Here at J Street, we are buzzing around helping clients make their companies more productive!
President Armen Stein has earned the Microsoft MVP Award every year since 2006. That tells you something about his passion for technology!
Computerized tests for Grades 3-8 hit a snag
Schools report connectivity problems, crashes during pilot test administration. Read more…
Drawn by Joe Kane – 2018
To me, a developer saying their programming change “shouldn’t hurt anything” is the equivalent of a person in a horror movie saying “I’ll be right back” – things are likely to end badly!
We work on many projects that involve making changes to an existing system that the client is using every day. But how do we prevent things from going wrong when we are modifying an existing database that contains real live data?
Testing in Test
One of the most important steps when making changes to any system is to deploy them to a test copy of the system, not immediately to the live production environment. We use automated scripts for the deployment, so the process is documented and repeatable. Only after we are sure that the changes have not disrupted anything and that the new features are working properly do we use the same scripts to push those changes to Production. I’m amazed how many client systems we inherit don’t have a test environment – changes are routinely pushed straight into production! As they say: All software changes are tested. If not in Test, then in Production.
Testing What We Didn’t Change
Not only do we test the parts we changed, but we also quickly run through the rest of the system to make sure everything else still works. That’s called regression testing, and it helps to make sure that a seemingly unrelated area of the system wasn’t affected. Also, testing is a shared responsibility – our clients test the systems, too. After all, they know their business best, and sometimes spot issues we didn’t see.
Do you have an existing system that needs updating? Contact us for a free consultation – we’re here to help you – and it won’t hurt anything!
What We Do
