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Testing is a destructive task in which the goal is to find relevant defects as early as possible. It requires automation to reduce cost and ensure high regression, thus delivering determined quality. This article reviews technologies for test automation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Continuous integration has been around for a while now, but the habits it suggests are far from common practice. Automated builds, a thorough test suite, and committing to the mainline branch every day sound simple at first, but they require a responsible team to implement and constant care. What starts with improved tooling can be a catalyst for long-lasting change in your company's shipping culture. Continuous integration is more than a set of practices, it's a mindset that has one thing in mind: increasing customer value. The Web extra at http://youtu.be/tDl_cHfrJZo is an audio podcast of the Tools of the Trade column discusses how continuous integration is more than a set of practices, it's a mindset that has one thing in mind: increasing customer value. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Modern virtualization technology allows us to run operating systems in a virtual machine that can be hosted on facilities ranging from our laptop to a datacenter in the cloud. It's thus possible to create a virtualized development environment that contains all the tools, applications, and libraries that a programmer requires. This speeds up developer setup time, brings economies of scale, introduces parity between development and production environments, allows the use of platform-specific tools, and simplifies embedded-system development. Using VMs, testers can ensure a pristine environment and access to diverse (virtual) platforms. Deployment is also simplified by packaging all the system's components and setup into a VM appliance. Finally, on the operations side, VMs make it easier for a system to support application provisioning, maintenance windows, high availability, and disaster recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Phillip G. Armour responds to "Differential Debugging" in the Tools of the Trade column September/October issue of IEEE Software to discuss the process of predicting defects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]