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Summary: VISUAL BASIC FOR TESTERS is a great resource, long needed
Review: As a member of both the software and hardware community, I've found that Mary Sweeney's book "Visual Basic for Testers" is a resource that has been long overdue. While there are hundreds of test tools available on the market, each of these can only be tweaked so far in order to handle the demands of a software application or hardware drivers. Sooner or later a proprietary tool needs to be developed to meet the specific demands of the application under test. Mary Sweeney's book helps fill the void that addresses this need. Utilizing both Microsoft Visual Basic and "Visual Basic for Testers" produces a great combination to help even your basic 'blackbox' tester over the hurdles of developing test tools and understanding the backend requirements inherent in application programming. While this book does not teach you the fundamentals of Visual Basic (there are already several available on the market that do just that), it does teach you through clear explanations and working examples how to begin writing Visual Basic programs to interact and test the various components found in typical software applications. I highly recommend this book to any tester or QA engineer whose manager ever said "I sure wish someone could write a tool that could test such-and-such." Mary Sweeney's book may be your first step in putting you in the right direction of producing just such a tool.
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Summary: Finally a programming book for testers by testers!!!!
Review: I am a QE Engineer who has been testing software for about 8 years and and test software at Rational Software, a major manufacturer of automated testing tools, process and development tools. This book is excellent and I wish it was around when I first started testing software. It is written by testers for testers and is packed with great information. It's really one of the best books I have read thus far. I recommnend this book to anybody involved in testing software be 1 week of experience or 20 years of experience all will benefit and learn from this well written book. I enjoyed the forward by James Bach who is a huge talent in the testing community . The book is full of great info that will make you the testing god or goddess of your company!!! I can't put this book down its that good!!!
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Summary: A great start - so far
Review: I am mostly through this book, not quite finished yet. I am very glad to get something that has a perspective on VB close to mine.I am pretty new to softwre testing and also pretty new to programming. I like the discussion of both that I am getting. The COM and DB sections look like they will be a little challenging for my level. I will write more when I finish it!
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Summary: Review
Review: I have been managing large Automated group of testers for several years now and this is the book I make sure any new novice members of the team read. We have even produced a 'summary' of the book as a reference guide for those just entering the industry within the team. It doesn't go into great depth but it's a solid starting point for anyone who wonders how could I do this better.
I have also found when interviewing candidates and I happen to mention this book in passing, that a blank expression indicates this person just hasn't been through enough testing wars to hire. Try you the next time you're interviewing someone - you'll be pleasently surprised.
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Summary: poor book with limited examples
Review: I wanted this book to help me write automated ADO tests, it provides an introduction to VB with lots of waffle about testing and lots of articles about how to be a better tester. I wanted concrete examples of how to create automated test suites etc. If you test mostly through the GUI, this might be of some use.
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Summary: .Net backlash?
Review: I've had several college-level courses now in Testing and this is the only book we used that actually had anything to do with testing and programming. This is an absolute essential text for a college curriculum in testing. I checked out several curricula and found that most of them use it. I wonder about those that don't. In our course we also explored the use of .Net for testing and in my opinion it's a lot easier, more clear and way less expensive to use the techniques in this book. If you're trying to learn it on your own, this is still a good book. It's got exercises and examples.My wife's been a tester for many years but didn't do programming and she loved it. She said it gave her a lot of ideas. Maybe if you've already been an automated tester and/or developer for many years, this book isn't going to help, since it has a lot of basics. But if you are trying to learn, where else would you go? I liked the way you could just sit down and read it from cover to cover. It's unpretentious and doesn't talk down to us. It does expect you already know testing terminology and basics, but before you read this, you should.
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Summary: VB Test auto group favorite
Review: Our Software Test Automation group found this book on the recommended site for Automation Junkies last year. We've all read it, there's about 15 of us, and have learned a great deal. The lessons are not just about software test but also about testing in general. This book is for the general programmer and isn't intended as an advanced how-to book. It's perfect for what it is, and that is a book that's points you to where to start with clear explanations and plenty of examples. We highly recommend it and agree with all of the reviews except the one from Lenexa, KS! We encourage you to read the other reviews of this book to get a good idea of its value.
Software Test Automation Group SWTAG
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Summary: VB Test auto group favorite
Review: Our Software Test Automation group found this book on the recommended site for Automation Junkies last year. We've all read it, there's about 15 of us, and have learned a great deal. The lessons are not just about software test but also about testing in general. This book is for the general programmer and isn't intended as an advanced how-to book. It's perfect for what it is, and that is a book that's points you to where to start with clear explanations and plenty of examples. We highly recommend it and agree with all of the reviews except the one from Lenexa, KS! We encourage you to read the other reviews of this book to get a good idea of its value.
Software Test Automation Group SWTAG
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Summary: A great overview of using VB for testing
Review: Software tester's interested in using VB for software testing and who don't have extensive experience with VB will find Mary Sweeney's book a wellspring of information. Applied correctly VB has powerful potential as a test automation package. Sweeney points out many uses of VB for testers from the very basic to the more advanced topics of working with COM and testing databases. The text has many useful tips and examples that Sweeney has taken the time to explain in detail. It's obvious from the text that Sweeney has exhaustive experience with VB and testing. As the only book available on VB from a tester's viewpoint it's a must-have for anyone using or thinking of using VB for test automation. Highly recommended.
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Summary: An excellent resource for testers and programmers alike.
Review: There are not many viable resources available to the testing community because of the diversity of applications out there to test. While basic testing premises/processes are discussed, solutions usually are presented in expensive 3rd party testing applications. In this reference Mary presents inexpensive and complete examples of how a tester can utilize Visual Basic to automate and perform many of the routine testing procedures involved in any software application testing cycle. She shows that is not always necessary to learn propietary scripting languages or to use recorded scripts that often fail once a GUI or code base is tweeked. I highly recommend that this reference be added to your QA library.
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