See Also

Ecora Change Manager

Business challenges

Smartech QA team performed complete testing of Ecora Change Manager, developed automated test scripts and wrote all necessary documentation to perform continuous testing of the product in order to guarantee the desired quality level of current and future versions of the product.

Application description

Ecora Change Manager is a powerful configuration management system capable of deploying operating systems to target computers, storing and managing complete configurations snapshots, deploying software to systems and managing system settings. The application consists of service that interacts with target systems directly or via Microsoft ADS (Automated Deployment Services) to perform the necessary tasks. ASP.NET based console is used to provide configuration, systems and tasks management. Ecora Change Manager uses MS SQL Server 2000 or higher to store data.

Testing approaches

Since the application has a web based user interface, performs potentially harmful actions to operating systems (users configuration, services configuration, NTFS permissions management) and may cause high severity problems in case of unauthorized access, the following testing approaches were used to test the application: functional testing, UI testing, configuration testing, DB consistency validation and security analysis.
  • Functional testing included validation of all features supported by the application: storing system information, collecting and storing system images, images deployment, applications deployment, system attributes modification. Smart redirection (in case of link misprints) was checked as well.
  • UI testing was made to verify that UI design meets common standards.
  • Configuration testing was made according to test matrices and was performed to ensure that all attributes are correctly applied to all supported operating systems.
  • DB consistency validation included analysis of data stored in databases, including white-box assurance that all database updates are made within transactions in order to roll back any partial changes that took place before full update completes.
  • Security analysis was paid extra attention. Console and worker service protection from unauthorized access was checked. Verification of user access based on account permissions level and protection from SQL injection attacks.

Summary

During 1 year testing of Ecora Change Manager Smartech QA team posted over 1500 bugs and enhancements. Ecora Change Manager achieved the desired quality level and was released as functional addition to Ecora Enterprise Auditor. QA team managed to perform all necessary testing in time.

Tools used for testing

  • TrackIt and Aqdevteam bug trackers;
  • TestComplete automated testing tool;
  • Custom tool for DB consistency validation.