Some Testing and QA Blogs You Should Read

Blogs are a great way to quickly read what others in the Testing and QA field have to say about our profession.

Here are some good ones.  I read them often.  Perhaps you should check them out:


Matt Heusser's Blog - Testing at the Edge of Chaos

Matt is a software craftsman with an interest in testing, project management, development, how people learn and systems improvement
Matt Heusser

http://blogs.stpcollaborative.com/matt/

I.M. Testy

Treatises on the practice of software testing
Bj Rollison

http://www.testingmentor.com/imtesty/

Tooth of the Weasel

Notes and rants from Alan Page.
Alan Page

http://angryweasel.com/blog/

(previously, http://blogs.msdn.com/alanpa/default.aspx)

Test Obsessed

Elisabeth Hendrickson’s Thoughts on Testing, Agile, and Agile Testing
Elisabeth Hendrickson

http://testobsessed.com/

Google Testing Blog

If it ain't broke, you're not trying hard enough

http://googletesting.blogspot.com/

DevelopSense Blog

Observations on software testing and quality, by Michael Bolton
Michael Bolton

http://www.developsense.com/blog.html

James Bach’s Blog

The Consulting Software Tester
James Bach

http://www.satisfice.com/blog/

Practical QA

Common Sense Quality for the Rest of Us
Linda Wilkinson

http://www.practicalqa.com/

Abakas

I specialize in tactical QA - preventing, finding and fixing software problems no matter what the circumstances. No excuses, no problem.
Catherine Powell

http://blog.abakas.com/

Steve Rowe's Blog

Ruminations on Computing - Programming, Test Development, Management and More
Steve Rowe

http://blogs.msdn.com/steverowe/default.aspx

Exploration Through Example

Example-driven development, Agile software development, testing, Ruby, and other things of interest to Brian Marick
Brian Marick

http://www.exampler.com/blog/

Collaborative Software Testing

Jonathan Kohl's blog on software investigation
Jonathan Kohl

http://www.kohl.ca/blog/

Test This Blog - Eric Jacobson's Software Testing Blog

Refinements on the art of software testing
Eric Jacobson

http://www.testthisblog.com/

Expected Results

Testing, managing, consulting, quality and the art of motorcyle maintenance
Phil Kirkham

http://expectedresults.blogspot.com/

PractiTest QA Blog

Testing Tools & Methodologies for the Practical QA Tester
Joel Montvelisky

http://qablog.practitest.com/

Adam Goucher

Quality through Innovation
Adam Goucher

http://adam.goucher.ca/

Steve Souders - High Performance Web Sites

Steve works at Google on web performance and open source initiatives...
Steve Souders

http://stevesouders.com/

QA Hates You

You suspected it.  Now you know it.
The Director

http://www.qahatesyou.com/wordpress/

(last updated December 30, 2009)

Testing Virus Recognition - The EICAR Anti-Virus Test File

We are currently building a product that allows users to upload a file that we will then place on a publicly-available website.  One of the requirements is that we check the uploaded file for viruses first.  This presented an interesting testing opportunity.

Our enterprise anti-virus software can scan the uploaded files, and delete them if a virus is detected before they are moved to the externally-accessible location.  But how to test this?  We couldn't use a real virus - that's far too dangerous.

Fortunately, there's a nice solution.  Eicar, the European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research, in conjunction with most major anti-virus vendors, has created a file that is not a virus itself, but will cause most anti-virus software to react as if it were a virus.

If you copy the following 68-character string into notepad, and save it to a text file, your anti-virus software will treat that file as if it contained a virus: copyrightjoestrazzere

X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

(Or download one of the files from http://www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm)

For my tests, I simply had to take this file to a machine that had its own anti-virus software temporarily turned off, then submit it to the new product.

• Test completed. 
• The product reacted as expected.
• The appropriate message was written to the event log.
• The appropriate warning message was displayed to the user.
• The "pseudo-infected" file was deleted and not made public.
• Test Passed!

It's fun to learn a new technique.

See also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EICAR_test_file
http://antivirus.about.com/od/whatisavirus/a/eicar.htm
http://www.anti-malware.info/weblog/2006/09/eicar-anti-virus-test-file-changed.html