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It was a big event for InfoStretch with the Mayor of the City of Santa Clara presiding over its new office inauguration. The Mayor was very happy that we have been part of Santa Clara since our inception and continue to make it our home. He talked about how Santa Clara has been a home of many successful small businesses for a quite a few decades now. Forbes ranks Santa Clara as one of the top locations for small businesses to establish their base and flourish, he mentioned.

Rutesh Shah, President and CEO of InfoStretch, thanked the Mayor for having taken time out of his busy day to come and inaugurate InfoStretch’s new office and said that its going to be the new home for InfoNeers for at least the next couple of years. Santa Clara has brought good tidings and the company has flourished with the support of the city. As the company grows and adds new staff and customers, Santa Clara is still going to be THE destination of choice, he added.

Manish Mathuria, CTO of InfoStretch congratulated the Mayor on Santa Clara becoming the home of the 49ers. Although InfoStretch has started off as a small business, he hoped that, in the next couple of years, InfoStretch would grow to become a larger enterprise – but will be based in Santa Clara nevertheless. InfoStretch presented a golf kit to the Mayor as a thank you note for having graced the occasion. The Chamber members presented a plaque to InfoStretch as an acknowledgement of being a part of the Santa Clara community since 2004.

InfoStretch released their fun to work video which talked about the InfoStretch journey so far and the fantastic company culture that it has built with the help of all the InfoNeers. The video received a huge round of applause from everyone in the room. Click on the below picture to take a look at the video.

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Join Industry Leaders Perfecto Mobile and InfoStrech for this Unique Mobile Application Testing Seminar

Learn about the latest technology and methodologies for cloud-based mobile test automation, performance and monitoring. During this seminar, we will address key considerations for
a successful enterprise-grade mobile quality strategy including:

  • How to meet mobile related risks and deploy your apps with confidence
  • How to replace mobile app testing chaos with sustainable, scalable and secure
    mobile testing governance, using the MobileCloud platform
  • How to remotely test, automate and monitor REAL life mobile end-user scenarios
    on REAL devices in your REAL target networks/geo
  • How to seamlessly extend your ALM environment to mobile, leveraging your
    existing investment
  • How other enterprises are handling mobile application testing, monitoring and
    continuous integration

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Agenda:

8:30 AM – Networking Breakfast
9:00 AM – Keynote Presentation
10:00 AM – Mobile Testing using Automation from InfoStretch
10:30 AM – Building an Effective Mobile Testing Strategy from Perfecto Mobile
11:00 AM – Mobile Testing Expert Panel Q&A
11:30 AM – Live Demo
12:00 PM – Networking Lunch
12:30 PM – Stay & Play: A unique, hands-on session to experience the Perfecto Mobile solutions first hand

Click on this link to register – http://mobileapptesting2013-is.eventbrite.com/#

 

 

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Mobile Scoop

 

 News and Insights

Research Papers
Fun Read
Industry Insights
Mobile Trivia

Which company is credited with inventing the world’s first cell phone?

  • Apple
  • IBM
  • Motorola
  • Tandy


Don’t forget to check out the answer in our next mobile scoop!

 

 

 

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Recently, my team had to work on a clustered web-based project that had a No-SQL backend; MongoDB to be specific. Having come from a SQL era, this was the first big No-SQL project that I had to deal with, and there were many things that I learned in the process. One of the outcomes of this was Mango, a schema inference engine, which I will describe later below.

But first,

What is a No-SQL database?

There is no precise definition of the term “No-SQL” database. It is used to describe a number of recent database engines, that break away from the SQL mould, and have some common characteristics like:

  • Scalability is the primary objective
  • ACID compliance is not a necessity
  • No pre-specified or enforced Schema for tables / collections
  • Nested documents
  • Typically, there’s no support for joins or they are very slow.

Because of the above reasons, full support for SQL queries is not possible, and hence the term “No SQL”

Challenges

While working with such a NoSQL database, I found that there the above charactereistics bring about new features and along with them new challenges, like:

  • There are no transactions in the database, so if you need them (occasionally), you need to code that logic in the application.
  • Since documents can be nested, queries are easier to write.
  • It is easy to mix documents with different properties in a collection. For example, if only few users in the database need addresses, you can specify the address field for only those users’ documents.

However, because of the latter two points (nested documents and varying properties), over time, it becomes difficult to know what is the overall schema of the collection.

To address this problem, my team has been working on a new project, which tries to infer the schema of an existing No-SQL database. We have name the tool Mango.

Mango features at a glance

  • Data exploration
  • Schema inference
  • Relation inference

Using Mango

When a user first runs Mango, they are presented with connection options (currently, it only supports MongoDB on localhost), and after approving them, Mango connects to the database backend and presents a list of databases that are available to explore.

After selecting the database, the user can choose from a list of collections in that database.

After choosing a collection, the inference engine starts reading and processing the entries in that collection. It does a recursive analysis of each field in each document in the collection, and then infers the schema from this.

If more than one collection is chosen, Mango will also try to infer the relationships between the collection. This information can be quite complex and hence it is presented in a graph.

Illustration 3: How a graph showing relations looks like

For those who would like to view the inference results as a static document, we have implemented an HTML report generator as well.

Developing Mango

Our natural choice for developing Mango was Scala, because it is fast and portable and expressing complex algorithms in it is easier, thanks to its exhaustive collection libraries, and functional programming features.

For example, the core inference engine is just about 25 lines of code! We first defined a function that merges any two given schemas and then to merge all schemas in a collection we folded over the sequence of rows like this:

val inferredSchema =
collectionSchema.rowFields
.foldLeft[Seq[Field]](Nil)(mergeSchemas)
.sortBy(-_.count)

Here we are folding over the schemas by merging them and then sorting them based on their repeat count. Four lines of code which would have taken reams of code in an imperative styled language!

Of course, writing those few lines of code requires some time and expertise, but it pays off in the long term, in time spent on testing, debugging and maintenance.

Scala will also enable us to easily perform background tasks, to free the GUI thread. We intend to use Actors to implement multi-threaded analysis algorithms.

We have been using good design patterns while developing Mango, such as immutable constructs and layered classes, and we have been writing unit tests as well. This has led to a robust application.

Future plans

Support for more databases and more f

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Introduction:

Blackberry 10 is the new platform developed by RIM for its upcoming smartphones. Blackberry 10 is based on the QNX neutrino multithreaded operating system which is time tested and is used in many mission critical operations. RIM has understood the needs of users beautifully and managed to develop a smartphone that can cater not only to business user but also equally to personal users. RIM has studied the issues faced by users of both IPhone and Android based phones and developed a UI that is more intuitive, a device that can be handled by just one hand and every feature/application comes as a flow. There is immense opportunity posted by the Blackberry’s new smart-phone platform which can take the smartphone definition to a new level.

Development Options:

RIM has provided various options for developing applications for BB10. This includes:

  1. Native cascades  (C/C++, QML)
  2. WebWorks (HTML/JavaScript)
  3. Android (via Android runtime)
  4. Action Script

There is an equal opportunity to develop apps using either of these technologies, whether one is a hard core C/C++ developer, android developer, web developer or adobe action script developer.

Cascades Development:

Out of these development options native cascades which uses both C/C++ and QML gives the best user experience which is faster and uses the UI principles/behaviors designed for BB 10 by RIM. Developing applications using cascades framework is fast. Application UI can be developed using QML by using the drag and drop feature of QNX Momentics IDE and using the previewer to get a feel of the UI before it is loaded on the device. The developer only needs to write the business logic in C/C++.  The Blackberry 10 simulator software enables to quickly test implemented features before the app is actually loaded on the device.

Info Stretch – An expert in Blackberry 10 development

Info Stretch understands the power of this new platform and has been leading in developing innovative and engaging applications. We as a group are one of the first firms to start exploring and developing on this platform and have gained the expertise to develop apps for any industry segment. Info Stretch has the expertise in developing native C/C++/QML based applications as well as HTML5 based WebWorks applications.

Why one should choose Info Stretch as a partner for BB 10 development:

  • Info Stretch has the right technical expertise.
  • We understand our partners and end users better and can use the best development approach to build faster and scalable applications.
  • We have the least turnaround time and can quickly develop production grade apps.
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Just last week, all the 50 Dreamliners worldwide were grounded by FAA indefinitely.  Reason: their Lithium Ion batteries were unsafe with possibilities of leakage.  Boeing continues to defend its baby which was launched after years of grooming in 2011.  But the fact is, the overheated battery might have become a cause for an explosion. Dreamliners are now under the microscope of aviation authorities in the United States and Japan, but there is no resolution on what might be wrong. This is not only a big black eye for Boeing but also creates a FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt), in the minds of travelers across the world.

There are hundreds of Dreamliners in queue, waiting to come to birth. Boeing has made a huge investment on this effort, but everything is up in the air as Dreamliner’s credibility is questioned. It has alarmed people and made us question the viability of technology. Is quality assurance being sidelined at the expense of making rapid advancements and in my parlance – gain instant gratification? And the consequences of this are not very pretty. Grounding the 787 will not only have an effect on Boeing, but it will also effect its clients i.e. the airline. This grounding will cause the airline almost $1.1M a day! Boeing’s credibility is questioned and the shareholder’s confidence dwindles.

Last year, I had blogged about a million dollar bug – discover it before it discovers you! So, could they have potentially avoided this conundrum by scrutinizing their quality assurance?  Why wasn’t the design flaw caught early on while the Dreamliners were ‘teething’. Has the need to advance technologically taken over the need for safety and well – being? That’s scary and it tells us that we have a bigger problem. We would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Interestingly, Rutesh, our CEO and founder who presents this session cites an example of an online brokerage firm which was hit by an unknown bug and halted all trading activity with losses of more than 60k trades in less than 30 minutes. And, the approach to deal with this is was what we call the war room approach to find the root cause and create a solid back-up system to make sure that all lost trades are executed at the customer’s discretion. Of course, it’s very important to arm your QA teams with the right ammunition to create solid QA processes, which we call out-of-the-box squad approach which are used to identify the deadly bugs and create enough readiness to fight them, as soon as they’re spotted.

 

 

 

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Since last couple of years, we have seen a huge spike in smart phone and tablet sales. CES 2013 focused on a brand new range of tablets and mobile devices to change the mobile game a bit more. With Google’s Android providing tough competition to Apple’s iPhone, nearly 80% of the world has a smart phone commonly used to shop, bank, entertain and network. Gartner predicts sales of 1.2 billion smart phones and tablets in
2013, a 50% increase over 2012. No doubt, enterprise mobility is set to evolve in 2013.

In the years to follow, mobile platforms and devices will consolidate, which will make developers focus on cross platform applications or hybrid application and as HTML5 is going to update its standards, this will be the most wanted technology in the market. The dominant platforms like iOS and Android in consumer world will try to replace RIM’s Blackberry from the enterprise world. Companies will analyze how mobile technologies can generate business values for their organizations. All these changes will cause employees to bring their own personal devices to
workplace, making security a big issue for administrators.

To minimize security breaches MDM (Mobile device Management) and MAM (Mobile Application management) are gaining acceptance. These technologies will allow for secure monitoring of mobile devices and applications.  At the same time, business managers would need to maintain a competitive edge which means usage of smart phones, tablets in public networks will grow and so will the need to protect sensitive business data, customer contacts, invoices, databases.

Many companies have discovered away to resolve security issues and get ‘bang for the IT buck’. It is mobile security techniques that will help the admin to track or monitor all kind of devices. It enables to block malware and entry to malicious websites as well as detect attacks. Some MDS (Mobile Device Security) can monitor, block and log calls and send SMS, MMS based on user policy of organizations. And the most important point to note is Data Protection – all these with reduced cost and lots of flexibility will be the mantra of the future.

To get full control of BYOD it will surely take time but the speed at which mobile industry is progressing with advanced hardware and software, organizations have to find better policies or security techniques to get most of Enterprise mobility with minimum risk.

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Happy New Year to all of you folks! We’ve entered the New Year with a bang – lots of stuff planned and the wheels are in motion. This year, in the events and tradeshows category, we plan to do a lot more than we did last year. So here’s our line up, and yes, if you want to meet us at any of these events, drop us a note at marketing@infostretch.com

Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, Spain

Feb 25th – Feb 28th

Join us at most happening mobile conference of the year, the Mobile World Congress! Connect with our experts to learn about all the innovations InfoStretch has been making in enterprise mobility with smart solutions for industries such as retail, healthcare, banking and travel. To know more about InfoStretch mobile services visit mobile.infostretch.com

Mobile Technology Conference, Munich, Germany

March 11th – March 14th

Swing by our to meet our mobile team and discuss your mobile roadmap, whatever your mobile plans may be, InfoStretch will work with you to actualize it. With expertise in mobile solutions across all verticals and OS’s, InfoStretch is your partner of choice. So what’s your mobile strategy?

Mobile Application Conference, Mumbai, India

March 16th

Be a part of this event in India for mobile start-ups which covers the whole gamut from design, development, testing and certification. Connect with InfoStretch to learn about our methodology and practice in mobile development for all platforms – iOS, Android, Windows and more. Join us at the presentation deck, where InfoStretch tells you how we’ve done this over and over again successfully. Visit mobile.infostretch.com for more info.

StarEast, Orlando, Florida

April 28th – May 2nd

Like every year we will be heading east to make it to the biggest QA conference of the year and delivering the Industry Technical Presentation. Last year’s session was on Selenium Automation, and if you missed this session then tune into our webinars page to catch Siva Anna, who presented this session.

StarWest, Anaheim, CA

October 2nd – October 5th

Again, like every year, we will be heading West to attend the StarWest. Talk to us about our recent strides in mobile QA and enterprise QA. Take a look at some of our newest mobile automation demos – presented in partnership with our partners like Perfecto Mobile. Swing by one of our sessions as we present our best practices in Agile, CI, Automation, Cloud based testing and more.

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Background The program is about implementing new Internet Banking platform that aims to consolidate numerous internet instances across the Banking Group onto a shared platform and to implement new functionality for Group Businesses. The program is structured into a number of releases.

The Test Data is required for the different work streams

  •  Unit and Component Integration Test Data
  • System and System Integration Test Data
  • Automation Testing Team – Regression Test Data
  • Non Functional Test Data
  • Business Team – User Acceptance Test Data

Problem Statement

  • Numerous amount of test data request to be catered within given time frame.
  • Considerable amount of manual effort needed to create & tweak the test data using  Web applications, different desktop application, Mainframe systems
  •  Delivery slippage risk due to unavailability of the above said applications.
  • Manual data tweaking through mainframe systems was cumbersome & time consuming.

Solution

  • Investigation done to find out APIs responsible for data creation & tweaking through backend
  • Developed automation framework including combination of APIs, web applications &

Mainframe system in logical sequence, to do tweaking on the base accounts

API Automation

  • Directly can fire the APIs through Microsoft.XMLDOM and XMLHTTP objects for this we have to create a template XML file form the WSDL
  • Controller will call a specific API with the required data to be updated in existing XMLs. To update the XML for example <VBScript>

Variables details

strPath (The Directory Path)

srcCCXMLPath(Source XML File Path)

XMLNewFile(Updated XML will be saved on this Location)

destCCXMLPath(Response for the API will saved on this path)

strUpdate(A string with the Node Name and the Values with the separators i.e “;” and “=” )

LinkBUrl(API to be fired on this destination)

Response(Boolean Value for the result of API)

Sample Code

strPath=Environment.Value(“TestDir”)

Set fso = CreateObject(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”)

TestPath = fso.Getparentfoldername(strPath)

srcCCXMLPath = TestPath & “\XML_Template\” & CCXML

destCCXMLPath = TestPath & “\XML_Template\CreditCardXML_Resp.XML”

#And then we calls the reusable functions to update and sent the API on the URL

strUpdatedXML =  fnUpdateXML(srcLinkBXMLPath,strUpdate)

 

#Function body to update the XML File

‘********************************************************************’FUNCTION HEADER

********************************************************************’Name: fnUpdateXML

‘Description: This function is for updating the existing XML file with the passed parameters

‘Input Parameter:  XML file name, String in “XMLtag=XMLValue” format

‘ObjectName : XML DOM Object

‘Created By: Kuldeep Sharma ‘*****************************************

Public Function fnUpdateXML(ByVal XMLNewFile, ByVal strUpdateString)

arrSplitNode = split(strUpdateString,”;”)

For i=0 to ubound(arrSplitNode)

arrValue = split(arrSplitNode(i),”=”)

Set xmlDoc = CreateObject( “Microsoft.XMLDOM” )

xmlDoc.load(XMLNewFile)

Set objNodeList = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName(arrValue(0))

set str = objNodeList.Item(0)

str.text = arrValue(1)

strUpdateXML = xmlDoc.text

xmlDoc.Save(XMLNewFile)

Next

Set xmlDoc = nothing

fnUpdateXML = strUpdateXML

End Function

 

# We can send this request to the URL with the XMLHTTP Objects

Response = SendXML(srcLinkBXMLPath,destLinkBXMLPath,LinkBUrl)

‘********************************************************************************* ‘FUNCTION HEADER

‘*********************************************************************************

‘Name: SendXML

‘Description: This function is to send the XML to the specified server

‘Input Parameter:  source XML file name, Destination XML file name, Server URL

‘ObjectName : XML DOM Object, XML HTTP Object

‘Created By: Kuldeep Sharma ‘*********************************************************************

Set xmlhttp = CreateObject(“Microsoft.XMLHTTP”)

xmlhttp.open “POST” ,url, False

Set xmldom = CreateObject(“Microsoft.XMLDOM”)

xmldom.load(srcXMLFile)

xmlhttp.send xmldom

xmlhttp.ResponseXML.Save(destXMLFile)

resp = FetchXML(destXMLFile, “SeverityCode”)

If resp = “0″ Then

SendXML = True

Else

SendXML = False

End If

Set xmlhttp = nothing

Set xmldom =nothing

End Function

”*******************************************************************

Function FetchXML is to ready the API Response if it is Passed

”*********************************************************************’FUNCTION HEADER ‘**********************************************************************

‘Name: FetchXML

‘Description: This function is for fetching XML tag value

‘Input Parameter:  XML file name, XML tag name

‘ObjectName : XML DOM Object

‘********************************************************

Public Function FetchXML(ByVal XMLNewFile, ByVal XMLTag)

On Error Resume next

Set xmlDoc1 = CreateObject( “Microsoft.XMLDOM” )

xmlDoc1.load(XMLNewFile)

Set objNodeList = xmlDoc1.getElementsByTagName(XMLTag)

set str = objNodeList.Item(0)

XMLTagValue = str.text

FetchXML = XMLTagValue

Set xmlDoc1 =nothing

End Function

‘****************************************************************************

Features & Benefits

Features

  • Factory Model Framework
  • Unique Solution of its Kind
  • Error Handling on code and functional level
  • Plug and Play framework (Completely Modular)
  • User Friendly

Benefits

  • High Effort Saving.
  • Less Manual intervention ensures less probability of error
  • Less dependency on UI
  • 50 % of effort saving.

 

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Light at the end of the tunnel

If you’ve read my previous post, I had second thoughts about BB10 making it, especially since it is launching after the holiday season. It has all its eggs in the BB10 basket which means that if this ship goes down, RIM goes down along with it. But the market dynamics seem to be in favor of RIM.

One, Windows hasn’t established firm footing yet and still dwindling at #3 which means there is room for RIM to usurp. Second, BYOD is causing a lot of headaches for the IT departments. How do you ensure security while letting the users use their own device – this has been the moot question. With the BB10 features such as BB Hub, Work and Balance, this issue might be addressed.  These features keep the work and personal life separate and thus easy to secure.

Third, all the major US carriers – ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint have decided to carry the BB10 line. And last but not the least; the world is looking for THAT smartphone which will do everything. This is BB10’s chance to showcase features which Apple, Google and Windows haven’t thought of – yet.

I am different!

“In building BlackBerry 10, we set out to create a truly unique mobile computing experience that constantly adapts to your needs. Our team has been working tirelessly to bring our customers innovative features combined with a best in class browser, a rich application ecosystem, and cutting-edge multimedia capabilities. All of this will be integrated into a user experience – the BlackBerry Flow – that is unlike any smartphone on the market today. Thanks to our strong partnerships with global carriers and a growing ecosystem of developers, we believe our customers will have the best experience possible with BlackBerry 10. We are looking forward to getting BlackBerry 10 in the hands of our customers around the world.”

Thorsten Heins, CEO of RIM

Other unique features which set the BB10 apart – the new OS lets users transition between various activities without having to return to a home screen and completely switch apps. Users will be able to ‘glance’ at apps that are running in the background by swiping Windows and menus from the side.  A paradigm that’s all about the flow.  With the BB10 camera, users will be able to go back in time to select the best shot even if it happened before the shutter was pressed.

As mentioned earlier, security is one of the key features and towards this effort there is a list of 106 passwords which the company does not let you use. These are also called banned passwords which include words like batman, freedom and iloveyou.

BB10 app world gains momentum

BlackBerry 10 is only a half-month away from launching, and RIM just recently hosted two Port-a-Thon events to encourage developers to submit their games and apps for BlackBerry 10, while offering $100 for any app approved to the store. Naturally, the $100 incentive seemed to work, since 15,000 apps were submitted over the course of just over 36 hours. The first developers submitting between two and five approved apps were promised a free PlayBook, while those writing more than five approved apps were entered into a random drawing to receive a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device.  RIM knows it cannot compete with Apple and Google but it aims to target a certain demographic with its app libraries – the ‘hyper connected multitasker’ who needs to get the job done.

 

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