Why you should learn Java Programming Language

Why you should learn Java Programming Language

Here is my list of 10 reasons, which I tell anyone who asks my opinion about learning Java, and whether Java is the best programming language in terms of opportunities, development and community support.

1) Java is Easy to learn

Many would be surprised to see this one of the top reason for learning Java or considering it as the best programming language, but it is. If you have a steep learning curve, it would be difficult to get productive in a short span of time, which is the case with most of the professional project.

Java has fluent English like syntax with minimum magic characters e.g. Generics angle brackets, which makes it easy to read Java program and learn quickly.

Once a programmer is familiar with initial hurdles with installing JDK and setting up PATH and understand How Classpath works, it's pretty easy to write a program in Java.

2) Java is an Object Oriented Programming Language

Another reason, which made Java popular is that it's an Object Oriented Programming language. Developing OOP application is much easier, and it also helps to keep system modular, flexible and extensible.

Once you have knowledge of key OOP concepts like Abstraction, Encapsulation, Polymorphism, and Inheritance, you can use all those with Java. Java itself embodies many best practices and design pattern in its library.

Java is one of the few close to 100% OOP programming language. Java also promotes the use of SOLID and Object-oriented design principles in form of open source projects like Spring, which make sure your object dependency is managed well by using Dependency Injection principle

3) Java has Rich API

One more reason for Java programming language's huge success is it's Rich API and most importantly it's highly visible because come with Java installation.

When I first started Java programming, I used to code Applets and those days Applets provides great animation capability, which amazes new programmer like us, who are used to code in Turbo C++ editor.

Java provides API for I/O, networking, utilities, XML parsing, database connection, and almost everything. Whatever left is covered by open source libraries like Apache Commons, Google Guava, Jackson, Gson, Apache POI, and others.

4) Powerful development tools e.g. Eclipse, Netbeans

Believe it or not, Eclipse and Netbeans have played a huge role to make Java one of the best programming languages. Coding in IDE is a pleasure, especially if you have coded in DOS Editor or Notepad.

They not only help in code completion but also provides powerful debugging capability, which is essential for real-world development. Integrated Development Environment (IDE) made Java development much easier, faster and fluent. It's easy to search, refactor and read code using IDEs.

Apart from IDE, Java platform also has several other tools e.g.. Maven and ANT for building Java applications, decompilers, JConsole, Visual VM for monitoring Heap usage etc.

5) Great collection of Open Source libraries

Open source libraries ensure that Java should be used everywhere. Apache, Google, and other organization have contributed a lot of great libraries, which makes Java development easy, faster and cost-effective.

There are frameworks like Spring, Struts, Maven, which ensures that Java development follows best practices of software craftsmanship, promotes the use of design patterns and assisted Java developers to get there job done.

6) Wonderful Community Support

A strong and thriving community is the biggest strength of Java programming language and platform. No matter, How good a language is, it wouldn't survive, if there is no community to support, help and share their knowledge.

Java has been very lucky, it has lots of active forums, StackOverflow, open source organizations and several Java user groups to help everything.

There is the community to help beginners, advanced and even expert Java programmers. Java actually promotes taking and giving back to community habit. Lots of programmers, who use open source, contribute as a commiter, tester etc.

7) Java is FREE

People like FREE things, Don't you? So if a programmer wants to learn a programming language or an organization wants to use a technology, COST is an important factor. Since Java is free from the start, i.e. you don't need to pay anything to create Java application.

This FREE thing also helped Java to become popular among individual programmers, and among large organizations. If you are curious where exactly Java is used in the real world, see that post. I have talked about Java's adoption by all around the world.

Availability of Java programmers is another big thing, which makes an organization to choose Java for there strategic development.

8) Excellent documentation support - Javadocs

When I first saw Javadoc, I was amazed. It's a great piece of documentation, which tells a lot of things about Java API. I think without Javadoc documentation, Java wouldn't be as popular, and it's one of the main reason, Why I think Java is the best programming language.

Not everyone has time and intention to look at the code to learn what a method does or how to use a class. Javadoc made learning easy, and provide an excellent reference while coding in Java. 

With the advent of IDEs e.g. Eclipse, you don't even need to look Javadoc explicitly in the browser, but you can get all information in your IDE window itself.

9) Java is Platform Independent

In the 1990s, this was the main reason for Java's popularity. The idea of platform independence
 is great, and Java's tagline "write once run anywhere" and acronym "WORA" was enticing enough to attract lots of new development in Java.

This is still one of the reason for Java being the best programming language, most of Java applications are developed in Windows environment and run on UNIX platform.

10) Java is Everywhere

Yes, Java is everywhere, it's on the desktop, it's on mobile, it's on the card, almost everywhere and so is Java programmers. I think Java programmer outnumber any other programming language professional.

Though I don't have any data to back this up, it's based on experience. This huge availability of Java programmers is another reason, why organization prefers to choose Java for new development than any other programming language.

Having said that, programming is a very big field and if you look at C and UNIX, which is still surviving and even stronger enough to live another 20 years, Java also falls in the same league.

Though there are a lot of talks about functional programming, Scala, and other JVM languages, they need to go a long way to match community, resources, and popularity of Java.

Also, OOP is one of the best programming paradigms, and as long as it will be there Java will remain solid.

Dell Resets All Customers' Passwords After Potential Security Breach

Multinational computer technology company Dell disclosed Wednesday that its online electronics marketplace experienced a "cybersecurity incident" earlier this month when an unknown group of hackers infiltrated its internal network.

On November 9, Dell detected and disrupted unauthorized activity on its network attempting to steal customer information, including their names, email addresses and hashed passwords.

According to the company, the initial investigation found no conclusive evidence that the hackers succeeded to extract any information, but as a countermeasure Dell has reset passwords for all accounts on Dell.com website whether the data had been stolen or not.

Dell did not share any information on how hackers managed to infiltrate its network at the first place or how many user accounts were affected, but the company did confirm that payment information and Social Security numbers were not targeted.

Credit card and other sensitive customer information were not targeted. The incident did not impact any Dell products or services," Dell says.

You are affected if you have ever created an account on the Dell website to purchase any of their products or to access the online support.

"Upon detection of the attempted extraction, Dell immediately implemented countermeasures and initiated an investigation. Dell also retained a digital forensics firm to conduct an independent investigation and has engaged law enforcement," the company said.

Domain Name System

The domain name system (DNS) is the way that internet domain names are located and translated into internet protocol (IP) addresses. The domain name system maps the name people use to locate a website to the IP address that a computer uses to locate a website.

Skills You Need to Become a Big Data Developer

How To Become A Big Data Developer

Big Data has been the buzz for quite some time now. Big Data related jobs are topnotch in the market today and there is a fair share of reasons for that. Data is generated every hour, every minute, every second. Therefore, enterprises need professionals to control this huge amount of data and utilize it to their benefit.

However, with perks come responsibilities. Therefore, building a career in big data is not an easy task. Apart from being a data savvy professional, you have to be an adept developer and an expert engineer.

A Big Data Developer typically caters to the specific Big Data needs of an organization and works to solving the Big Data problems and requirements. As a specialist, he or she should be skilled enough to manage the complete lifecycle of a Hadoop solution, including platform selection, requirement analysis, design of technical architecture, application design, development, testing, and deployment.

Skills You Need to Become a Big Data Developer

Entering the field of Big Data requires some basic skillsets. Look through them before you dig into the field.

Problem Solving Aptitude

Big data is emerging and there are new technologies evolving everyday. As you dwell in the domain of big data, a new technology will come your way with every passing day. Therefore, to become a successful Big Data Developer, you should be a natural problem solver and tinkering with different tools and techniques should be your forte.

Data Visualization

Big data comes in various forms, e.g. unstructured, semistructured, which are tough to understand.Therefore, to draw insights from data you need to get your eyeballs onto it. Multivariate or logistic regression analysis may be useful for a small amount of data but the diversity and quantity of data generated for a business necessitates the use of data visualization tools like Tableau, d3.js, etc.

Data visualization tools help reveal hidden details that provide critical insights to drive business growth. Furthermore, as you progress in your career as a Big Data Developer, you grow up to become a Data Scientist or a Data Artist when being well-versed in one or more visualization tools is a practical requirement.

Machine Learning

Computational processing of the growing volumes and varieties of available data via machine learning makes it cheaper and more powerful. The need to know machine learning is also essential to a Big Data Developer’s career, because it makes possible to rapidly and automatically produce models to analyze complex data and deliver faster and accurate results on a large scale. Building precise models provides organizations with a better chance of identifying profitable opportunities.

Data Mining

Data mining is a critical skill to be possessed by a Big Data Developer. Unstructured data comprise a huge amount of Big Data and data mining enables you to maneuver such data and derive insights. Data mining lets you sift through all the unnecessary and repetitive information in your data and determine what is relevant and then make use of that information to assess and predict outcomes.

Statistical Analysis

Statistics is what big data is all about. If you are good in quantitative reasoning and have a background in mathematics or statistics, you are already close to become a Big Data Developer. Learn statistical tools like R, SAS, Matlab, SPSS, or Stata to add up to your skills and there is nothing that can stop you to become a good Big Data Developer.

SQL and NoSQL

Working with Big Data means working with databases. This mandates the knowledge of a database querying language. As a Big Data Developer, you should be aware of both SQL and NoSQL. Although, SQL is not used to solve all big data challenges today, the simplicity of the language makes it useful in many cases. Gradually, distributed, NoSQL databases like MongoDB and Cassandra are taking over Big Data jobs that were previously handled by SQL databases. Therefore, the ability to implement and use NoSQL databases is a must for a Big Data Developer.

General Purpose Programming

As a Big Data Developer, you need to code to conduct numerical and statistical analysis with massive data sets. It is essential to invest money and time to learn programming in languages like Java, C++, Python, Scala, etc. You need not master all of the languages.  If you know one language well, you can easily grasp the rest.

Apache Hadoop

Hadoop is an indispensable technology for Big Data. Many-a-times, Hadoop is mistaken to be synonymous to Big Data. It is essential to be a master in Hadoop to become a Big Data Developer. The knowledge and experience of core components of Hadoop and related technologies such as HDFS, MapReduce, Flume, Oozie, Hive, Pig, HBase, and YARN will render you high in demand.

Apache Spark

Spark is also an important technology to consider for big data processing. It is an open source data processing framework developed around speed, ease of use, and sophisticated analytics. Of course, Spark is not a replacement of Hadoop rather it should be looked at as an alternative to Hadoop MapReduce. Spark runs on top of existing HDFS infrastructure to provide enhanced functionality and it also supports the deployment of Spark applications in an existing Hadoop v1 cluster (with SIMR or Spark-Inside-MapReduce) or Hadoop v2 YARN cluster or Apache Mesos.

Understanding of Business

After all, the main motive to analyse and process big data is to use the information for business growth. Hence, domain expertise empowers Big Data Developers to identify opportunities and threats relevant to the business and design deploy the solutions accordingly besides communicating the issues effectively with different stakeholders.

In Conclusion

Becoming a Big Data Developer requires proficiency in all the aforementioned skills. IT professionals may have an advantage in learning new programming languages and technologies but people from a statistical or mathematical background also have the advantage of an analytical mind.

However, remember that the more effort you put into acquiring the skills, the better you will be rewarded with a higher pay package. So, invest in yourself and hone your skills with time.

Difference Between DBMS and RDBMS

What to Expect from VPNs in 2020

Not many people knew about virtual private networks ten years ago. Today, everyone knows about their importance and viability. No wonder it’s a growing market, and one that’s poised to continue its upward trend in the years to come.

How the VPN industry will actually turn out in the years to come is yet to be seen, but the outlook from analysts and cybersecurity professionals shows a bright future.

Why VPNs are here to stay?
The viability of VPNs is directly related to the increase in the number of cyber attacks that happen every day. In 2007, it was reported by G Data and AV-Test that 0.13 million new types of viruses, worms and Trojans were discovered, which had infected millions of devices globally. Just a decade later, this number had grown to 7.41 million new types of malware in 2017  .

In the past, there were anti-viruses that kept our PCs safe. However, today our activities are no longer restricted to the PC. In fact, an average online user spends 70% of their time online via a mobile device, such as smartphone or an iPad, while the remaining is utilized on a desktop PC such as Windows or Mac.

With such habits defining our behavior, it is only natural for VPNs to expand in terms of user base and market size, due to their support for all devices, platforms, and services at the same time. Over time, individual users as well as organizations have realized that VPNs are one such tool which gave a complete cyber security solution.

Devices
Nowadays, VPN services come packed with an all-inclusive one-stop solution for all your internet-related needs. This means you can browse the internet across all platforms while being under a secure umbrella of encryption. 

VPN Providers
concludes that nearly 1,000 VPN providers exist in the market, with new VPN services emerging frequently. With the future of the VPN market looking bright, one must not forget to put trust in those VPN services which have a proven track record of resilience and legitimacy. Such VPNs, which have an excellent track record in keeping their users’ privacy safe, include PureVPN and ExpressVPN.

Cybersecurity experts and privacy advocates have long been emphasizing the need for a VPN to combat online threats and ensuring the utmost privacy of user data. The fight for online privacy is real and common among VPN providers as their main essence of operations is to provide users with a private tunnel that funnels their internet traffic in a secure manner.

Such is the case of PureVPN, which has been leading the fight for online privacy and security in today’s digital age. It commenced operations in 2007 with the aim of restoring the online privacy of its users and providing them with an uninterrupted streaming experience on the internet.

Another reason why VPN companies have become popular is that they allow users to anonymize their online presence (a much needed thing in today’s age of mass surveillance). More than 95% of Americans surveyed in a recent poll said that they were either somewhat concerned or very concerned about how companies use their data. From the survey, a staggering 74% users claimed that they have limited their use of online data in the past year alone. Also, 45% users claimed that they are now much more worried about their online privacy than they were a year before.

VPNs are here to stay. With a sudden increase in cyber-attacks and privacy breaches in the last decade, VPNs will be the savior in times of digital insecurity. The internet is becoming a marketplace for evil intentions, and so it’s only wise to adapt VPN in our daily internet lives.

What is SQL Injection

SQL Injection

python data structures

Data Structures (list, dict, tuples, sets, strings) There are quite a few data structures available. The builtins data structures are: lists, tuples, dictionaries, strings, sets and frozensets. ... Sets are mutable unordered sequence of unique elements whereas frozensets are immutable sets.

10 Best Uses of Microsoft Excel

Ms Excel is used very widely nowadays by everyone because it is very helpful and it helps in saving a lot of time. It is being used for so many years and it gets upgraded every year with new features. The most impressive thing about MS Excel is that it can be used anywhere for any kind of work. For example, it is used for billing, data management, analysis, inventory, finance, business tasks, complex calculations, etc. One can even do mathematical calculations using this and can also store important data in it in the form of charts or spreadsheets.

MS Excel provides security to your files so that no one else can see your files or ruin them. With the help of MS Excel, you can keep your files password protected. MS Excel can be accessed from anywhere and everywhere. You can even work on MS Excel using mobile if you don’t have laptops. There are so many benefits of using MS Excel that it has become an inevitable part of lives of millions of people. MS Excel has numerous tools and features that make one’s work easy and saves one’s time also.

To use MS Excel to the best of its ability one must know its benefits and advantages. Following are the ten best uses of MS Excel:

Uses of Microsoft Excel: Analyzing and storing data

One of the best uses of MS Excel is that you can analyze larger amounts of data to discover trends. With the help of graphs and charts, you can summarize the data and store it in an organized way so that whenever you want to see that data then you can easily see it. It becomes easier for you to store data and it will definitely save a lot of time for you.

Once the data is stored in a systematic way, it can be used easily for multiple purposes. MS Excel makes it easier to implement various operations on the data through various tools that it possesses.

Uses of Microsoft Excel: Excel tools make your work easier

There are so many tools of MS Excel that make your work extremely easy and save your time as well. There are wonderful tools for sorting, filtering and searching which all the more make you work easy. If you will combine these tools with tables, pivot tables etc. then you will be able to finish your work in much less time. Multiple elements can be searched easily from large amounts of data to help solve a lot of problems and questions.

Uses of Microsoft Excel: Data recovery and spreadsheets

Another best use of MS Excel is that if your data gets lost then you can recover it without much inconvenience. Suppose, there is a businessman who has stored his important data in MS Excel and somehow it gets lost or the file gets damaged then he must not worry as with the new MS Excel XML format one can restore the lost or damaged file data.

The next important use is that there are spreadsheets in MS Excel which also makes your work easy and with the help of new Microsoft MS Excel XML format you can reduce the size of the spreadsheet and make things compact easily.

Uses of Microsoft Excel: Mathematical formulas of MS Excel make things easier

Next best use of MS Excel is that it makes easy for you to solve complex mathematical problems in a much simpler way without much manual effort. There are so many formulas in MS Excel and by using these formulas you can implement lots of operations like finding sum, average, etc. on a large amount of data all at once. Therefore, people use MS Excel whenever they have to solve complex mathematical problems or they need to apply simple mathematical functions on tables containing larger data.

Uses of Microsoft Excel: Security

The chief use of MS Excel is that it provides security for excel files so people can keep their files safe. All the files of MS Excel can be kept password-protected through visual basic programming or directly within the excel file. People store their important data in the MS Excel so that they can keep their data in an organized way and save their time as well. Almost every person wants his files to be password protected so that no one is able to see them or ruin them so here MS Excel solves this problem very efficiently.

Uses of Microsoft Excel: Add sophistication to data presentations

Next use of MS Excel is that it helps you in adding more sophistication to your data presentations which means that you can improve the data bars, you can highlight any specific items that you want to highlight and make your data much more presentable easily.

Suppose you have stored data in MS Excel and you want to highlight something that is important so then you can do that through the various features of data presentations available in MS Excel. You can even make the spreadsheets more attractive on which you have stored data.

Uses of Microsoft Excel: Online access

Another use of MS Excel is that it can be accessed online from anywhere and everywhere which means that you can access it from any device and from any location whenever you want. It provides the facility of working conveniently which means that if you don’t have laptops then you can use mobile and do your work easily without any problem. Therefore, due to the large amount of flexibility that MS Excel provides, people like to work on MS Excel so that they can comfortably work without worrying about their device or location.

Uses of Microsoft Excel: Keeps data combined at one location

Another interesting use of MS Excel is that you can keep all your data at one location. This will help you in saving your data from getting lost. It will keep all your data in one place and then you will not have to waste your time in searching for the files. So it will save your time and whenever need be, you can look up the categorized and sorted data easily.

Uses of Microsoft Excel: Helps businessmen in developing future strategy

You can represent data in the form of charts and graphs so it can help in identifying different trends. With the help of MS Excel, trend lines can be extended beyond graph and therefore, it helps one in analyzing the trends and patterns much easier. In business, it is very important to analyze the popularity of goods or the selling pattern that they follow to maximize sales. MS Excel simplifies this task and helps businessmen grow and maximize profits through the same.

Uses of Microsoft Excel: Manage expenses

MS Excel helps in managing expenses. Suppose if a doctor is earning around 50,000 per month then he will make some expenses as well and if he wants to know how much he is exactly spending per month then he can do it with the help of MS Excel easily. He can write his monthly income as well as expenses in the excel tables and then he can get to know that how much he is spending and he can thus, control his expenses accordingly.

There are a lot of benefits of using MS Excel, which is why it is used worldwide by people for performing so many tasks. It not only saves time but also it makes the work easier. It can almost perform every type of task. For example, you can do mathematical calculations and you can also make graphs as well as charts for storing the data. It becomes easy for the businessman to calculate things and store data in it.

You can store a large amount of data in the MS Excel and analyze it as well. It helps in keeping the data combined in one place so that data does not get lost and one does not waste time in finding a particular data. Due to these factors, it has become such a popular software and we have become habitual of using it.

HACKERS, PASSWORDS AND THE DARK WEB: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

Criminals love stealing credentials, and too many people are handing them the keys to the kingdom. A recent study by Verizon showed that 91% of phishing attacks targeted the user’s credentials. Why? Because stealing your username and password is the easiest way to break in to your business data, your bank account and more.

We make it even easier when we choose weak passwords or reuse the same passwords in multiple places. In fact, the study reported that 63% of confirmed data breaches involved weak, stolen or default passwords.

YOUR PASSWORDS ARE A PROBLEM

You’ve probably been told a hundred times to use a secure password. Many services even require long passwords or passwords with special characters. Many people are still ignoring the advice. As of 2016, 123456 was still the most common password. Other laughably crackable passwords on the list include qwerty, 111111 and, of course, password.

Another common method for choosing passwords is to use pet names, birthdays, favorite sports teams, etc. Nowadays, Facebook probably knows more about you than some of your family members. It’s not hard for a hacker to use Facebook to find out your favorite band and your mother’s maiden name.Even with a strong password, you’re probably guilty of another password crime: recycling. 81% of Americans admit to using the same password for multiple online accounts. Once a criminal gets their hands on your credentials for one account, they’ll certainly try it on any of your other accounts they can find.

This is a big danger for businesses. Imagine if an employee’s personal credentials get hacked, but they’re using the same password for their work email. Suddenly, the hacker has a backdoor into your business. Once inside, they can sneak malware onto your network or try to penetrate deeper to get at your financial or employee records.

Reusing the same password for multiple accounts is like having the same key for your business, your house, your car and your bank account. Risky. Even worse, if it’s a weak password, it’s like making the key neon green and hiding it under your front doormat. No one would ever look there, right?

YOU’RE IN THE DARK

One big problem with stolen credentials is that many businesses don’t know when they’re stolen. According to the Verizon study, 93% of attacks took only minutes, but the organization took weeks or more to discover the breach.

In that time, your stolen data can travel extremely far on what’s called the “dark web.” The dark web is a part of the Internet can only be accessed with special browsers and direct links, making users untraceable. Criminals and hackers exploit this anonymity to buy and sell thousands of stolen credentials every day.

In an experiment by cloud security company Bitglass, researchers tested how stolen data spreads on the dark web. They created a fake Google Drive account with fake financial data and other personal data. Then they leaked the Google Drive credentials and watched how hackers reacted.

The data immediately generated over 1,400 hits and 94% of the hackers also found the victim’s other accounts, including the fake bank account. It’s a powerful reminder of how fast information can spread online and of the danger of reusing passwords.

Find out if your passwords are protected

Again, most businesses don’t know if and when their credentials are stolen. But you don’t have to be in the dark anymore.

We can monitor the dark web and alert you when we detect any stolen information about your company.

Top 10 Network Security Tips

1.   Make sure you have a security policy in place -— The security policy is the formal statement of rules on how security will be implemented in your organization. A security policy should define the level of security and the roles and responsibilities of users, administrators and managers.

2.   Make sure all of your operating systems and applications are patched with the latest service packs and hotfixes -— Keeping your systems patched will close vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers.

3.   Keep an inventory of your network devices -— Develop and maintain a list of all hardware/software components, and understand which default software installations provide weak security configurations.

4.   Scan TCP/UDP services -— Turn off or remove unnecessary services. Unneeded services can be the entry point attackers use to gain control of your system.

5.   Establish a strong password policy -— Weak passwords could mean a compromised user account.

6.   Don't trust code from non-trusted sources.

7.   Block certain e-mail attachment types -— This list includes .bas, .bat, .exe and .vbs.

8.   Don't provide more rights to system resources than necessary -— Implement the concept of "least privilege".

9.   Perform your own network security testing -— Find the holes before the attackers do!

10.  Implement "defense-in-depth" -— Don't rely on just one control or system to provide all the security you need.

Web Testing- Selenium and LoadRunner Testing

The deployment of web technology on different softwares these days has called for highly advanced testing technologies into play. Be it cloud application, web application or mobile application testing technology, testing plays a vital role in order to analyze bugs and fixes and combat them. While it is important to test an application before its launch, it’s also important to see that it doesn’t consume much time.

Let us talk about web application testing. Out of various testing applications like WebLOAD, Selenium, LoadRunner, etc., two applications have stolen the show because of their multitasking behavior, and are fetching more attention every passing day. Before we talk about those applications let us discuss what is web testing to have a substantial idea of its role in web development.

What is Web Application Testing?

It is an activity, a tester has to perform every day, in order to combat bugs or analyze the behavior of the application to predict the chances of any further repercussions in the future. In order to begin the testing process, a tester has to go through the following checklist:

Functionality Testing

It is also called website functional testing, and it is the process of checking all the site navigation external links, images, streaming content, form submission, exception handling, Ajax functionality, state maintenance, e-commerce transaction, search functionality, transaction handling and printing web pages. The tester has to take proper care so that the internal links, links jumping on the same page and outgoing links are intact. There should be no orphan pages and broken links.

Usability Testing

This is a user level testing, done to test how internet or browser friendly the website is. Major things that a tester has to look for are the responsiveness of the website, caching behavior, ease of usage, configurability and localization. He/she must verify that the main menu is present in every page or not and how user friendly it is in terms of consistency, instructions and content.

Interface Testing

The two most popular interfaces are, web server and application server interface and application server and database server interface. The tester must ensure that the servers are properly executed, and errors and bugs are fixed. If there occurs an error in database or web server, for any query initiated by application server, then the application server must pick the error and display it appropriately to the user.

Compatibility Testing

Website compatibility is evaluated in four different tests:

Operating System Compatibility- Some functionality of the web applications may not be compatible with the operating system. All new web development technologies are not likely to be available in all the operating systems. So, the tester must perform the test in OSes like Windows, Linux, Unix, Solaris and so on.

Browser Compatibility- All the browsers have their own configuration and settings that the web page must be compatible with. The website must be cross browser compatible.

Mobile Browsing- As mobiles are a ruling technology in modern era, it is very important for the web pages to perform well on all mobile browsers.

Performance Testing

This test is done in two phases, web load testing and web stress testing. Web load test is performed by the tester to ensure that the website is able to handle heavy load on specific pages, simultaneous user requests and connections to database, large user inputs and so on. Whereas, the web stress testing is performed by breaking the site using stress. It is done to see how the system reacts to stress and recovers from crashes.

Security Testing

This testing is done by pasting internal URL onto the address bar of the browser without login. The tester must ensure that

Web directories and files are not directly accessible without a download option.

The Captcha for automated script logins must be checked

All the error messages, transactions, security breach attempts must get stored in log files somewhere in the web server.

What are the Web Testing Tools used nowadays?

These days Selenium and LoadRunner are gaining popularity in the world of web application testing.

Selenium: Selenium is a bundle of software tools each with a different utility and approach to supporting test automation. They are:

Selenium 2 or Selenium WebDriver- This is the latest addition to the Selenium toolkit. It provides awesome features that include cohesive and object oriented API. The limitations in the old implementation are sorted out as well.

Selenium 1 or Selenium RC or Selenium Remote Control: It was the most powerful tool before Selenium and Webdriver merged. Now it is not actively supported anymore, especially in maintenance mode.

Selenium IDE (Integrated Development Environment): It is a prototyping tool basically used for building scripts. It is a Firefox plugin that provides a very friendly interface to develop automated tests.

Selenium Grid: It allows the Selenium RC solution for scaling large test suites and testing suites that must be run in multiple environments. Selenium Grid allows the tester to run tests in parallel, in other words, different tests can be run simultaneously on different remote machines.

LoadRunner: Here is one of the best software testing tool in the industry, released from Hewlett Packard. Testing applications, measurement of system behaviour and performance under load was never so easy before. It was acquired by HPE as part of Mercury Interactive in the year, 2006. Like Selenium, LoadRunner also comes as a bundle with different components such as, Load Generator, VuGen, Controller, Agent Process and Analysis.