TestProNews Q4 - 2007
Web Technologies Applied to Test
The holy grail of interactive Web sites is an interface that looks and behaves like a locally-installed application, but is entirely contained within a Web browser. Achieving this type of user experience was not possible with older-generation Web technologies, in part because an entire page had to be refreshed every time new data arrived or the user initiated an action. New technologies have completely revolutionized the user experience to the point that well-designed Webpages are virtually indistinguishable from actual applications. Familiar examples are Google’s mapping and financial tools, as well as their spreadsheet and word processing tools, which behave very similarly to their locally-installed counterparts. These developments are particularly exciting to the world of test and measurement, where more and more people across an enterprise need access to the volumes of data generated by automated test systems.
One of the principal goals of Web-based applications is to eliminate the need to install and manage a local copy of a particular software package. Instead, the user accesses the application remotely and all associated management—including upgrades, backups, and bug fixes—are taken care of on a centralized server. The server provides services to users across the network, a setup which is commonly referred to as on-demand software or software as a service. The group which manages the server and the services it provides is referred to as an ASP (Application Service Provider).
Data integrity and timely delivery are essential to any test system. For this very reason, you need a trustworthy technology as the network becomes an essential part of your test solution. Ensuring that acquired data samples and reports are generated and securely stored on databases across the network requires such robust and reliable technology. There are many competing frameworks and platforms for network data communication. Microsoft, because of its ubiquitous presence, makes one of the most popular platforms on the market: ADO.NET. This is a set of software components and libraries for accessing data and associated services that programmers use when developing their applications. These are part of the Microsoft .NET Framework, on which hundreds of thousands of applications have been built and deployed for systems ranging from sensitive banking transactions to remote systems operations.
|
Figure 1: Popular Web-based applications for maps, financial data, and test data |
Another essential technology is the Web browser. Commercially-available Web browsers have been around since 1993 and were at first only capable of displaying HTML-based documents. This capability remains in today’s browsers; however, browser technology is continuously being expanded beyond early limitations. Using tools such as JavaScript—a scripting language developed by Netscape Communications Corporation—Web-based applications become more interactive, complex, and useful without having to be developed from scratch. It is the continuous extension of Web browsers and the technology they support which increasingly makes browsers a platform well-suited and appealing for test applications.
Figure 2: Google Maps application with highly interactive sections
|
Displaying information in an intuitive and useful way is essentially what smoothes the transition from locally-installed applications to a Web-based approach. In test systems, this is particularly true because high-speed data, diagrams, live charts, reports, and status indicators must be easily viewable while presenting the data with significant immediacy. Instead of refreshing an entire Webpage every time a new data point or indicator is updated, new technologies enable pages to be designed such that only the modified section of a Webpage needs to be reloaded, reducing network traffic and increasing interactivity. Although you may not yet be taking advantage of this technology for your test applications, you have probably experienced it with other tools. Common examples of Webpages that implement this technology are Google Maps—where you can zoom and pan without reloading the entire page—or Yahoo! Finance—where you can update the data displayed in stock value charts without affecting the rest of the Webpage. In terms of Webpage usability and responsiveness, AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is one of the most significant developments in recent years. AJAX basically enables portions of a Webpage to be updated without having to reload the entire page. Although AJAX is not a technology in itself, it does comprise a group of technologies—including XHTML, CSS, JScript, XMLHttpRequest, and XML—that together enable a high level of interactivity and application-like behavior on the Web.
Figure 3: Yahoo! Finance webpage with application-like data visualization and manipulation
|
Web 2.0 is a term that refers to the next generation of interactive, Web-based applications. It is not a technology itself, but rather a group of technologies and services that facilitate efficient collaboration and sharing between users and their systems—a necessity for test and measurement applications. When considering the joint benefits of these technologies, one could attribute Web 2.0 with transforming Web sites from data islands to aggregated sources of information and functionality, and providing a better means of presenting and organizing that information. These new technologies have made all aspects of the enterprise more accessible, making business users one of the main beneficiaries of the technology. All of these benefits combined have given the Web the interactivity required to present the large volumes of data that today’s test systems produce.
Web dashboards are by far one of the most useful and practical tools making use of the technologies mentioned above. Essentially, dashboards present a single view with all relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics that are important to you. The technologies described in this article enable you to customize how you access and interact with your data, while promoting interesting and previously unthought-of ways of presenting information. Although used extensively for business purposes and more frequently for executives and managers, dashboards now provide universal access to the large amount of data representations in test and measurement applications. Anyone from test engineers, technicians, and department managers can open a customized dashboard and access, correlate, and aggregate information coming from device designers or validation, verification, characterization, and test systems. Typical benefits of a dashboard include the following:
|
Immediate consolidation of data from multiple sources in one format and location
Scheduling of automatic report generation for record keeping and tracking purposes
Instant sharing of reports and data views across the enterprise and the world
Interactive sorting, filtering, and searching of data to suit different data visualization needs
Security protocols limit accessing data and reports to users with proper credentials |
Figure 4: Arendar Dashboard with customized test data views and relevant information in one location
|
Systems integrators can help you put together a solution that provides all the aforementioned benefits. Doing this from scratch requires specific expertise because of the complexity of integrating all the necessary databases and other back-end systems. You can also choose commercial off-the-shelf solutions like VI Technology Arendar, which include all the features and necessary tools in one enterprise test platform.
A possible next step in the evolution of Web-based applications is the concept of a WebOS or “Webtops.” This is essentially a return to the thin client, where a PC will host only the minimum amount of software required to access the applications served through the network. The operating system will basically consist of a Web browser and the necessary underlying system to interact with the peripherals. The rest of applications which one would typically expect from a desktop operating system are then accessed through the browser. This could also have a significant impact on test applications, as these WebOSs provide the ability to run applications without being physically tied to a particular PC and will therefore enable access to test resources across the enterprise.
Gricha Raether
Director - Sales and Marketing
VI Technology
|
|
|
|
Read about the latest information for integrating automated test systems throughout the enterprise. |
|
|
|
 |
Download PDF |
|
|
