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In the spring semester of 2002, I served as a Software Tester for the IS Department of OíReilly & Associates.
OíReilly & Associates is best known for publishing a wide range of books geared toward leading-edge technologies in the computer industry. As a software tester, I was responsible for testing intranet web applications and reporting bugs to an internal email tracking system. Using an email system to track bugs allowed for a two-way communication between the software tester and software developer. In my case, I was testing both software that was in the process of being developed, as well as software that was already in residence on the OíReilly intranet.
Over the course of my internship, several software developers completed projects that I tested through several phases of their development. The two main projects were a shopping cart and a book publisherís database system. The shopping cart was a standard shopping cart designed similar to the one currently being used by amazon.com. The book publisherís database system was an in-depth tracking system used by employees to track books through each stage of the publishing process. Employees could bank information as the book progressed - starting from its original inception, to its final publishing stages, and continuing on through the release of any updated editions.
I also tested web applications that were already being used by employees on the OíReilly intranet. This involved a number of reports that were being generated on a daily basis to reflect up-to-date sales data for all OíReilly products. Part of my responsibility in assessing these sales reports required that I read through code written in ColdFusion and SQL. I used this information to fill out forms indicating such things as: which program was generating the web form, what SQL tables/views were being accessed, were the SQL views program generated or were they pulled from the database, etc. This was my first exposure to ColdFusion as a programming language - a language that is currently in wide use throughout the industry.
OíReilly provided a relaxed environment to work in. I found the people easy to work with and helpful. When I first began working there in February, many of the employees in the department brought their dogs to work. This seemed to occur less often as the semester wore on.
I donít think this type of testing was typical of the software industry as a whole. Maybe some parts of it were - such as the use of bug tracking software. Overall, it seemed to be a fairly loose testing environment with very little formal testing systems in place. This could be due to the small size of the company along with the less formal atmosphere that is present at OíReilly.
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