Developer Christmas Countdown - December 9 - T minus 16 days

December 9: Quality and Testing, JCP Java SE 7 and Java SE 8 roadmaps approved

I woke up early this morning thinking about how much work I have to complete before I take a few days off during the holiday time. No matter how I plan, it always seems like there is more to do, more action items appearing and not enough hours in the day to clear items off the list that should be done before the new year starts.  I am committed to entering the New Year looking forward and working on new projects.   You betcha!

Quality and Testing

I received an email from one of our field Software Consultants asking me "A prospect is asking if we can prove that C++Builder XE can be used to develop software, which will run under Windows 7 and Windows Vista. We declared that Delphi XE/C++Builder XE (starting from 2010) can generate applications for Windows 7 and Vista. Do we have information, links or publications other than the product data sheet?" A thought provoking question. In some ways, I've taken it for granted that ouor products support the editions of Windows that we list on our Data Sheet, especially with all of the internal testing, working with our customers and partners who help us with field testing and with my own development and demoing. There are sometimes exceptions noted in our product readme files. We also find issues after a product release (what software company doesn't) and we work on updates, hotfixes and workarounds.

To what efforts do we test and ensure the quality of our software and its support for Windows platforms?
Chris Pattinson, Embarcadero Technologies Directory of Quality Engineering, has written a series of blog posts to help developers understand our quality efforts. Here are some of his posts on the subject of quality, maturity models and our testing processes:

• Quality Standards


• Embarcadero product certification testing


• RAD Studio XE, Delphi XE and C++Builder XE Review - Beta Tester Feedback Report


• RADStudio XE - Quality Review and Metrics


• Embarcadero - Quality Central


• Embarcadero Quality Review - 2009 to 2010


• How much testing is enough?

Chris also presented the Embarcadero Quality Maturity Model at the recent CodeRage 5 online virtual conference (all of the sessions are available for replay and download). The Embarcadero Quality Maturity Model is used by each Embarcadero product team as a framework to continually improve in terms of testing effectiveness. The quality maturity model has 8 categories to help focus and drive quality improvement. This model has been used very successfully with mature products such as RAD Studio. Success factors include customer satisfaction, time to market, and development productivity. This session discusses the Quality Maturity Model, the Embarcadero QA Roadmap, and goes through some of the initiatives taken by RAD Studio in the past two years to dramatically improve the product quality.

Java Community Process (JCP) gives Java 7 and 8 approvals under protest

I enjoy reading articles written by Darryl Taft who writes for eWeek. I also have the distinct pleasure to talk to and meet with Darryl from time to time (note: Daryll loves baseball hats with software and company logos on them). This week Darryl reported that the Java Community Process (JCP) has given its approval for the Java 7 and Java 8 roadmaps.   The executive committee voted to approve JSR 336 - Java SE 7 and JSR 337 - Java SE 8.  Darryl notes in his article: 1) the voting was not unanimous (Apache Software Foundation, Google and Tim Peierls voted against passage) and 2) Tim Peierls resigned from the SE/EE Executive Committee of the JCP). You can read Darryl's eWeek article at http://www.eweek.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=65369&Itemid=28.