Welcome to PTI Newsletter No. 6

1. Up coming PTI Training classes
2. Perl for Unix and Linux System Administrators
3. TAP - Test Anything Protocol
4. List of PTI Training classes
5. Special offers

May   13,14,20,21  References, Modules and Objects (Advanced)
May   27,28,29     QA Automation using Perl (Advanced)
June  12,13,19,20  Fundamentals of Perl (Beginner)

Recently I have started to put together a page describing how Unix and Linux System Administrators can automate many of their tasks using Perl. The examples include

• Parsing Apache log file
• Rename several files at once
• Change the content of many files without opening them
• Reading and Writing Microsoft Excel files (on Unix)
• Sending e-mail with disk usage report
• Create UNIX user accounts with special additions

The full list with descriptions and the source code itself can be found under Perl for Unix system administrators.

These examples were taken from our Fundamentals of Perl course.

On the QA day back in December 2006, among other things, Ran Eilam and I showed TAP, the Test Anything Protocol. The protocol that was actually already available back when Perl 1 came out in 1987 have gone through many improvements - it also got its name only a year or two ago - but most importantly it helped Perl to achieve a unparalleled set of unit and integration tests both on the compiler/interpreter level and on the extension level (aka. CPAN).

If I want to describe it in one sentence it should be:

That is, one could write tests in any language, s/he could even embed it in a device or send through the network while there can be several central tools (harnesses or parsers) for collecting the results and presenting in various easily readable way.

In the last year the QA team of Perl started to work on exporting this simple but wonderful idea to other programming languages and to other aspects of the testing world. Implementations are currently available in Perl, Python, PHP, C/C++ and Java.

Anyone interested in the development of TAP should look at its dedicated web site of Test Anything. for a short introduction look at the Wikipedia article abpit TAP There is a mailing list designated for the development of the protocol itself and another mailing list for the development of the TAP::Parser in Perl.

You could also take look at our QA related courses where TAP is part of the curriculum:
QA Automation using Perl (Advanced)
Perl for QA Professionals (Beginner)

For details, please see our full listing of courses and the up to date schedule.

For further details please contact Naama Enosh
by email: [naama at pti.co.il]
or by phone: 050-4845633