FAQ QA

Software Quality Assurance (SQA) involves the practice of planning, analysis and test execution of software components. It comprises high-level software development life cycle (SDLC)organizational planning for process and continuous improvement practices as well as detailed test planning, analysis and test execution. All aspects of SQA are needed to establish, foster and maintain efficient feedback loops for continuous improvement.

The purpose of a regression test is to ensure changes made to a program do not 'regress' other aspects of the program or system. For example, when regression testing Jira fixes it would be unlikely that the reported problem failed in exactly the same way. It is more likely that new errors were introduced in boundary locations. Testing is a creative process where the goal is to prove the object of test does not work. It is deemed qualified when the tester can no longer prove it does not work. This assumes the tester has adequate knowledge of functionality to ensure full test coverage. One must be reasonable in attempts to locate important failures in relatively short durations of time.

Confluence is collaboration site where you will find documents and ongoing discussion. Regarding QA you'll find urls of the test servers and test documents.
Jira is an issue tracking system. Bugs are reported, verified, QA-ed etc. here.

First of all make sure you have an account for Confluence(http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/confluence) and for
Jira(http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/jira/secure/Dashboard.jspa). Anyone can request a Jira/Confluence account by sending a request to jira-admins@collab.sakaiproject.org. Once you have done that you can submit and comment all you want. There are no restrictions on who can report and discuss issues in Sakai. To do more than that in Jira, such as closing issues you have verified are resolved correctly, then you MUST contact Peter Knoop(knoop@umich.edu) or Megan May (mmmay@iu.edu) in order to obtain Jira Close Issue & Reopen Issue rights.

To join the QA WG Sakai mailing list point your browser to:

http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/sakai-qa

You will be asked to fill out a short form (username, password) and you can select whether or not to receive each list post individually (default) or batched in a daily digest. Once you have submitted your request you will be sent a confirmation email with a short set of instructions for confirming your subscription request.

Look in Confluence (http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/confluence/display/QA/Test+instances) for urls of the test servers. They change over time so make sure that you've the right url.

If you are verifying issues in Jira against Sakai, please make sure you are using a production version of a browser. Reporting issues that occur in beta versions of browsers can be misleading, particular in the case of rendering issues, as the fault may lie with a bug in the browser rather than Sakai.  The latest version of IE and FF is recommended for testing.

There are a variety of ways to test. If you've volunteered to join the QA effort please get in contact with Megan May (mmmay@indiana.edu). Megan will work with workgroup members and post assignments to Confluence once they've all been identified. 

Go to Jira an submit the issue (http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/jira/secure/CreateIssue!default.jspa).
Make sure to re-read your Jira issue Descriptions & resolution Comments to ensure clarity before submitting them. For issue Descriptions, please provide precise details pertaining to the steps used to produce the problem (if not intuitive), the release number, browser version, operating system, server location, DB or other relevant information. For issue resolution comments, please provide enough detail to adequately describe what was done to fix the problem as well as helpful suggestions for regression test.  There is an excellent tutorial at  http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/confluence/x/b48

Use this Jira filter for the current regression test effort: 2.5 QA Awaiting Verification. Verify each item against both an Oracle and MySQL test instances before closing. Upon verification, add a short closure note and change the status to Closed using 'Close Issue'. Information in the note should include

• When the verification took place (i.e., date and time).
• Where the verification was done (e.g., on nightly, QA1-NL, QA2-US, ect).
• On what version of Sakai the verification was performed (e.g., nightly revision 32956, tag 2.5.0.001, ect).
• Test cases run through

The item will no longer appear in above filter but will now appear in this filter: 2.5 QA Verified
Note that you need Jira Close Issue & Reopen Issue rights. If do not have these rights, contact Megan May (mmmay@indiana.edu) to obtain these Jira rights.

It is not obligated but much appreciated.

There is a page about host a QA server.