should have the following capabilities:
Editing,
Versioning,
Commenting,
Sharing,
Searching

A semantic document (like XML) could also be queryable, and have better searching. It could be populated from a template plus data.

Reports are documents generated from a template plus data.
Forms are applications that retrieve data, potentially by processing documents.

A collection of tests, requirements, or bugs is a report generated by querying multiple documents.

System Integrator

According to wikipedia, One Shore pretty much matches the definition of a system integrator.
We pretty much build a QA system from open source parts. A QA site is a hosting solution, a Linux server or VPS, a collection of open source tools, including version control (svn,cvs), build automation (ant, maven, luntbuild), bug tracking (bugzilla, trac, mantis), test management (qatraq, test-site, testopia), automated tests(fit, testng, junit, selenium, watir, samie)project management (dotproject, phprojekt, trac), document management (knowledgetree, alfresco), wiki (dokuwiki, dekiwiki, moinmoin, trac), forum(punbb), blogs(wordpress-mu), etc. and integrating them.

I noticed trac is in there three times. Fit and trac are popular for a reason, and I think it has to do with document-centrism.