Reliability and continuous availability have become crucial
for computer software in the information economy. Well-publicized failures from both industry and government have underscored the need for mission-critical software. Today's software must be thoroughly tested before being released into the marketplace. When it comes to industrial-strength reliability, no computer system is more renowned than the mainframe. But for years the actual approaches used to test mainframe software have been kept under wraps. What techniques are used? How do the teams in the elite mainframe development labs test their systems to ensure
they will deliver such extreme levels of robustness? How
can these lessons be applied to other software projects?

   Real-World Software Testing answers these questions
and provides practical testing techniques for achieving robust reliability with large, complex software projects. Written in
a friendly, accessible style, the book highlights areas such as devising attacks to validate data integrity, wreaking havoc to ensure recoverability, exploiting virtualized environments to improve test efficiency, the tug of war between finding defects and meeting schedules, and approaches for emulating customer environments to find the most critical defects. Focusing on real life techniques illustrated through examples and case studies gleaned from the authors' experiences of mainframe testing and operation, software engineers will know the tried and true techniques that are used for testing multimillion- dollar commercial software products.

KEY FEATURES

* Places an emphasis on system level testing, touching on
    aspects that are relevant to large-scale projects, but
    focusing on the system-wide testing that is critical to
    establishing the reliability of enterprise-class software

* Provides practical testing techniques for achieving robust
    reliability with large, complex software projects
* Focuses on real-world issues, problems, and solutions, not
    abstract theories
* Emphasizes approaches for finding and removing the defects
    that matter most to customers
* Highlights techniques for devising attacks to validate data
    integrity, wreaking havoc to ensure recoverability, exploiting
    virtualized environments to improve test efficiency, finding
    defects and meeting schedules, and emulating customer
    environments to find the most critical defects

Part I Testing: Why Worry
Part II The Testing Ecosystem
Part III The Best-laid Plans
Part IV Preparing for the Test
Part V Executing the Test
Part VI The Final Stages

About the Author:

Scott Loveland (Wrappinger Falls, NY) is a Senior Technical Staff Member in the z/OS development laboratory.

Geoffrey Miller (Highland, NY) joined IBM in 1982 and is a Senior Technical Staff Member in the z/OS development Laboratory.

Richard Prewitt (Poughkeepsie, NY) is a Senior Software Engineer in the z/OS development laboratory.

Michael Shannon (Wrappinger Falls, NY) has worked as both a software debugger and z/OS system programmer in the z/OS System Test group.