Grid-Tools Blog Author Archives - Huw Price

Grid-Tools win “UK IT Achievement of the Year”!

Posted on November 17, 2010 by . Posted in: Test data.

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Grid-Tools winner of UK IT Achievement of the Year Award

After an amazing year, we are thrilled to annouce we won “UK IT Achievement of the Year” at the 2010 UK IT Industry Awards; pushing Cisco, the US-based multi-national corporation into second place alongside British company Amicus ITS.

Run by the BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, and Computing Magazine, the UK IT Industry awards are widely regarded as the Oscars of the IT industry, celebrating best practice, innovation and excellence. Read more about the awards here: http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=conWebDoc.37939

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Plus ca change?

Posted on October 26, 2010 by . Posted in: Test data. Tagged in: , , , .

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Ten years ago, I read a figure that suggested that software testing accounts for 50% of the total cost of software development. It would be intriguing to know what percentage of IT budgets account for database testing and development projects today. On one hand, there are obvious routes to cost savings but on the other [...]

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Cut costs not projects

Posted on October 4, 2010 by . Posted in: Test data. Tagged in: , , .

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With more companies postponing or even cutting IT projects, the need to create efficiencies when it comes to developing systems is greater than ever. Yet at the same time, those efficiencies are being sought with production databases and applications that are ballooning both in terms of size and complexity. Transaction rates are happening at unprecedented [...]

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So, you need to create test data…

Posted on September 20, 2010 by . Posted in: Test data. Tagged in: , , , , , , , , , .

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Let’s face it; nothing will emerge to meet the needs of our fast-changing business world without it. Actually, forget ‘fast-changing’, it’s regularly set at break-neck… But anyone working as part of a development and testing team will also know that the demands of the ‘brief’ set before them will rarely be met with ease. Over [...]

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The truth about test data creation: The Silver Lining

Posted on September 2, 2010 by . Posted in: Test data.

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Picture the scene – a development team who’ve been gathering dust as they wait for valid test data now find they not only have the data they need, but the data contains all the valid and invalid combinations to test their systems. Also, the data will enable them to test more robustly than would have [...]

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Why are we waiting so long for our development and testing projects to finish? Might be time to think a bit more about test data management techniques…

Posted on August 20, 2010 by . Posted in: Test data. Tagged in: , , , .

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Time for an honest ‘hands in the air’ moment. Who amongst you in the development and testing teams have found their projects stalled because of delays ‘upstream’? From what I’ve seen and heard recently, that should be a sea of hands! We’ve heard of six large scale projects in as many months where the development [...]

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Less is Moore – creating an easier route to understanding data flow

Posted on August 9, 2010 by . Posted in: Test data. Tagged in: , , , .

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“It can’t continue forever,” so said Gordon Moore five years ago when asked for a comment about the law to which he gave his name. Moore’s Law was originally based on an observation that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit had been invented. [...]

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How To Build A Successful Career In IT

Posted on July 26, 2010 by . Posted in: Test data.

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Here’s a quote from Peter Bartram’s new book How To Build A Successful Career In IT: “Today’s IT leaders are multi-skilled and business focused, equally at home discussing shareholder value as they are in the datacentre.” Bartram interviewed a number of IT professionals at the top of their game and it might not surprise many [...]

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