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News In Review
July 27, 1998

Ensure E-Commerce Quality

By Richard Adhikari

E lectronic-commerce applications have to be built fast to stay ahead of changing technology. They must be built well, because breakdowns frequently mean lost business.

Testing is the obvious way to ensure quality applications. But testing tools are difficult to use because most require hand-coding of all the scripts, says Stephen Purpura, who developed extranet applications for ComCast Cellular Communications Inc.

Purpura needed to be able to make changes quickly to the extranet, which let the vendor's partners talk to ComCast and perform tasks such as activating cellular phones. But every change required more testing. Purpura signed on as a beta tester of Astra QuickTest from Mercury Interactive Corp., a $4,000 icon-based testing tool for E-business that replaces traditional testing scripts with icons to simplify and speed up testing.

Astra QuickTest, which was unveiled last month and ships at the end of this month for Windows 95/98 and Windows NT, emulates various browser types and HTTP protocols so users can predict system behavior for different browsers, including specific versions. Astra QuickTest works independently of any server or software platform so that tests will work regardless of changes made to the architecture.

Purpura mainly used Astra QuickTest to make changes to his Web sites, develop scripts quickly, and make sure the changes he made worked. He also tied these scripts to load-testing scripts to ensure the Web site could support the number of users projected. "As a development manager, it would be foolish of me not to use it, because it mitigates the risks," Purpura says.

To test an application, the user specifies a URL to begin recording. The test is then generated automatically as the user navigates through the application with a browser.

The only other way to verify that the changes made to ComCast's Web site worked would have been to test it by hand, Purpura says. That would be virtually impossible, he adds, because the number of scripts increases exponentially as changes are made.

Return to main story, "E-Commerce Impact."


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