Programming and Databases for Testers - General Description

This course covers two days. The first day concentrates on programming, while the second concentrates on databases.

Unless you are a programmer by trade, programming may be a confusing discipline with terminology that is baffling, at best. This course is designed to introduce the tester and quality assurance professional to programming concepts. We¹ll discuss how programming relates to QA and what we need to know to be effective testers. Terminology is probably the most difficult hurdle in understanding the programming world, so we¹ll cover terms and their uses and provide you with enough information to be able to participate in technical discussions effectively. As each programming concept is investigated, particular note will be made of how this information affects us as testers. You won't leave this course being a programmer, but you will be a better-informed tester who can talk the talk and doesn¹t have to feel confused in a technical review.

Knowledge is power and the data is what creates the knowledge. We need to know how to store it and how to retrieve it in order to be effective in testing the data flow through a system. In this section we will discuss what a database is, why it¹s used and how to use it. A significant amount of time will be spent discussing SQL and walking through examples. SQL can be a major tool for verifying the data that you are processing during testing. Throughout this course we¹ll look at database design issues and how they affect the testing requirements.