Gabor Szabo <szab...@gmail.com> writes: > Hi, > > In this question I am not so much interested in how you do unit > testing of your Perl code but how you use Perl in a QA or QC department? > > > Some of you might know that I have a training course on how to > use Perl in test automation. That course assumes you already know > Perl. (First I teach TAP and how to test Perl code and then things > like WWW::Mechanize, Selenium for web, Expect and Net::Telnet for CLI > and Win32::GUITest for, well GUI related things to test anything else.) > > > Now I am thinking on building a course or writing a book or just a > series of blog > entries that will not assume any Perl knowledge and will help people in the > QA/QC department and in test automation. > So I wonder, if you are working in QA, what are you doing with Perl? > > Is that processing log files? > Is that running batch jobs or wrapping other utilities? > Is that for preparing input files for the test? > Do you also use Perl to test various applications (web, CLI, GUI, etc)?
We test operating systems (kernels, kernel subsystems) against cpu features with and without virtualization (Xen, KVM) and also running on cpu simulator. The whole infrastructure is written in Perl. It allows any incoming reports based on TAP (Test Anything Protocol), so it's also a TAP database. We also transport benchmark values inside TAP using TAPv13's embedded YAML feature. To access this history of TAP reports it additionally provides a query API based on TAP::DOM and Data::DPath. Using this query interface we generate data for several kinds of data evaluation, using either Perl and Data::DPath directly or just provide data as YAML/JSON to other scripts, written in Python or Perl. Having TAP as the only common interface allows us to incorporate other, non-Perl test suites by only enabling them to output TAP. We have a collection of test and benchmark suites (dedicated or wrappers around existing ones to produce TAP) written in Shell, Python and Perl. They do everything from simple log file analysis to stressing cpu features. ah, and yes, we also have a Web app to present data. It's written in Perl using Catalyst, DBIx::Class and TAP::Formatter::HTML. We presented several parts on German Perlworkshop and YAPC::EU 2009: http://www.perl-workshop.de/talks/157/view http://yapceurope2009.org/ye2009/talk/1950 http://conferences.yapceurope.org/gpw2010/talk/2621 (REDUX at GPW2010) All in all, your mission to advocate TAP without Perl is very useful! TAP is a killer API for test infrastructures. Kind regards, Steffen -- Steffen Schwigon <s...@renormalist.net> Dresden Perl Mongers <http://dresden-pm.org/>
