Microsoft Silverlight Books

It does what it says

Its a Good book for any one who wants to know more about Software Testing using Visual Studio Team System 2008. 100% worth for starters.

G. Chalapati
20 May, 2010

Of very little value.

Not worth the price or the effort to read. Very hard to follow - written in pigion english. Major concepts not covered. What little they had of any value, you can get much faster from a google search. Save your money.

Michael V. Brugger
26 March, 2010

Great for what it says it does

If I rated this book by the English language style, I'd probably give it a 3. If I rate it by the software delivery paradigm it upholds (vs mine), I'd probably give it a 2. Again, if I rate this book by the cover design or by how it handles things peripheral to it's central mandate, I'd rate it lower than a 5.

But when I took a look at that question "How do you rate this item?", I felt I have a responsibility to speak frankly to persons who are looking to learn how to do "Software Testing with Visual Studio Team System 2008". And to those folks, this is a great book. I can place my reputation on that.

This book may not hold the currently in-vogue dogma of how software should be built or even tested. It may not make it to the "elegant-literary-works hall of fame".

I will tell you what it does do ... that is, what it did do for me:
I came to this book from an MSDN knowledge of testing VSTS and was actually writing some tests and presenting a few seminars on testing. Then, I had a client paying my company to come do some test planning for them. And I was sent there. A client is paying and so, it's not just not enough to avoid what you're not fully comfortable with. I needed a book to quickly ramp up in a week. I got this book despite the low rating because there aren't really many out there. I read this book on the bus a few days. I got all I needed and had all my questions answered. It has an unassuming way of giving you great nuggets ... and quite effortlessly too.

Of course, there are things that could be cleaned up:
To the authors (for version 2010 revision)
* Don't say that you write unit tests after you're done writing the code; because agile purists will get mad at you. Just avoid when, just show how.
* Don't say that you run smoke tests before system test or before UAT or before any one particular event for that matter; because smoke testing is a self-check procedure and can be applied anywhere, even just before go-live.
* Don't use the article "the" if you are not referring to a particular noun. For instance, dont't say, "I welcome the feedback from everyone" when you mean to say, "I welcome feedback from everyone".
* Don't get distracted and start discussing load testing in the web testing chapter. It could confuse persons who don't know the difference.
* Don't, for the sake of completeness, dabble into areas you're not familiar with. It's ok to say, I don't know much about that ... and give a good reference. Keep to what you do well because you're good at it.
* Get a good editor with a different English language background. Honestly, it will improve this work.

And why would I give this book a 5* after all this? Well, you weren't listening buddy (LOL) ... the book rocks on what it says it does on the covers.

Dr. Peter Obiefuna
15 December, 2009

Useful, but poorly written

I just finished reading the Sw testing with VSTS 2008 book and although it gave me a step by step instructions on how to perfrom the testing using VSTS2008, I feel a bit dissapointed. The book seems to follow a very traditional software development process thinking and won't tak e.g. agile development into account. Also the english is quite bad which makes the book a bit boring to read. If your looking for a complete book on how to test using VSTS2008 and you need instructions that walk you through the testing step by step, then this book might suite you.

Juhola Tomi
30 August, 2009

Good enough but need an advanced version

The book is good enough to guide people to start their first Testing with VS Team System. Easy to follow and straightforward. However, more advanced topics should be added or covered in order to satisfy power users especially most testing scenarios do need more manipulations than just clicking on web sites. I have to do lots of trial and error to make my test cases work, but the book is a good reference on the basic.

H. Hauw
06 July, 2009

Software Testing with VSTS 2008 by Subashni S. falls short

Software Testing with VSTS 2008 by Subashni S. & N. Satheesh Kumar falls far short of another book on Software Testing with VSTS 2005 by Wrox Publishing. Software Testing with VSTS 2008 had several "Read Me" files, all of which were empty. Files as provided for download did not work without at all without much tweaking, in fact, more tweaking than was worthwhile. Contacted author and publisher, all to no avail - response I got was: "It worked on my machine."

Professional Software Testing with Visual Studio 2005 Team System: Tools for Software Developers and Test Engineers (Programmer to Programmer) by Tom Arnold, Dominic Hopton, Andy Leonard, and Mike Frost at least would get responses and replies to emails with questions to authors - still a better buy even though written for 2005 rather than 2008.

Steven L. Shippee
11 April, 2009

Quite incomplete, yet quite insulting

This product is not worth its asking price. Use the web to find your answers. I have gone thru the book and it has not helped me much compared to google.

A "Comprehensive and concise guide" should not skip out on the many things it does, yet it does anyway. And it also spends too much time explaining the most obvious things. Code samples are oddly scarce. Never had a book say so much yet say so little.

Zachry D. Baker
02 April, 2009

Great reference for every development team!

Another book review, this time for Packt's "Software Testing with Visual Studio Team System 2008" (http://www.packtpub.com/software-testing-with-visual-studio-team-system-2008/book). The book introduces you to the main types of testing available in Visual Studio Team System 2008 for both desktop and web applications, and then walks you through deploying, running, and interpreting the results of tests.

The book starts with an overview of why you need testing and then lists all available test types in Visual Studio 2008. It also explains the differences between a stand alone Visual Studio 2008 and a Team Foundation Server backed version. Each chapter thereafter covers one of the test types in detail: unit tests, web tests, advanced web tests, load tests, manual tests, ...

Next to these things, more information on how to deploy and run tests on a VSTS build server is provided. And when you work with a VSTS build server, chances are big reporting is enabled. These reports are also covered in detail, showing you how to interpret the data displayed.

I've been working with and giving training on Visual Studio 2008 for quite a while now, including a large part on Visual Studio and testing. To be honest, I think this book really covers all aspects of testing in Visual Studio 2008, making it an ideal reference for any development team working with VSTS.

Maarten Balliauw
02 February, 2009