Michael Doolin has over 20 years IT experience with AIB. This includes development and management rolls supporting Accounting systems, Departmental systems, ATM & Point of Sales systems, and Call Centre systems. In December 2000 Michael took charge of the IT System Test team which is the primary testing and QA team in the organisation.

The System Test team in AIB have had a process improvement programme in place for the last two years. The objective of the programme is to develop System Test into centre of excellence for testing that consistently provides high quality testing services supported by state of the art testing processes. This presentation will cover  the changing objectives of the programme:

• the process employed
• progress that we have made so far
• benefits achieved
• future goals
• lessons learnt & conclusions
• Success factors and pit falls for a process
• Improvement initiative
• Benefits that can be achieved by the programme

Brendan Lawlor is CTO of Spokesoft Business Components, based in the National Software Centre in Cork. He has spent 13 years working with a variety of Object Oriented technologies and methodologies. Having worked in the telecoms sector in France, Germany and Belgium, he returned to Ireland in 2000 to co-found Spokesoft - a J2EE component-based product and services company.

Problem
Some components of java web applications are very difficult to unit test. But without unit tests for these components, a most vital component of software development is lost: the ability to make changes and know that the system has not regressed. So what can be done to ensure quality, prevent regression and facilitate rapid change in web applications?

This presentation aims to demonstrate that writing the right kind of system tests will give developers of web applications the kind confidence-in-the-face-of-change that unit tests normally provide.

Solution
An excellent tool for this purpose is the HttpUnit API – an opensource project on sourceforge.net. It facilitates sending HTTP requests, and examining HTTP responses, transparently handling cookies and even dealing with basic JavaScript.