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Announcing improved international support, native Excel spreadsheet support and more!
December 29, 2005
We are pleased to announce the latest version of Test Run, Beta 7, is now available for download and is also available on the online version as well. This release is very significant and requires users of the downloadable version of Test Run to make some fundamental changes to their Test Run database, which is detailed later in this post. These changes however are required in order to meet the demands of Test Run’s growing international user base. Now in use in China and Europe, customers submitted feedback requesting support for the UTF-8 character set so that multibyte characters would be displayed properly. While the application is still shown in English, Test Run now allows users to enter virtually any character they wish into their spreadsheets and within Test Run itself.
Beta 7 also introduces native Excel spreadsheet support. What does that mean? In previous versions of Test Run users were required to import and export CSV files to and from Excel and Test Run. It was not technically difficult, but it was an extra step that just made integration with the most common QA tool more cumbersome. With Beta 7 one can upload and download Excel spreadsheets directly, with no other intermediate steps necessary.
Those are the two major changes in Beta 7, but there are a number of other feature enhancements and bug fixes as well.
Change Log for Beta 7
Below is a detailed change log for Test Run Beta 7.
- Fixed bug on test case screen that resulted in a non-logged in user not being cycled through the authentication system
- Changed database to use MyISAM table formats in order to be more compatible with MySQL 4.x and 5.x
- Changed tables to use UTF8 character encoding for better internationalization support, updated schema and grade files.
- Upgrade database tables in upgrade script to MyISAM
- Display version number in footer of page
- Ability to add/delete bugs assocated with test cases
- Fixed bug that prevented some users from changing their password
- Added ability to change your email address and verify it via email
- Fixed bug in forgot password sequence - it was not using the proper base URL
- Introduced native Excel Spreasheet support
- Test cases are not soft deleted, meaning they are flagged as deleted. This will retain the referencial integrity of older test plans, and facilitate historical reporting.
- Added ability to delete notes associated with a test case.
Database Changes
- Upgraded table defination to use MyISAM formats as opposed to ISAM formats. Some versions of MySQL do not support this format. MySQL version 3.x supports MyISAM, but sometimes requires that MySQL be compiled with the “—with-isam” compile directive enabled. Later versions of MySQL should support this new table structure natively. Instructions on upgrading can be found here.
- Upgraded almost all tables to use the UTF-8 character set.
Note: Some users may be required to upgrade MySQL in order to use this latest version. Please don’t hesitate to contact support if you need assistance.
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About Byrne Reese
Byrne Reese is a product manager by day and an engineer by night.
He conceived of Test Run to help project managers like him stay up to date and informed of what his team was working on.
Earlier today I wrote about the challenges of choosing between new features and fixing bugs. Well, bugs unfortunately are a reality. And Test Run Beta 7 had tons of them, and honestly, I feel guilty about that. But with this... [Read More]
From Test Run Blog on March 25, 2006 12:59 PM