Today”s software systems are comprised of numerous distributed services, spanning platforms, protocols, and programming languages, all with significant impact on the operations environment. Moreover, teams have become increasingly specialized and geographically distributed. Successful deployment of modern solutions depends on bridging the communication gap between development and operations so that the entire IT department is represented early and often throughout the software lifecycle.

In the past, testing tools were kept separate from development tools. Testers used a separate environment and the test scripts that they wrote were stored in a separate repository from source code control. Feedback was sometimes challenging, bugs hard to trace down when separate systems were used, and performance testing was usually done after the development cycle was near complete. This added cost, time and ultimately stress to the development lifecycle.

Network impersonation load testing simulates users accessing the application using a mix of network connections. View larger.

Besides the predefined test types; Web, load, unit, manual, and ordered, Visual Studio 2005 includes a generic test type that can be used to extend testing capabilities. View larger.

Browser impersonation allows testers to a heterogeneous browser mix when testing load against a Web application. View larger.

A New Way to Test
In the past, because testing tools were kept separate from development tools, feedback was sometimes challenging, bugs were hard to trace down when separate systems were used, and performance testing was usually done after the development cycle was near complete. All of this added cost, time and ultimately stress to the development lifecycle. Team Edition for Software Testers addresses these issues by integrating and streamlining the testing process into your entire development cycle.

With Team Edition for Software Testers you can reduce the complexity of testing applications by offering access to advanced testing tools and features from within the Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to create and run tests. By providing all members of a software team access to an overall shared warehouse for integrated feedback and reporting, you can tightly integrate testing into their software development collaboration.

Team Edition for Software Testers lets you accurately simulate production workloads in different environments, analyze and troubleshoot bottlenecks prior to deployment, and use cost-effective CPU based load agent licensing to simulate virtual users. You can also quickly automate and run tests by creating customizable and dynamic Web tests using the Web test recorder. This allows you to create commonly used tests using out-of-the-box test types, or extend your test framework using generic tests.

Team Edition for Software Testers Features
Visual Studio Team Test consists of three main areas — testing types, testing environment, and extensibility.

Team Edition for Software Testers offers tester’s access to advanced testing tools and features from one easy location. A number of core test types — including unit, Web, load, and manual tests — as well as the measurement of code coverage, are now integrated into Visual Studio 2005, making it easier then ever before for testers to be an integral part of the development process.

Because Team Edition for Software Testers is tightly integrated within the Visual Studio 2005 Team System, software testers can publish results to a common database, generate trend and historical reports, compare data, and determine the number and type of bugs identified as a result of testing. Deep integration into the current developer environment, along with the traditional project types, make it easier for all participants of the development team to access and share information.

And by offering a rich, extensible infrastructure for customers and third-parties to build upon, Team Edition for Software Testers includes an infrastructure that allows for two levels of extensibility. The first is designed for individual testers, and the second is designed for those who need to extend Visual Studio. By providing an open architecture, Visual Studio 2005 Team System allows for current and future test types from both internal testing staff and external partners to be added.

Team Edition for Software Testers also features a suite of new test tools. All tests, including unit, Web, load and manual testing, are first-class citizens in Visual Studio and can be shared across the organization. The test results can be published to a database, and you can generate trend and historical reports, compare different kinds of data, see how many and which bugs were found as a result of testing, and identify which bugs are not linked to a test that could help reproduce them.

Other advanced features include an automated and data-driven unit testing capability for the developer; efficient load test generation with easy deployment of test code and reverse deployment of logs and test results; parallel functional test execution with code coverage, Load Test Monitor and performance counters for analysis; customizable auto generated Web tests; and custom validation and extraction rules and the Web test plug-in that can call code during a test run.

MSDN Premium Subscriptions
Team Edition for Software Testers includes an MSDN Premium Subscription. An MSDN Premium Subscription provides continuous, priority access to the technologies you need to support Team Edition for Software Testers and build a broad range of applications and Web services, including the latest versions of Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows XP Professional Edition, Windows XP Home Edition, and future Windows releases. (Usage rights are limited to development and testing only.)

With the subscription, your technical support includes unlimited usage of MSDN Managed Newsgroups for online support with a guaranteed response time of two business days, phone-based support incidents, and free access to MSDN Online Concierge for nontechnical questions regarding navigation of the MSDN site, Knowledge Base article searches, and MSDN Subscriber Downloads. Also, continuously updated technical content is available through the MSDN Library, which offers comprehensive programming information, code samples, sample applications, technical documentation and articles, and the Microsoft Developer Knowledge Base.

Customers who qualify for the renewal price include current subscribers to:

• Any Visual Studio Team edition with MSDN Premium Subscription
• MSDN Universal

Buy from Amazon –> Microsoft Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Testers 2005 w/MSDN Premium Renewal

Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Test Edition Renewal

• Comprehensive Web testing tools for Web Services, HTTP, XML, and ASP.NET applications
• Enables testers to author, execute, and manage tests and related work items–all from within Visual Studio
• Load testing to simulate production loads and diagnose performance issues in labs and pre-production environments
• Code coverage to measure the effectiveness of your tests
• Integrated defect and test list management (Requires Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server)

Product Description
Item #: 26269H. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) provides benefits that traditional architectures have not been able to deliver. However, software architects and developers require tools that provide specific support to ease the burden of design and implementation.Ensure quality and performance of Service Oriented Applications. Using the comprehensive Web testing tools in Visual Studio Team System 2008 Test Edition, you have coverage for testing Web Services, HTTP, XML and ASP.NET applications. You can data bind Web tests to broaden coverage and also add custom validation or extraction rules to the recorded tests all through a simplified Web Test editor. You can also generate code automatically from recorded tests to create highly specialized tests in supported .NET languages and use existing coding skills to extend and debug tests within the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 IDE. Affordable licensing enables tool access to a larger team of testers and developers that can uncover architectural and design issues to identify bottlenecks early in the development life-cycle. You can simulate production loads using the Visual Studio Team System Load Test Agent to diagnose performance issues quickly in your testing labs and pre-production environments and you can quickly convert your existing tests into load tests. The inbuilt prescriptive guidance provides pre-packaged counters, pre-set thresholds, pre-built views of load statistics and their effect on the servers under test and built-in knowledge of server behavior.

Product Description
Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Test Edition – complete package
Category: Development tools
Subcategory: Development tools – team tools, development tools – RAD suites
License Type: Complete package
Bundled Support: MSDN Premium Subscription Renewal
License Qty: 1 user
License Pricing: Standard
Licensing Details: Not to Latin America
Language(s): English
Platform: Windows
DistributionAmazon.com
Visual Studio Team System 2008 Test Edition provides a comprehensive suite of testing tools for Web applications and services that are integrated into the Visual Studio environment. These testing tools enable testers to author, execute, and manage tests and related work itemsÑall from within Visual Studio.

Microsoft Visual Studio Team System is an integrated Application Life Cycle Management (ALM) solution comprising tools, processes, and guidance to help all members of a development team improve their skills and work effectively together.

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Test Edition is an easy-to-use yet comprehensive testing technology that enables testers to ensure the performance and quality of applications while reducing the complexity of the testing process, increasing team productivity, and improving team collaboration. Web testing tools enable you to record repeatable tests and generate code automatically to reduce time to create, execute, and maintain tests. Your team can optimize application performance and leverage knowledge of server behavior built into the performance tools. Using Team Foundation Server, testers can better collaborate with the rest of the team and integrate quality throughout the software development process.

Perform more accurate evaluations
Create more comprehensive test validation rules and bind to additional data sources for more accurate, real-world application evaluation using enhanced Web tests.

Improve load-test management
Open or remove existing load-test results from the load-test repository. Share imported and exported results files with other users.

Understand application performance
Gain insight into application performance by viewing summary load-test reports with a new load-test analyzer.

What’s New in 2008
Web and load test improvements, including:

• Web Test Validation Rule Improvements: Enable testers to create more comprehensive validation rules for the application being tested.
• Better Web Test Data Binding: Bind.CSV and XML data files, as well as databases to a Web test using a simple databinding wizard.
• Improved Load Test Results Management: Open or remove an existing load test result from the load-test repository.
• Load test summary report support: Multiple machine graphs are supported in the Load Test Analyzer.
• Web Test Recorder: Record AJAX requests and JavaScript pop-ups.
• Load Modeling: More closely simulate real-world usage of your Web applications with the new load modeling tools.

Feature Highlights

• Comprehensive Web testing tools for Web Services, HTTP, XML, and ASP.NET applications
• Load testing to simulate production loads and diagnose performance issues in labs and pre-production environments
• Code coverage to measure the effectiveness of your tests
• Integrated defect and test list management*

*Requires Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server.

Microsoft’s Solution for Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)
Building the right team and fostering a culture of continuous improvement is the foundation for success. You also need the right tools and processes in place for your team to do their best work. That’s where Microsoft Visual Studio Team System can help.

Overcoming Application Development Challenges
Whether you’re part of an application development team, or a business stakeholder who depends on IT for business-critical applications, you know first-hand some of the many challenges associated with application development. These challenges depend on the situation, but often include:

• Managing shifting business requirements throughout the project
• Communication gaps between project managers, developers and testers
• Adequately testing applications for quality and reliability
• Gaining visibility into project status to make trade-off decisions and to drive predictable project delivery
• Dealing with global development, regulatory and compliance challenges

These are not simple challenges to overcome; many are interrelated and involve multiple team members and stakeholders. By systematically improving capabilities across your team, you can achieve dramatic improvements in your project success rates, better mitigate risks and increase your overall impact to the business.

Visual Studio Team System can help your team overcome these challenges in the following ways:

Collaborate and Communicate
Most software development teams use a number of stand-alone tools to manage the application lifecycle. Specifications and requirements are stored on file shares or SharePoint sites; tasks assigned to developers are managed using e-mail; bugs are tracked with spreadsheets; and source code resides in one or more version-control systems. With important information in so many different places, it’s hard for team members to work together effectively, resulting in additional effort and the potential for miscommunication.

Integrated Team Server
Visual Studio Team System facilitates teamwide communication and collaboration by providing a unified repository for all project data, along with the tools to define, enforce, and automate desired processes. At its heart is Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server, which supports source code and version control, work item tracking, automated builds and quality checks, and more. Configurable process templates tie all team activity together, with changes in status gathered automatically as part of everyday workflows. Automatic notifications keep team members informed of key events, such as a failed build. And with all information in one place and tied together, all efforts are traceable back to initial requirements and all stakeholders have deep, real-time visibility into project status and quality.

Support for All Disciplines
Team System Team Foundation Server was designed to meet the needs of all members of the extended development team, not just software developers. Business analysts and architects can manage scenarios, requirements, and design documents; project managers and development leads can assign, track, and report on project status; database professionals can manage database schemas and deployment scripts; and testers can manage regression and load tests, determine test coverage, and keep a close eye on quality trends. The Visual Studio Team Explorer client provides all team members with a single point of access to all project artifacts and data, while a prebuilt, customizable SharePoint portal extends the same information to remote team members and other project stakeholders.

Key Benefits
By bringing all project artifacts, data, and status together in one place, Visual Studio Team System enables more effective team communication and collaboration. Defined and consistently enforced processes, full traceability, and built-in status reporting help maximize individual productivity, at the same time helping to ensure that the efforts of each team member remain well defined and aligned with the team’s overall priorities.

Ensure Quality, Early and Often
Quality is often neglected during most phases of the development process. Instead, it is measured near the end of the process, when code is handed off to be tested. This approach often results in extra work and a slipping schedule as features thought to be complete are pushed back to developers for rework. Even if code passes initial QA tests, performance and scalability issues can remain undetected until software is deployed into production.

A Quality-Centric Tool Set
Microsoft Visual Studio Team System provides tools for ensuring quality throughout all phases of the application lifecycle, helping teams to deliver high-quality software faster and with less rework. From tracking requirements during planning to performance and load testing of the completed application, Visual Studio Team System provides the tools needed to ensure all aspects of software quality.

Focus on Quality Throughout the Application Lifecycle
The focus on quality begins during the planning phase, before the first line of code is written, when work item tracking helps thoroughly map scenarios to requirements. As architects design a solution that meets those requirements, tools such as the Application Designer, Distributed System Designer, and Deployment Designer help ensure that the solution will deliver the necessary performance, scalability, and manageability.

During development, before code is checked in, static code-analysis tools help prevent coding errors and potential security issues, while performance profiling and hot-path analysis help avoid potential performance and scalability problems. Developers can easily create unit tests to validate application and database objects, using code coverage analysis tools to determine the completeness of those tests. Tools for examining code metrics can gauge the complexity and maintainability of code.

QA engineers can begin writing test cases and load tests early, mapping them to work items and managing all test activity with Visual Studio Team System. As requirements change, full traceability between work items helps them ensure that test coverage remains complete. Prior to production deployment, comprehensive load-testing tools help QA engineers validate the application’s performance and scalability as a whole.

Key Benefits
Visual Studio Team System enables development teams to ensure quality throughout all phases of the application lifecycle, not just near the end. Such an approach helps minimize the rework-and-retest “churn” that typically occurs near the end of each development iteration, during which tradeoffs on quality versus schedules must often be made–in turn helping to increase software quality, reduce time-to-market, and decrease overall development costs.

Manage Team Workflow
Development teams deal with many different types of work items, such as scenarios, use cases, requirements, developer tasks, change requests, test passes, and bugs. However, most teams lack a good way to manage all those work items, define the relationships between them, and trace those relationships and the effects of status changes throughout the application lifecycle. Through such capabilities, teams can better gauge progress toward goals and ensure that resources are not being wasted on unnecessary work.

Detailed Work Plans
Work item tracking in Microsoft Visual Studio Team System provides an efficient way to manage and monitor the status of all project-related activity. All projects have detailed work plans, with initial work items generated automatically based on process templates. Each work item typically has a title; a description; a team member to whom the work is assigned; and a current state, such as proposed, active, resolved, or closed. Work items can also have links to other work items, attachments, and custom fields.

Full Visibility and Traceability
With relationships between work items clearly defined and changes in the status of work items collected automatically, a team’s progress-to-goals remains visible at all times, even as work is handed off among team members. For example, a business analyst may break down scenarios into requirements, which a development lead divides into tasks for developers. As developers finish the tasks, source codeÐcontrol policies require them to associate their checked-in code with work items. Because those change sets are associated with each build, as a new build passes QA tests, all stakeholders can see that, for example, 60 percent of the work required to meet all project requirements is now complete.

Key Benefits
Work item tracking provides an efficient way to manage the efforts of all team members, with full traceability back to initial project goals and real-time visibility into team progress. Team members will know how their assigned tasks are related to project goals as a whole, and project managers and leads can ensure that no unnecessary work is assigned. And because all changes to work items are logged and fully auditable, those same capabilities can help address complex compliance and regulatory requirements.

Integrate Work Frequently
Another quality-related area where most teams see room for improvement is source code management and version control. One common issue is the integration of individual developer efforts into the official code base, which can result in the all-too-frequent “broken build”–and force QA resources to sit idle until the issues have been resolved and a new build is ready to test.

Comprehensive Version Control
Microsoft Visual Studio Team System helps solve these pains by providing a comprehensive, flexible, version-control system. This functionality is not a mere upgrade to Microsoft Visual SourceSafe version-control system; rather, the version-control capabilities of Visual Studio Team System Team Foundation Server were designed from the ground up to deliver the same scalability, performance, and reliability of its underlying data store, which is based on Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database software. Built-in tools aid in the migration of source code and change history from Visual SourceSafe.

Some key version-control features in Visual Studio Team System Team Foundation Server include atomic check-ins, which help maintain the integrity of source-code files, and policies that require developers to perform unit tests or static code analysis prior to checking in code and to associate all checked-in code with work items. Support for “shelving” code enables developers to store work in process on the server without checking it in, and a new “get latest on edit” feature checks for new code on the server when a developer starts to edit a local copy–just in case someone else has made changes since the code was checked out.

Powerful Build Server
Version control in Visual Studio Team System is complemented by its Team Build features, including support for continuous integration builds every time someone checks in code. Unit tests and build verification tests can be run as part of the process, and if the build or tests fail, designated stakeholders are automatically notified. Flexible build definitions also help reduce the time spent managing scripts for “official” builds, providing the ability to easily automate compilation, unit tests, static code analysis, virtual server configuration, Web site or Web services configuration, application installation, database deployment, test-data generation, and load tests.

Key Benefits
The version-control and Team Build features in Visual Studio Team System help teams ensure quality by enabling them to easily and frequently integrate the work of individual team members–and validate that the combined efforts work as expected.

Use Familiar Tools
Many development teams want an integrated solution for application lifecycle management but also want to avoid the lost productivity associated with having to learn new tools.

Make Use of Existing Tools and Skill Sets
Microsoft Visual Studio Team System facilitates adoption by enabling team members to use tools that are already familiar to them. Project managers can design an itemized list of work items, assign those work items to developers, and track their completion using Microsoft Office Project Professional, or they can use Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet software to make global changes and quickly reassess priorities. Architects, software developers, development leads, database professionals, and testers can continue to use the Visual Studio integrated development environment, including Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition or any of the Visual Studio Team System 2008 editions. Remote team members and business stakeholders can use Visual Studio Team System Web Access to take advantage of all Visual Studio Team System features.

Key Benefits
Visual Studio Team System helps reduce “soft” adoption costs by integrating with the desktop applications that people already know and use. Instead of having to learn new tools, all team members can continue to use the tools that help them be the most productive.

Make Real-Time Decisions
Regardless of the maturity of their processes, many development teams lack full visibility into the application lifecycle–and thus they are unable to easily answer questions such as “Does the application meet all requirements?” and “Are we on schedule?”

Business Intelligence for Development Teams
Powered by an integrated Microsoft SQL Server 2005Ðbased data warehouse, the business intelligence features in Microsoft Visual Studio Team System provide the information needed to make informed, real-time decisions with just a click on a link. And because SQL Server Reporting Services is the engine underlying Visual Studio Team System business intelligence, teams can just as easily customize existing reports as they can create new ones.

One highly useful out-of-the-box report is Remaining Work, which provides a comprehensive view of all remaining work items, enabling development leads and project managers to easily see progress, identify bottlenecks, and, if necessary, reallocate resources. Another useful prebuilt report is Quality Indicators, which provides a combined view of unit test success rates, code coverage by unit tests, code churn, and active bugs–all tracked over time.

Key Benefits
Visual Studio Team System provides the information needed to make informed, real-time decisions on iteration planning, test coverage, bug trends, project schedules, resource allocation, and more–in turn helping development teams to deliver on time and on budget, and to ensure that projects meet all requirements. Project managers and development leads can be ready for team meetings in minutes instead of hours, saving everyone the effort of having to manually communicate status, and can answer questions posed by external stakeholders and upper management on the fly.

Drive Predictability
Most development teams recognize the value of consistent processes. However, they may not have such processes, know what they need, or know how to get started. Teams that have established processes may find that the processes are not consistently followed, or that adherence requires significant manual effort. Few teams have matured to the point that they can consistently and effortlessly follow established processes and, even if they have, must still deal with issues such as reorganization, new regulatory or compliance requirements, and bringing new team members up to speed.

Defined and Consistently Followed Processes
Visual Studio Team System includes integrated process templates to help teams deliver predictable results, continuously improve and adapt, and more effectively collaborate and communicate. The process templates are fully integrated with other Visual Studio Team System features, such as work item tracking and source code control, providing both the ability to define desired processes and the means for all team members to productively work within those processes.

Visual Studio Team System includes two out-of-the-box process templates: Microsoft Solutions Framework for Agile Software Development and Microsoft Solutions Framework for CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) Process Improvement. Each provides a set of predefined work items, HTML-based process guidance, a SharePoint portal, and a set of predefined reports. Templates for additional methodologies such as Scrum are available in the Visual Studio Team System Developer Center on MSDN, the Microsoft Developer Network.

Configurable and Adaptable Templates
Although prebuilt process templates can provide a strong head start, they’re not hard-coded. Teams can tailor them to support their own processes or can define new templates from scratch. Either way, the Process Template Editor makes it easy to create new types of work items, specify content for a work item type, define which work items are automatically generated for a new project, and define the relationships between work item types. Teams also can customize process guidance, SharePoint portal layout, and reports.

Key Benefits
Visual Studio Team System can help development teams define, adopt, and enforce consistent processes. In turn, that improved predictability can help increase project velocity, accelerate development cycles, and facilitate more accurate estimation of those cycles, thereby helping teams to deliver results better, faster, and more consistently.

Buy from Amazon –> Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Test Edition Renewal

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