Paint the room heuristic

The other day, my wife asked me if I could finish painting the bedroom before my conference call in 90 minutes. Naturally, I said that I could and like a good husband, I immediately got started. It wasn't until my phone rang that I realized that I hadn't made it in time. Luckily enough, it was no problem to delay the call by 30 minutes.

While I was finishing up, I realized what had happened. When my wife asked me if I could accomplish the painting in a certain amount of time, my thought process was...

1. If I do it now, it will make her happy.
2. If it takes a little too long, the worst that will happen is that she'll be a little grumpy until I finish, but once I'm done she'll be happy.
3. Once I start, no one is actually going to make me stop before I'm finished... I mean, who wants a mostly painted room?!?
4. I completely overlooked the fact that delaying the phone call could be problematic.

Tester thinking...

Say you were given the following requirements...

•   Users shall be able to enter any of nine predefined data objects
•   User interface shall consist of nine blocks of three rows and three columns
•   Each row, column and/or block shall accept only one member of each data object

What am I describing?

Why all the hype about SOA & Testing?

I've been working on a Webinar and article about testing SOA... because I've been asked to... because SOA is all the rage or something. So what's the big deal?!? Objects that are based on a business process is called a Service... Ok. There are competing "standards" for communication protocols for services... Ok. There are SOA Management Software packages that do what middleware has always done... Ok. Services are assumed to be remote and developed by someone else... Ok. And?

What's the new part? What *haven't* we had to deal with before? What *haven't* we had to deal with in combinations before?

Am I just WAAAAAAAAAY out of the loop, or this 90% hype and 10% pushing problems we've been dealing with for *at least* 6 years working their way into new places?

O-well, back to the article... maybe I'll come up with something more useful to say in it.

--
Scott Barber
President & Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
About.me

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Author, Web Load Testing for Dummies
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, & How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

"If you can see it in your mind...
you will find it in your life."

Book Review: Linux Debugging and Performance Tuning

I guess someone appreciated the book review the other month, because very shortly after the column was published, I received a request to review another book. This time the book was "Linux Performance Tuning, Open Source" . I'm sure you're shocked to learn that I said yes, accepted delivery of another free new book a few days later, and read the book during my seemingly endless hours on airplanes these days. My assessment is that, in short, this is another good book that is very much worth a look. This time it took until about three-quarters of the way through before the concepts got too abstract and/or technical for my rather limited Linux background, but once again I put the book down wondering where it was in 2001 when I was trying to configure Linux servers on my own instead of bribing my office-buddy with more beer to do it for me.

As I read, I jotted the following notes:

Book Review: Performance Tuning for Linux Servers

The other month I wrote a column for Software Test and Performance magazine where I discussed Linux Performance Tuning.  Shortly thereafter I received a request to review a new book titled "Performance Tuning for Linux Servers."  After reading it, I offer the following as a summary:

"This book is "must have" for a novice to mid *nix tuner/administrator in terms of technical content and information and a "nice to have" reference book for more senior folks.  It has the highest density of information that is directly applicable to tuning Linux servers for optimal multi-user application performance of any that I have come across that present material in ways that a non-expert can directly apply.  Another positive but not-so-common thing this book does is provide the author's reference material at the end of each chapter, making it quite easy for the readers who want to know more to get the next level of detail.