ALM Patch Released

HP just released an ALM 11.52 Patch for the following operating systems:

* This patch supersedes patch TD4QC_00269(01 11.50.886.01)

The Following ALM Features Have Been Enhanced

• A newly designed landing page has been added for easier access to Add-ins, Movies, and what's new information.
  
• New Business Views Excel Add-in! Makes ALM reporting much more flexible than ever before. The Business Views Excel Add-in is based on the new Business Views capabilities that were introduced in HP ALM 11.50. You can now easily slice and dice, shape and share any ALM data.
  
• Project Planning and Tracking (PPT)
  Release Enhancements: you now have the ability to select content to be included in release scope items. Also you can now include defects that link to selected requirements, tests, and tests sets (and their associated test instances, runs, and run steps).
  
• Lab Management Automatic Upgrade of Lab Project for Upgrades to Minor-Minor Versions. When upgrading to minor-minor versions, even those that affect the database schema, the upgrade of the Lab Management project is now automatic.
  
• HP ALM Lab Service changes. For example using the auto login feature, you can now configure Lab Service to automatically log in to the testing host to run a test. Also you can now view the version of Lab Service you are running in the Lab Management Testing Hosts grid.
  
• You now have the ability to set the 'Suggested Duration' when running tests from functional test sets and build verification suites. The Suggested Duration feature can be used to set the duration of your test based on previous test executions.
  

• Jenkins Integration. An open source Jenkins plugin has been developed that enables you to trigger a functional test set or build verification suite as a Jenkins build step. The results are reported in Jenkins and in the ALM Test Runs module. Support for this open source plugin is provided by the Jenkins community. For more info on the ALM/Jenkins plugin check out: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/HP+Application+Automation+Tools
  

The following issues have been fixed in this ALM Patch

• Fix for the "An exception occurred" when you try to upgrade over 100 projects to the HP ALM 11.5 patch 1.
  
• Dashboard Analysis configuration "An exception occurred" error when you try to unzip a file that was zipped in the Dashboard has been resolved
  
• The conversion of a Requirement entry to a Test Folder did not set the folders description to match that of the converted requirement.
  
• The Status Filter drop down list of the requirements Test Coverage tab did not show the relevant statuses as expected.
  
• User settings of the columns width in the Test Coverage tab of the Requirement Details view were not kept as the user moves between requirements.
  
• Filtering requirements in the Test Coverage view to include only those that have not been assigned to requirements resulted in the display of empty folders.
  
• In the Test Plan view, the New Folder option was missing from the context menu.
  
• The Alert indication on a test in the Test Plan module intended to reflect modification done to a linked requirement appeared as expected in the Test Plan view.
  
• Traversing over the Test Plan module using API kept some memory resources allocated and they were not released.
  
• A new option of Go to Test Instance was added to the Test Runs view to enable users to easily switch from the test run to its corresponding test instance.
  
• Changes made to any of the Actual, Description and Expected fields are not kept after cancelling an "Attach to step" action immediately after the text editing.
  
• In projects utilizing the ALI extension, the SCM Management and Build Management modules became inaccessible after switching between projects.
  
• Attachments with comma characters in their name were not displayed correctly in the attachment list viewed from baseline, and they could not be retrieved.
  

How to Get this ALM Patch

Due to HP's legal department I can no longer post these patches on my web site as I explained in my post "Another reason why HP stinks". To get a copy of this patch you will need to contact HP Support or you can download it from HP's Patches support site.

If you are not sure how to download patches from HP be sure to check out my video "How to download UFT/QTP Patches from HP"

New Critical LoadRunner Pack 2 Released for LR 11.50

Good news for LoadRunner 11.50 performance engineers – Today HP released a new critical service pack 2 (11.52).

This patch is also cumulative and contains all the enhancements/feature added to Service Pack 1 (11.51)

Below are the patch names for the HP LR Service Pack 2 release:

What's Been Updated

• Cool – Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10 Supported
  
• LoadRunner now has support for:
  
  • nUnit
    
  • jUnit
    
  • Some Java-Based Browser Automation Tests
    
• You can now integrate with Jenkins Continuous Integration
  
• Visual Studio 2010 & Eclipse Add-ins
  
• Performance enhancements have been added in VuGen
  
• Improved VuGen Usability and Functionality
  
• Controller Enhancements
  
• Improved Performance in Analysis
  
• Shunra Network Virtualization Integration Enhancements
  
• Integration with HP Live Network (HPLN)
  
• Virtual Table Server (VTS) Utility
  
• Multiple Protocols Enhancements around:
  
  • Mobile
    
  • PeopleSoft
    
  • RDP
    
  • Java
    
  • Flex
    
  • Citrix
    
  • Oracle NCA
    
  • Web Transport
    
• Recording Through a Proxy
  
• Additional Linux Distributions for Load Generators
  
• Enhanced Linux Support for Protocols Replay
  
• Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10 Support
  
• Google Chrome Support
  
• IPv6 Enhancements
  

What's Been Fixed

• Fix for when setting up the SiteScope monitor, there is no "Select All" button for the available counters
  
• Fix to add 'Select All' checkbox for Sitescope Measurements in Sitescope monitor
  
• Support for RDP agent on 64 bits OS
  
• There is no Microsoft Terminal Server Agent for 64 bit for Windows 2008 64 bit OS
  
• Supportability for newer People Soft versions - 9.x.
  
• OpenSSL Upgrade from 1.0.0 to 1.0.1
  
• Support a secure encryption in RDP server
  
• User interface to be provided, which will allow Unix Resources monitor communication to recover following temporary loss of connectivity
  
• Different encoding in LR 11.0x for data.ws
  
• Allow exporting of more than 65k rows from analysis tool to Excel in CSV and XLSX
  
• Support of JDK1.7 to be provided for LR 9.5, LR11 and LR 11.50
  
• Request for RDP 8 recording/replay support
  
• Support for JDK 1.7 in flex protocol
  
• Slow VuGen performance.
  
• Support for JRE 1.7 in GWT DFE
  
• Supportability of XenDesktop
  
• Support of XSS Secure Programmed scenarios
  
• Need better support for non-standard or incomplete pcap captured packets in mobile protocol
  
• Percentage mode vUser allocation algorithm
  
• Mobile Protocol Fails to Generate Complete Script from PCAP file
  
• Silverlight protocol not handling a call correctly
  
• vuser_end section not executed upon stopping the script run at flex_rtmp_receive_stream for a AdobeLivestream app.
  

How to Get LoadRunner's Service Pack 2

Due to HP's legal department I can no longer post these patches on my web site as I explained in my post "Another reason why HP stinks". To get a copy of this UFT patch you will need to contact HP Support or you can download it from HP's Patches support site.

If you are not sure how to download patches from HP be sure to check out my video "How to download UFT/QTP Patches from HP"

Tis not her coldness, father,
That chills my labouring breast;
It's that confounded cucumber
I've ate and can't digest."
Richard Harris Barham (1788-1845) The Confession '

The Cucumber Book – Behavior-Driven Development for Testers and Developers

Are you trying to get up to speed on Business Driven Development (BDD), but are finding all the information hard to digest?

When you're in a meeting do you wonder why everyone suddenly has a craving for cucumbers? Are you responsible for test automation and want to know how it all fits in BDD?

Do you want to know what level of detail your BDD scenarios should be written in? How does test automation fit into the Business Driven Development process?

Basic Overview of The Cucumber Book

Authors Matt Wynne and Aslak Hellesoy answer virtually every BDD question one could possibly ask in their book titled The Cucumber Book – Behavior-Driven Development for Testers and Developers.

The book's title might lead one to believe that its contents are only for people that use the Cucumber tool for BDD with Ruby, when in fact the authors cover most of their topics in such a way that most of the principles can be applied to whichever BDD tool and programming language one is using.

Although the book is geared towards a more technical reader, the authors offer what I think are some of the best general overviews of BDD available. For example, some chapters that will be devoured by the technical and non-technical alike are:

• Why Cucumber – Chapter 1
  
• Gherkin Basics – Chapter 3
  
• Expressive Scenarios – Chapter 5
  
• When Cucumber Goes Bad – Chapter 6
  
• Adding Tests to a Legacy Application – Chapter 13
  

Cucumber in Three Juicy Slices

The Cucumber Book – Behavior-Driven Development for Testers and Developers is sliced into three main parts:

• Part 1 – Cucumber Fundamentals
  
• Part 2 – Working Example
  
• Part 3 – Cucumber Applied
  

Part 1

Part One covers the basics of BDD, including:

• What is Cucumber?
  
• What are Features and Scenarios
  
• Gherkin Basics
  
• What are Step Definitions
  
• How to create expressive scenarios
  
• Things that can go wrong and what to look out for
  

My favorite chapter in Part One is Chapter Six: "When Cucumbers go bad." The authors reveal real- world advice and workarounds for common issues they have experienced first-hand while on their consulting gigs --things like what makes a test break unintentionally, why certain features have long running times, and tips on defect prevention.

Part 2

The "meat" of the book can be found in this section. All the concepts covered in Part One are actually put into practice with working examples. This is also the section in which most of the coding examples happen, so if you're not technical you might want to skim over it.

Part 3

The third and last section is basically a set of recipes that allows you to pick and choose what you wish to use based on your company's technical stack. Topics covered are:

• Web Service Testing
  
• Command line Programs
  
• Ajax
  

Recommendation

I would recommend this book to anyone who is new to BDD, as well as developers who are familiar with cucumber but are looking to expand their skills. The biggest benefit for me was that after reading it I feel I have the information I need to successfully create killer automation for my next BDD project.

I also now have the know-how to avoid what the authors call a "big ball of mud" -- an ironic name given to the type of software design you see when nobody has made much of an effort to actually do any software design. (In other words, it's a big, tangled mess.)

Like I said earlier the principles learned here can be carried over to whatever tooling you use. For example I use C# with SpecFlow and got enormous benefits from reading this book.

For serious BDD practitioners this book is a must-have for your technical library. Pick it up now on Amazon and enjoy a book that's as refreshing as fresh cucumbers drizzled with fine olive oil and a touch of freshly ground pepper on a summer day.

HP QC 10 latest patch Release

Today HP released Quality Center Patch 31 that fixes a number of known issues.

What's been fixed?

• When importing large project as QCP files the server disconnecting issue has been resolved.
  

• You can now see version related info for version controlled Test Lab reports that are created using the Document Generator.
  

• Data hiding settings should now work when viewing Tabular formatted reports.
  

• Idle BPT test steps should no longer lose their output parameter values
  

• After a user ordered tests in Execution Flow of the Test Lab module tab, that test order should now be visible in the execution grid of the Automatic runner
  

• Offline execution related executable files were downloaded on connection of QuickTest Professional to QC server for the first time. Now the required files are installed beforehand.
  

• In the Test Plan view, the Find option did not find the desired folders when a filter was set on the view. The Find option now finds the expected folders, however in order for such folders to be found using the Find option, at least one test needs to be defined in those folders.
  

• A few files were missing from the MSI installation of the previous patch: PerformanceWinHooks.dll
  
  • VugenTestType.dll
    
  • dsoframer.ocx
    
  • ExtensibilityAPI.dll.
    
  • These files are now included in the MSI installation.
    

• Version controlled projects that keep losing pasted design steps parameter values has been resolved
  

• Workflow code under Test_MoveTo in Test Plan module was ignored when a test was checked out or checked in. This behavior should now work.
  

• The Risk Assessment and Functional Complexity tabs in the Requirement Management module were improperly displayed after repeated resizing of the viewed area.
  

• On pasting requirements or importing requirements from libraries, empty fields such as Target Release and Target Cycle were automatically updated with default values instead of keeping them empty as in the source requirements.
  

• Activating user actions in the Requirements toolbar failed with an error after activating the requirement traceability option.
  

What's been Enhanced?

• Quality Center Server now supports:
  
  • SUSE 10 SP4 x64 using MS SQL 2008 R2 SP1 x64.
    
  • Windows 7 SP1 x64.
    

• Service Test Management now supports Microsoft MSSQL 2008 SP2.
  

• The Compare baseline behavior has been changed to now display Modified for a renamed TestSetFolder.
  

• A new parameter has been added for controlling the size of the attachments
  

• A new Uninstall utility has been released
  

• Business Process Testing and Service Test 11.2 now support:
  
  • Windows 2008R2 SP1 as a server.
    
  • Oracle 11.2.0.2
    
  • Windows Vista SP2 32bit as a client.
    

• A new parameter IS_SHOW_ADVANCED_SHARING (values: Y, N) has been added to the Site configuration.
  

• Adding filtering capabilities when creating library (Advanced filter) is missing.
  

• Quality Center 10.0 now supports:
  
  • IE 9
    
  • Citrix 6.0 for QC Client (with some limitations)
    
  • Microsoft SQL 2008 SP2 Limitation: ST/STM were not certified on MSSQL 2008 SP2
    

• The Public Analysis Favorites is available in the Analysis menu in QC 10.00. The Entity tree will be added to all sub standard reports from type Test instance in order to avoid the need going back and forth between Test Lab and Dashboard module and to select Test Set from the Test Plan tree in the report configuration view.
  

• Pin to baseline now takes the baselines requirement test coverage into account. FYI: To enable the set system parameter GET_COVERAGE_FROM_BL_FOR_PINNED_TESTSET set the value to Y.
  

• Quality Center 10.00 patch 22 is now certified on Win Server 2008 R2. For installation instructions, you need to enter an HP support request.
  

• Unable to generate QC Sense reports on Web logic App server deployment Limitation: Null pointer Exception returned in QC Sense Report Viewer while trying to get Server Statistics report And Operation Flow report type.
  

• The Quality Center Connectivity Helper - .NET component introduced in ALM-11 that used with external testing tools to provide ability of working with OTA in isolated environment should now work with both QC10 and QC11 servers.
  

How to Get the Latest QC Patch

To get a copy of this QC patch you will need to contact HP Support or you can download it from HP's Patches support site.

If you are not sure how to download patches from HP be sure to check out my video "How to download UFT/QTP Patches from HP"

HP UFT Critical Patch Release

Good news for early adapters of UFT 11.51, HP has just released a critical patch 1 (UFT_00037) that resolves a bunch of nasty bugs.

Also HP released an ALM patch UFTALM_00033.Exe that should be installed when working with UFT 11.51 Patch 1.

Dependencies for Patch 1

If you currently have UFT 11.50 you do need to first upgrade to UFT 11.51 with patch UFT_00001. If you're using ALM you also need UFTALM_00001.

What's been fixed in this UFT patch Release?

• Error "not able to find the object" when trying to import older QTP 11 scripts into UFT.
  
• Weird "Exit Property" crash when typing "y"
  
• Action was not found "Line (1): "LoadAndRunAction "[QualityCenter]Subject\utp\UTPDriver","Action1", OneIteration" when upgrading to UFT from QTP
  
• Random exception errors when opening QTP 11 scripts in UFT
  
• UFT freezes when trying to execute the Swftoolbar().Select statement
  
• Oracle field UFT object spy recognition issues. UFT spy showing Oracle application fields on Windows 7 as winobjects.
  
• Change to how UFT associates function libraries
  
• The ability to actually recognize Ribbon controls developed using the MSAA API.
  
• Flash player error "Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference" after clicking in a Flex Data Grid
  

How to Get Patch 1 UFT_00037 or UFTALM_00033.Exe

Due to HP's legal department I can no longer post these patches on my web site as I explained in my post "Another reason why HP sucks". To get a copy of this UFT patch you will need to contact HP Support or you can download it from HP's Patches support site.

If you are not sure how to download patches from HP be sure to check out my video "How to download UFT/QTP Patches from HP"

HP Patched and Hotfixes on www.joecolantonio.com

As many of you already know, HP's legal department has forced me to take down all the HP Patches and Hotfixes I had in my download section.

Unfortunately, I don't see HP changing their minds on this lame decision. The best I can do, at least for now, is to show you how to download the Patches yourself. If you need an HP Hotfix, you'll still need to contact HP support directly.

How to Download HP Software Patches Directly from HP

For some reason, I get a lot of emails asking how this is done. Apparently HP's patch process is not as clear as it could be. Shocking.

This video shows how to download patches from HP. Check it out:

HP LINKS:

• HP's selfsolve patches site
  
• HP What is a SAID?
  
• HP Support Contact Information
  

Service Test Patch Alert

HP just released a new patch (SOAST_00097) for Service Test 11.20. This patch includes many feature updates and multiple fixes for known issues.

What ST Features have been updated?

• Updates to the ALM Integration
  
• REST Service changes
  
• The Web Service's Call Activity
  
• Changes to the Remote Agent
  
• Checkpoints
  
• Property Sheet
  

What's been fixed?

If you are experiencing any of these issue hopefully patch 9 will solve them for you:

• Modifying the design of a REST service, and solving the conflict in the steps, throws an error.
  

• When windows account with read-only permissions over C:\Windows\System32 folder starts a Service-Test Test an error is thrown
  

• Service Test not able to connect to QC through proxy with a long username
  

• Structural Validation fails with error: "...element is not declared"
  

• Service Test Not Sending "Cookie" RequestHeader
  

• Possible project corruption with integration with Service Test 11.20
  

How to Get Patch 9

Due to HP's legal department I can no longer post these patches on my web site as I explained in my post "Another reason why HP sucks". To get a copy of Service Test Patch 9 you will need to contact HP Support or you can download it from HP's Patches support site.

If you are not sure how to download patches from HP be sure to check out my Video How to download UFT/QTP Patches from HP"

HP QTP 11 Cumulative Patch Releases

Last week HP released two new patches that contain all their previous patch releases rolled into on big patch:

• QTPWEB_00120 is a cumulative patch that provides important WPF Add-in fixes as well as some other .NET Add-in fixes. This patch is also said to improve runtime performance by enabling QuickTest to identify Silverlight test objects more quickly, and it provides testing support for Silverlight 2, 3, 4 and 5.
  

• QTPWEB_00090 - This is a cumulative patch that provides important Web Add-in fixes as well as support for Mozilla Firefox versions 4.0.x, 5.0.x, 6.0.x, 7.0.x, and 8.0.x.
  

To Get the Patches

To get the Web, Firefox, WPF and Silverlight patches you can download them from HP's Patches support site:

All QTP 11 Patches

For an updated list of all patches available for QTP 11 check out the Patches section in my article: QTP 11 Support Matrix with Patch Updates

Please don't ask me for HP Patches

Due to HP's legal department I can no longer post these patches on my web site as I explained in my post "Another reason why HP sucks"

ALM Patch Released

HP just released ALM Patch 13 for the following operating systems:

The following patches have been superseded by Patch 13

Patch 13 supersedes the following previous patches:

• TD4QC_00282
  
• TD4QC_00276
  
• TD4QC_00262
  
• TD4QC_00252
  
• TD4QC_00240
  
• TD4QC_00206
  
• TD4QC_00201
  
• TD4QC_00191
  
• TD4QC_00166
  
• TD4QC_00154
  

The following issues have been fixed in ALM/QC 11 Patch 13

• Fix for random exception error when you are creating or generating a live analysis graph of the Test Plan module.
  
• Plus sign being treated as a carriage returned resolved in the Edit Categories dialog box of a graph configuration in the Analysis module
  
• The Requirements progress graph did not properly reflect the accumulation of requirements across time has been resolved.
  
• The crazy long time it takes to upload a file to the HP ALM server has been fixed.
  
• Memory leak when consecutively switching between ALM projects has been resolved
  
• Alert indication that a requirement linked to a test was modified was not displayed until logging out.
  
• Modification to a user-defined field drop down when selecting multiple values not saved has been fixed
  
• KPI calculations issues in the Scorecard view for the Release module has been fixed
  
• Fix for template customization not been applied to Performance Center extension
  
• Run_CanPost method being ignored in a workflow has been fixed
  
• A new site parameter "ENABLE_COLUMNP_VISIBILITY_TRACKING=Y" was added to fix grid display issue
  
• The long time it took to export a defect grid to Excel has been resolved
  
• The Site Administration schema could not be accessed and patch installation failed if schema connectivity details were modified only in the siteadmin.xml file and not in the qcConfigFile.properties file. The issue is now resolved by retrieving the connection details from the siteadmin.xml file.
  
• Excel add-in issue fixed for Korean field names
  
• Launch Notepad button not starting issue when using the ALM feature "HP ALM Export Wizard - Scan Error Report" dialog box in the HP ALM Excel add-in fixed.
  
• Project template new role permission issues fixed
  
• Installing QTP and ALM in silent mode on a non-admin instance of Citrix causing connection issues fixed
  
• Attached files that contain comma characters are not showing date and size details in the baseline view has been resolved.
  
• Functionality of rows and columns data in scorecard now truncated to fit the max size limit of 900 cells. This change will stop warning message being displayed when cell limit is reached.
  
• Email will no longer be sent out in a version control project when a user views a History of a requirement that had not yet been checked out
  
• In specific scenarios one could not assign a cycle to child requirements after assigning a cycle to the parent requirement.
  
• Setting a URL in a rich text field converted special characters such as ampersand to URL encoded characters.
  
• A rich text template defined with a multiple table structure was not displayed properly.
  
• When an entire table column inside a rich text field was selected and cut to the clipboard, only the content was cut and the column remained part of the table.
  
• Server connections were not properly released even after considerable time passed following a timeout defined by the site parameter of Wait_Before_Disconnect.
  
• Copying a project with the MSTM extension enabled, copied the requirements when only Customization was set to be copied.
  
• Quality Center license was not released after user was disconnected by inactivity timeout.
  
• Some components were missing from the Choose Components dialog box after attempting to apply invalid filter criteria.
  
• The upgrade process of an HP Quality Center 9.2 project to HP ALM 11.0 on Unix made wrong use of the slash character in the repository path. As a result, objects in Business Process Testing components were displayed using question mark icons instead of their actual test object icon, and failed to run from Quick Test Professional.
  
• Double-clicking the scrollbars of the Test Script grid for a business process test unintentionally opened the Component Details dialog box.
  
• The Quick Test Professional process kept running after a business process test failed and was set to exit On Failure.
  
• An Automatic Runner test set with a Host Group failed with "Another test is running", instead of waiting for the host to become available.
  
• After upgrading a Quality Center 10.00 project to HP ALM 11.00,the values of business process test parameters got mixed up during execution.
  
• The default value of Test Parameters in Test Plan > Test Configuration > Data for business process tests was not displayed correctly.
  
• Copying a project with the MSTM extension enabled, copied some attachments when only Customization and Users and Groups were set to be copied.
  
• The Execution Date of a test instance was not refreshed to reflect a Fast Run execution.
  
• Copying and pasting a test set resulted in an error message when data hiding was defined for the Test module, even though the test set was eventually pasted properly.
  
• Quick Test Professional test set execution did not stop when a failure occurred, even though the On Failure instruction was set to "Stop the Test Set". Now the test set execution stops on failure, however it should be noted that the following cases do not constitute failed tests: Host is not available, Quick Test Professional is not installed on the destination host, and Quick Test Professional agent fails to run the test.
  
• Exporting the Test Plan grid view to Excel after re-ordering the grid columns did not reflect the new column order.
  
• Values entered in Test Run fields such as Actual, Expected and Description were not kept after opening the Attachments dialog and clicking the Cancel button in that dialog window.
  

The Following Features Have Been Enhanced

• HP ALM server can now connect to SMTP mail server with authentication enabled. This is done by turning off the STARTTLS command using a new Site Parameter: SMTP_ENABLE_STARTTLS=N
  

• A dropdown was added to the Planned Host Name field in the Test Lab/Test Set execution grid for selecting pre-defined hosts
  

• HP ALM 11.00 is certified for Microsoft MSSQL 2008 R2 SP2 Limitation: STM is not certified on MS SQL 2008 R2 SP2
  

• HP ALM 11.00 is certified for PC 11.00 Patch 7
  

• A new site parameter, ATTACH_TOTAL_MAX_SIZE, limits the size of attachments for a specific entity.
  

• Performance has been improved for ALM connected over a reverse proxy server.
  

• As of patch 12, HP ALM 11.00 is certified for Performance Center 11.00 Patch 7.
  

• Service Test is certified on MS SQL 2008 SP3 Service Test is certified on Red Hat 5.8 64-bit as a server operating system
  

• You can now create cross filters in the Test Lab module's tree by Responsible Tester.
  

• A warning message, that is displayed when editing a called test's steps while the called test is running, was repeatedly displayed for every step. Now this message is displayed only once.
  

• In the Test Plan module, the state and position of the Test Configurations bottom pane under the test selection tree is now persistent for each user.
  

• Release scope items are defined by including requirements, tests, test sets,and defects.Now you can also filter which defects to include.
  

• In the Releases module > Release Scope tab, you can include one of the following:
  
  • Defects that match certain criteria.
    
  • Defects that are linked to certain requirements, tests, and test sets.
    

• MSI Generator now supports combinations of Registered and Shared files in the same locations.
  

• MSI packages now support deployment of multiple ALM servers.
  

• Silent installation is now available for SystemTest Agent. Note: The silent installation of SystemTest agent cannot be executed on Windows Vista and Windows 7 when User Account Control is enabled.
  
• Login to ALM over HTTPS with client certificates is now supported.
  
• As of patch 10, HP ALM 11.00 is certified for the following servers, databases, and tools:
  
  • Oracle 11.2.0.3
    
  • MS SQL 2008 SP3
    
  • Windows 7 SP1 32Bit as Client OS
    
  • Red Hat 5.7 64bit as Server OS
    
  • Red Hat 5.8 64bit as Server OS
    
  • PC 11.00 Patch 6
    

• The following are some limitations relating to the new certifications:
  
  • STM, ST are not certified on
    
  • Oracle 11.2.0.3, MS SQL 2008 SP3
    
  • STM, ST are not certified on
    
  • Windows 7 SP1 32 bit as client OS
    
  • STM, ST are not certified on
    
  • Red Hat 5.7 64bit, Red Hat 5.8 64bit as server OS
    
  • For an overall description of certified environments see the System Requirements section below.
    

• Performance and stability improvements
  

• The patch includes various performances and stability fixes. This patch is a critical and mandatory patch.
  

• The performance improvements include: Improvements on the server cache mechanism Memory utilization improvements due to background job changes Improvements to SQL queries
  

• The stability items include: Fixes of server deadlocks that resulted in sporadic crashes Fixes in the PC extension that caused server crashes
  

• Controlling the size of the attachments- Description: A new parameter enables you to control the size of attachments. Solution: The site parameter UPLOAD_ATTACH_MAX_SIZE (size in KB) has been added. It controls the size of attachments added using OTA and in the User Interface. It does not control the size of attachments in integration tools.
  

• DEP compliance Description: ALM can work on operating systems with DEP turned on.
  

• Data Awareness Drop-down list in the Resource Parameter Name column which contains all the resource (Excel) headers. Auto-mapping via the Map Parameters dialog box. Data-table resource preview according to the predefined filter in the Test Configuration tab.
  

• Mail Support in Test Lab The user can send a test instance including details, history, attachments, run summary, and last run steps from Test Lab.
  

• Default Values Creating new entities, such as tests, test configurations, and defects, sometimes requires entering a large number of fields. Often the values for these fields are the same, and it is repetitive and time consuming to enter the values. For example, each time a QA engineer adds a new defect for the same environment in the same testing cycle, the values for the following defect fields are likely to be the same: Project, Detected in Cycle, Detected in Release, and Target Release.
  

• The second parameter, send from, from the Send Mail API has the ability to be specified in the script.
  
• You can select multiple tests/requirements and include them simultaneously to the coverage analysis feature.
  

• There is a horizontal bar in the Test Plan.
  

• Site Administration Both administrators and non-administrators can start Site Administration. Instances of Quality Center 10.00 Site Administration can be opened side-by-side with instances of ALM 11.00 Site Administration. 3^rd party tools can integrate Site Administration operations into their scripts by registering the Site Administration client component.
  
• Certifications BPT/BPTEE was certified for Win2008R2SP1, Oracle11.2.0.2, and VistaSP2x32. ST 11.2 was certified for Win2008R2SP1, and Oracle11.2.0.2.
  

• CIT 2.6 support will be provided with this patch.
  

• Mobile App - Introducing the HP ALM Defect Management Mini Application for Mobile Devices Enterprise Collaboration - ALM 11.0 can be integrated with Enterprise Collaboration (EC).
  

• Summary: A non-versioned field option was added to Project Customization, which is used to define whether or not to save versioning information for a field. When updating fields that are non-versioned for multi-entities using the Replace or Update selected options, if this option is selected, no check out dialog box displays. When viewing previous versions of an entity, fields that are not versioned are labeled as non-versioned.
  

• In Project Customization, in the Cross Project Customization page, you can now select whether to view all linked projects or only active ones.
  

• Project Planning and Tracking Summary: A drill down option was added to the Scorecard view in the Releases module. The option shows all the entities that create the scorecard KPI value. There is also an option to drill down by numerator or denominator.
  

• Business Planning Modeling: Summary: Support was added for EPC Row/Column ARIS notations.
  

• Windows Server 2008 R2 is now supported
  

• ALM 11.00 is certified on Microsoft Office 2010
  

• Business Process Testing - Add the BPTEE functionality to the core BPT product. It is recommended to perform the project upgrade after installing this patch
  

• NTLM support both for proxy and web authentication, to enable it for all configurations without the need in configuring the web gate. Note: To use ALM Explorer with NTLM, you use the new version from the Add-ins page.
  

• In ALM 11 the requirements rich text feature was changed. Before ALM 11 it was MS Word document, shown in the ALM UI. The new rich text is stored as HTML page. Rich text, created before ALM 11, should be converted from the MS Word documents into HTML.
  

Wow that's a ton of changes! How do I get this patch?

To get the latest QC patch you need to download it from HP's self solve patch section. Sorry – HP threatened legal action and I had to shut down my HP Patch download section.

ALM 11 – GETTING STARED WITH REST API

With the release of ALM 11, HP now offers an API that allows the user to interact with QC/ALM using REST. Rather than writing OTA code, one can now accomplish some of the same functionality using a browser as a client – no code writing needed.

Of course, you can also use tools like soapUI to work with ALM or create custom applications using languages like VBscript, C# and Java that interact with ALM.

But to keep it simple, we'll start by taking a look at how to get started using your browser as a client.

Getting started using your browser as a client

The first thing you'll need to do before using the ALM REST API is to authenticate your user. You can do this by obtaining a session cookie which returns a token that, by default, times out after one hour of inactivity.

Authenticate your user

1. Determine whether your user is currently authenticated by navigating to:

http://yourALMServer/qcbin/rest/is-authenticated

If your user is not currently authenticated, you'll get an HTTP Status Code 401.

2. To authenticate your user, navigate to:

http://yourALMServer/qcbin/rest/is-authenticated?login-form-required=y

3. Enter the ALM login name and password you want to authenticate:

4. If your ALM user is authenticated, you'll get the following XML:

How to READ an ALM defect

You should now be authenticated. Cool! Next, let's make sure we're able to retrieve the very first defect in ALM.

1. To READ an ALM defect record, place the following URL (using your ALM instance info) into your browser:

http://yourALM/qcbin/rest/yourDomain/yourProject/projects/CentricityBusiness/defects/1

2. The first defect should populate your browser with its XML info:

Although our example returned info for a defect in ALM, you can also read info for the other ALM entities, which are:

• Defects
  
• Resources
  
• Requirements
  
• Tests
  
• Test lab
  

For example – if we wanted to read the first requirement info from ALM, we would simply change the defect URL we used to point to requirements instead of defects:

http://yourALM/qcbin/rest/yourDomain/yourProject/projects/CentricityBusiness/ requirements/1

Other common tasks you can perform

We saw in the example above how easy it is to READ an existing record in ALM. Some other common tasks that can be performed using the ALM API are:

• Create
  
• Delete
  
• Read
  
• Update
  

That should be enough info to get you started using the ALM REST API. For more info, be sure to check out HP's ALM REST API doc – and as always, drop me a line with any questions or comments!