Testing Tools Books

Perl is my workhorse language. I've written more Perl code, both personally and professionally, than any other language I've learned. Whenever I receive a new project, I immediately think of how I would accomplish it quickly in Perl. I've also been a fan of O'Reilly's "Hacks" series of books. When I heard of the marriage of Perl and O'Reilly's "Hacks" series in the book Perl Hacks, I knew I had to pick up a copy. It was a match made in heaven. The nature of Perl for terse, yet powerful constructs, and the hackish nature of the "Hacks" series makes for one of my favorite books in this series. The collection of articles in Perl Hacks are great for putting more productivity into your programming experience.

Those of you not familiar with O'Reilly's "Hacks" Series may need an introduction. The "Hacks" Series is an ever-growing set of books with focused attention on a particular topic, like Astronomy, Mental Improvement, or even Halo 2. The books are generally short, and contain article-length "hacks" of varying difficulty, noted by a thermometer next to the hack number and description. These "hacks" fall into several categories; the non-obvious solution to a problem, the performance improvement, and the "gee, I didn't know it could do that" oddity. What makes this series special compared with other books is the willingness to "void the warranty" on a particular product, and get straight to the internals, whether they lay in hardware or software. If something can be made better by opening the covers, or twiddling with the program layout, then its eligible for inclusion in these books. The series lends itself to a wide range of topics, and the format is great for a quick read, or for (my favorite) just randomly opening the book and reading what's there.

Perl Hacks is not a book that you'd find yourself reading straight through (although you do want to make sure you visit every hack in the book at least once). The book is divided into nine chapters: Productivity Hacks, User Interaction, Data Munging, Working with Modules, Object Hacks, Debugging, Developer Tricks, Know Thy Code, and Expand Your Perl Foo. There are 101 hacks in this book, ranging from the simple (Reading files backward, or managing your module paths) to the truly perverse (Replacing bad code without touching it by substituting the system-wide exit call with your own[...]. Each hack title is listed in the table of contents, with both the page number and the hack number. Each hack contains a graphic of a thermometer next to the number to show the relative difficulty of the hack (higher temperatures = more difficult hacks). There quite a variety of hacks placed throughout the book. Not once did I feel that the book was padded with something that really didn't belong in the book. If anything Perl Hacks opened my eyes to things that I would never have thought to do, but could easily see as being useful. I wouldn't have thought to create my own personal module bundles for moving my Perl programs between machines (I've always done it the old fashioned way: run, cpan install, repeat), but hack #31 makes it so "of course" that I'm thinking of including this in all of my Perl code that I ship. Hack #74 shows how to trace all of the modules your program uses (and all of their modules, too). Hack #52 is a simple hack ("Make Invisible Characters Apparent") but I can see this saving a developer or two some time when figuring out why their code isn't behaving properly. Of course, not all hacks in the book are productive (at least, not while you're programming). Hack #37, "Drink to the CPAN" is a drinking game you and your Perl buddies may want to try.

Perl Hacks is a short book, at less than 300 pages, but it's loaded with incredibly useful information. Much like the "Perl Cookbook" (also from O'Reilly) you'll find lots of useful items hidden in their pages. Many times I started with one hack, and finished the chapter reading the rest of the hacks because there were just that interesting. Perl Hacks is highly recommended for any Perl programmer to have on their programmer book shelf. Sure, you might be able to find some of the hacks out there on the net, but I think you'll find as I have that this is more of a go-to reference for finding out some of the more interesting corners of Perl.

I received this book as a token of appreciation for my contributions to
the 2006 Perl Advent Calendar. It's the first book I read as part of the
O'Reilly Hacks' series of books, and it proved to be a light yet informative and entertaining
read.

The book covers various useful "hacks" or small tricks that allow one to
achieve a lot of cool tasks when working with Perl. These tricks are unorthodox
and stretch the limit of one's Perl knowledge. Since they require an advanced
knowledge and understanding of Perl, I would recommend this book only for Perl
experts. Some of the B:: using modules were even too high-level for me to
understand how they worked internally. However, I understood the purpose of the
code in all cases, even if I didn't understand the code itself.

So it is a recommended read for people who've worked with Perl a lot,
and wish to learn many new and useful tricks. Perl Hacks for Perl hackers,
indeed!

From the title, I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Perl Hacks. Was it going to be about rummaging around in Perl's internals? Making Perl do clever, yet ultimately dumb and pointless tricks? It turns out that, while there is some fairly voodooish material here, some of it quite playful, on the whole it's a very practical book. Aimed firmly at the advanced Perl programmer who knows when it's appropriate to mess about with the symbol table, temporarily turn off warnings, or crack out one of the B:: modules, this is a collection of 101 suggestions to improve your productivity, boggle your mind about what Perl can do, or both.

The content reminds me a little of the likes of Exceptional C++ Style, a mixture of advanced best practices, and things which you may not need to know, but you'll probably still be interested in finding out how it works. For instance, have you ever considered tieing an array or hash variable to a function? Ever wanted to name a supposed anonymous subroutine? Print out the source code as well as the line number of a syntax error? Nor me, but Perl Hacks shows how it could be useful. These are illustrative of the spirit of the book.

My favourite material was probably the chapter on modules. Included are how-tos for outputting all the modules used in a package, automatically reloading modules in running code, shortening long package names with the CPAN 'aliased' module, and making up your own bundle of modules for easy installation. There's also an interesting object chapter with subjects such as: inside out objects, using YAML for serialisation, using traits and autogeneration of accessors.

Additionally, there's a little on using those scary B:: packages, using modules which use the B:: packages or other dark magic (e.g. peeking inside closures), some fairly hardcore tracing and profiling, that touches on some Perl VM internals. Also worth mentioning is the hack that hijacks the angle bracket glob operator to create Haskell/Python-style list comprehensions.

You are going to have to be one scarily gifted Perl hacker not to find something useful or at least thought-provoking at regular intervals throughout this book. My only complaint is that the hack format, which the blurb on the back of the book describes as a "short lesson", does not lend itself equally well to all hacks. While I liked the chapter on objects, some of the hacks (in particular the traits hack, some of the testing material) were too short.

If you like the sound of a book that's somewhere between Perl Cookbook, Perl Best Practices and the second edition of Advanced Perl Programming, you're going to love this.

In a time when new computer languages are dime a dozen, perl unquestionably retains its beauty. Keeping with the philosophy of perl - there is more than one way to do it - the book shows you ingenious ways to work with this powerful language. This is a true hacks book and meant mostly for the advanced user. Before reading this book, I didn't even realize what I didn't know and I rate myself just short of contributing to CPAN. Even if you have read all the popular books - Perl Programming, Perl Best Practices etc. you'll still find a lot of gems.

Simply put if you like perl, you'll love this book. Welcome to the next level...

To be completely honest, this isn't the book I thought it was going to be. Most O'Reilly Hacks books start off pretty simply and in a few chapters take you to the further reaches of their subject area. Whilst this is a great way to quickly get a good taste of a particular topic, it has the occasional disadvantage that for subjects that you know well, the first couple of chapters can seem a bit basic. As I know Perl pretty well, I thought I would be on familiar ground for at least half of the book.

I was wrong.

Oh, it started off easily enough. Making use of various browser and command line tools to get easy access to Perl documentation, creating some useful shell aliases to cut down typing for your most common tasks. "Oh yes", I thought smugly to myself, "I know all that". But by about Hack 5 I was reading about little tweaks that I didn't know about. I'd start a hack thinking that I knew everything that the authors were going to cover and end up frustrated that I was on the tube and couldn't immediately try out the new trick I had just learnt.

It's really that kind of book. Pretty much everyone who reads it will pick up something that will it easier for them to get their job done (well, assuming that their job involves writing Perl code!) And, of course, looking at the list of authors, that's only to be expected. The three authors listed on the cover are three of the Perl communities most respected members. And the list of other contributers reads like a who's who of people who are doing interesting things with Perl - people whose use.perl journals are always interesting or whose posts on Perl Monks are worth reading before other people's. Luckily, it turns out that all these excellent programmers can also explain what they are doing (and why they are doing it) very clearly.

Like all books in the Hacks series, it's a little bitty. The hacks are organised into nine broad chapters, but the connections between hacks in the same chapter can sometimes be a bit hard to see. But I enjoyed that. In places it made the book a bit of a rollercoaster ride. You're never quite sure what is coming next, but you know it's going to be fun.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more apt the fairground analogy seems. When you ask Perl programmers what they like about Perl, you'll often hear "fun" mentioned near the top of the list. People use Perl because they enjoy it. And the authors' enjoyment of Perl really comes through in the book. It's obvious that they really wanted to show people the things that they thought were really cool.

Although I did learn useful tips from the earlier part of the book, it was really the last three chapters that were the most useful for me. Chapter 7, Developer Tricks, had a lot of useful things to say about testing, Chapter 8, Know Thy Code, contains a lot of information on using Perl to examine your Perl code and Chapter 9, Expand Your Perl Foo was a grab-bag of obscure (but still useful) Perl tricks.

So where does this book fit in to O'Reilly's Perl canon? I can't recommend it for beginners. But if you're a working Perl programmer with a couple of years' experience then I'd be very surprised if you didn't pick up something that will be useful to you. And don't worry about it overlapping with other books in your Perl library - offhand I can't think of anything in the book that has been covered in any previous Perl book.

All in all, this would make a very useful addition to your Perl library.

serious system testing has never been part of the culture here. One day the manager decided that it would be a good thing if we did proper, coordinated, effective stress and load testing. I got stuck with coming up with strategy. I started reading this book expecting a how to guide. I expected to be spoon fed all the nittt gritty details on how to do it. This is not what I got.

This book points you in the right direction, show you the tools you could use, explains what you need to think about and the questions you need to ask. The how-to and the answers to the questions are more for you to figure out yourslef.

At the end of it you come away with a better understanding of what you need to do, why you need to do, high level how you are going to do it and the value you and your company are going to gain by doing all of this.

I would strongly recommend it to anyone having to get involved in system analysis and performance. It gives you a great broader picture of the whole issue. You think you know what you have got yourself involved in. this book shows you that you appreciate only the tip of the iceberg.

This is an excellent book which can be used for perfomance tuning and stress testing phase of big projects

Written by an authority on the subject. This book is a treasure trove of information that is detailed and essential for covering all aspects of a properly executed stress test. Written from experience, this book is a definite "MUST" read for anyone assigned the challenging task.

This book features good discussion on performance tuning the mySAP suite that no other books have so far. This is the perfect book for SAP Stress Test Project Managers, SAP Stress Test Project Teams, SAP Basis Administrators, Oracle DBAs, Unix Administrators managing SAP systems, and project implementation teams. Those who stress test their systems well with the help of this book will have significant returns.

The ultimate reference for performance testing (certainly testing, more so than actual tuning, though the latter is covered well in the last few chapters). The author's approach is complete in that it addresses how to test along with what, when, to what degree, and with what kind of staffing resources. I'm already thinking of ways we can improve our own change control processes, and based on tools and methods covered by the author I'm convinced I can do so cheaper and with less impact to my users than I previously thought possible. Case in point, look into the two chapters on tools for testing and monitoring: in this alone, the book will pay for itself in short order.

A good resource for faculty. Well written with nice integrated examples. I always recommend this book to faculty looking to develop rubrics for their teaching.

While it may not seem like it to students, grading is a very complex exercise for teachers and instructors. Anyone hoping to go into that line of work will have to learn about how complex and uncertain the art of grading can be, and this book is a strong compendium of current theory on such matters. An especially valuable aspect of this book is its coverage of the different schools of thought on whether grading is really an accurate assessment tool at all, and how all parties in the education process (students, teachers, administrators, parents, employers) have different conceptions of the usefulness and value of grades. But while this book is hugely informative at the practical level, beware of a few larger theoretical weaknesses. Frequently, certain practices that are currently held in high esteem become overused examples of larger concepts. The most glaring example is the inaccurately-titled chapter "Establishing Criteria and Standards for Grading" which is entirely about just one method, Primary Trait Analysis. At a higher level, this book assumes that all instructors will have the privilege of smaller class sizes, or welcoming administrative environments, in which experimenting with grading methods is possible or practical at all. Meanwhile this book (and many others like it) fails to distinguish between future advancements in theory and the real world in which such theories and practices have yet to be implemented on any appreciable scale. [~doomsdayer520~]

Do you love to teach but hate the grading process? That's where I was when I picked up this book. Very practically written, "Effective Grading" shows you how to choose the proper grading model for a class, how to motivate students through properly communicating your grading system, and how to structure your assignments to increase student learning. All this while drastically reducing the amount of time you need to spend on grading papers. Within a week of reading this book, I've made some drastic changes in my courses which will benefit both my students and myself.

I admit I was skeptical when I started this book--so many pedagogically oriented texts seem to sacrifice content and standards for "feel-good" solutions to education. However, I have found this book to offer excellent suggestions for every aspect of structuring classes to teach and evaluate what you most want your students to learn. In my college English classes, I've used variations of Primary Trait Analyses and Gateway Criteria and they have made a big difference in the levels of thinking and writing in my own students. Giving students specific guidelines allows them to focus on what's important about the assignment, set their priorities appropriately, and makes things much easier for me when the time comes for grading. I highly recommend this book.

To give a brief background about myself. I have been one of the primary contributor and committer of the Web Tools Platform (WTP) eclipse tools project since its inception through WTP 1.5 release. I contributed the Validation Framework component for this project. I read a large portion of this book and can say that this most comprehensive book that explains the complete WTP in a step by step fashion that can be help you easily understand the whole WTP project, its sub projects, its components and features through several real world examples. I strongly recommend this book to all users and contributors of WTP.

Vijay Bhadriraju, IBM

Eclipse Web Tools Platform: Developing Java(TM) Web Applications

This is an excellent book; I specially liked the iterative approach (for example, for presentation tier, iteration 1: HTML, iteration 2: add CSS, iteration 3: add Javascripts, iteration 4: XML and XSLT, iteration 5: DTD)authors have taken. I have used examples from this book, with Eclipse and NetBeans, of course for Eclipse user this book has added value, since it goes through configuration of Eclipse and recommended practices. Please ignore the gripe about errors in the code; there are two minor errors which are detailed in the errata on book's companion site, it doesn't take more than a minute to fix those two issues.

Authors discuss All three tiers in great detail. How about this, by page 85 you would be deploying a simple web service (and you would be amazed how simple it is).

Though I have had some experience in Java, Eclipse, and WTP, a recent project required me to get more into depth. This book got me through the whole development process. It explained to me clean coding techniques when writing web apps in Java, how to get my web server up and running for use with WTP, to get my apps to talk to the server, debugging using different tools, and unit testing in a web environment.

This book was an invaluable addition to my collection, and is also a great reference now that I have mastered these concepts.

If you are in a situation like me, then this might be the best book. I read some introductory long ago at university. A few years from now I needed to refresh on the subject and get a little deeper. I have browsed or read some other books, but this is now my number one choice for reference. It starts very gently with e.g. spelled out examples on matrix addition. It ends with (by my standards) advanced topics like eigenstructures, quadratic forms, generalized inverses etc. I admire the writing style which is compact, precise and at the same time a little relaxed.

There are a lot of people out there who do statistical analysis but who do not possess the mathematical knowledge underpinning a lot of what they are doing (i.e., linear algebra and some calculus). Most of the time people can get away with using stastical software as a sort of 'black box' and not worry about the math. But there are situations when having the background knowledge is crucial.

This book does an excellent job of facilitating self-study of the math underpinning multivariate statistical analysis ... namely, linear (matrix) algebra and some calculus. Each chapter has a set of questions and ALL of the answers are provided in the book (handy for self-study). The one slight critique of this book I can give is that I wish the book did more on the calculus aspects. However, that is a minor comment and the knowledge that this book imparts of linear algebra to self-learners is extremely valuable.

I don't have a lot to say about "Network Performance Open Source Toolkit" (NPOST), other than I think it's excellent. We need more tool-oriented books to teach admins how to do real work on their networks. NPOST delivers chapter after chapter of practical, hands-on material applicable to the networking shop in any organization.

NPOST shines in three respects. First, the author ensures readers can properly install each tool he discusses. When dealing with open source tools, installation cannot be taken for granted. (The exception is using the FreeBSD operating system's "ports tree," which almost guarantees easy installation of any tool listed in the system.) Second, the author walks readers through the use of each tool, explaining what it does and how to best deploy it. Finally, readers are given mini-case studies demonstrating the use of each tool to solve real-world problems. This is just the sort of approach which helps readers understand the differences between network simulators and emulators, for example.

I found only a few minor issues. When providing command-line tcpdump options on pages 230 and 234, I believe the author should have passed a '-s 1514' option to change the default 68-byte snaplength to something more reasonable. I felt the FreeBSD kernel configuration advice in chapter 14 was insufficient, and didn't specify whether it applied to 4.x or 5.x FreeBSD systems. Last, the author's tcpdump command line for capturing FTP sessions on p. 230 will only capture "active" FTP sessions using port 20 TCP. It will miss any passive FTP data channels.

In summary, I give NPOST two thumbs up. Since so many other open source networking tools are available, perhaps we'll see a second volume?

This book helped me out a lot in troubleshooting my networks and trying to figure out what was wrong with it. I had switches and hubs cascaded too many times, bad network interface cards that were causing broadcast storms, i had a hacker that was sitting on a pc he took control of. and i figure it all out with the book by RB. i was able to analyze each traffic segment and immediately recognized what type of traffic was being sent across the network. i was even able to decipher spoofed ip addresses created by the hacker. this book is amazing!

The approach and techniques given in this book will get the new test manager and his or her team quickly started with basic techniques for managing testing. The key strengths of this book include:

(1) Instructions for developing test plans, and associated test cases and reports - the material is fairly basic, but complete and consistent with good practices.
(2) An excellent discussion of, and advice for, effective management of a test team, setting priorities and managing budgets.
(3) Practical advice for setting objectives and scope within the testing process.

While this book will give the in-the-trenches test professionals a view of the 'big picture', it's more suited to managers and QA leads who are seeking guidelines for establishing the foundation of a test process, and who want to quickly implement standards for test documentation and a workflow. The book's accompanying web page provides over 50 templates, case studies and tools that can be downloaded and immediately used within your organization. In addition, the website contains a small (but growing) collection of articles, presentations and links that augment the material in this book.

Although there are a handful of other books on test management that are equal to this one, each has strengths and weaknesses - but all provide sound advice and a structured approach to managing the test process. This particular book's strengths include the downloadable documents that will save much time and effort, and the straightforward approach to basic test management. If you are trying to get a basic test process in place you won't go wrong if you select this book.

I would definitely buy from this person again. They sent the book out the next day, from the original order date. She sent me an email that day, stating that she had put it in the mail. It was scheduled to get here on a tuesday, but knowing the mail, I did not get the book until Friday. But that is okay. That was beyond the seller's fault. The book was in EXCELLENT shape, even though it was listed as "good" condition.

The book is great as well. I will be able to use this book for the rest of the semester, as well as in my profession.

The Physician Investigator Handbook, by Deborah Rosenbaum and Fred O. Smith, is an excellent book for every physician who conducts, or who has ever considered conducting, clinical trials. The book contains practical and useful information about the conduct of clinical trials from the physician's perspective. Physicians will learn, in a clear and concise format, about the facilities and staff required, the investigator's role, compliance with regulations, and how to prepare study budgets and work with the study sponsor and its representatives. This book is an excellent guide to help physicians decide whether to enter the lucrative world of clinical trials. Furthermore, it can save time and money for novice and experienced investigators alike. I highly recommend this book for all physician investigators involved in the conduct of clinical trials. The authors write from experience and pack the book with useful information. What a great investment!

Sullivan and Tennant report the importance of evaluating programs in order to improve them. They also make the point that effective evaluation does not come from the involvement of outsiders. "Teachers and other school personnel, those who know their school programs best, can use evaluative tools to make their schools better" (p.3). The authors go on to discuss the many different purposes that evaluation results can be used for.
This evaluation guide is a must read. I would recommend it as a resource in any classroom or school library.