Tools I've Been Using A Lot Lately

It's good to have lots of tools in your toolbox.  But I tend go through periods of time where I'm using a smaller set of tools a large percent of the time.

For instance, lately we've been using these tools quite a bit:


WinTask
http://www.wintask.com

We use WinTask for most of our website automation tasks, regression tests, etc.  It's very easy to use, yet amazingly powerful.

BareTail
http://www.baremetalsoft.com/baretail/index.php

Our systems tend to have fairly comprehensive logs which provide a lot of useful information for analyzing the results of tests.  BareTail makes it easy to watch several logs simultaneously, and highlight areas of interest.

BareGrep
http://www.baremetalsoft.com/baregrep/index.php

Our systems tend to have a lot of configuration files.  BareGrep makes it easy to search through them and find the desired settings.

PL/SQL Developer
http://www.allroundautomations.com/plsqldev.html

We use this for pretty much all of our analysis of database activity, for creating test data, for testing stored procedures, etc.

WinMerge
http://winmerge.org/

Often our testing involves comparing the recent output to baselines.  Sometimes the output comes from our system-under-test, sometimes the output is created during our automated tests. WinMerge makes comparison with the baseline, and analysis of the differences, very efficient.

SharePoint
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com

We keep our development and test assets (Requirements, Specs, Test Plans, Schedules, Checklists, etc) in SharePoint.

Bugzilla
http://www.bugzilla.org/

Our bug-tracking tool of choice.

MWSnap
http://www.mirekw.com/winfreeware/mwsnap.html

We're currently using MWSnap for screenshots, typically for attaching to bug reports.

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://strazzere.blogspot.com/.