Think Publication

Ya, you are right I am talking about XAMMP server; I know most of the guys are familiar with this tool. This post will help to some of people who do not know XAMMP and want readymade solution to quick start there development work (most of time collage students ).

XAMPP for Linux
The distribution for Linux systems contains: Apache, MySQL, PHP & PEAR, Perl, ProFTPD, phpMyAdmin, OpenSSL, GD, Freetype2, libjpeg, libpng, gdbm, zlib, expat, Sablotron, libxml, Ming, Webalizer, pdf class, ncurses, mod_perl, FreeTDS, gettext, mcrypt, mhash, eAccelerator, SQLite and IMAP C-Client.
XAMPP for Windows
The distribution for Windows 2000, 2003, XP and Vista. This version contains: Apache, MySQL, PHP + PEAR, Perl, mod_php, mod_perl, mod_ssl, OpenSSL, phpMyAdmin, Webalizer, Mercury Mail Transport System for Win32 and NetWare Systems v3.32, Ming, JpGraph, FileZilla FTP Server, mcrypt, eAccelerator, SQLite, and WEB-DAV + mod_auth_mysql.  XAMPP for
Mac OS X
The distribution for Mac OS X contains: Apache, MySQL, PHP & PEAR, SQLite, Perl, ProFTPD, phpMyAdmin, OpenSSL, GD, Freetype2, libjpeg, libpng, zlib, Ming, Webalizer, mod_perl.  XAMPP for Solaris
The distribution for Solaris contains: Apache, MySQL, PHP & PEAR, Perl, ProFTPD, phpMyAdmin, OpenSSL, Freetype2, libjpeg, libpng, zlib, expat, Ming, Webalizer, pdf class. The license
XAMPP is a compilation of free software (comparable to a Linux distribution), it’s free of charge and it’s free to copy under the terms of the  GNU (General Public License). But it is only the compilation of XAMPP that is published under GPL. Please check every single license of the contained products to get an overview of what is, and what isn’t, allowed.Note
The new version of XAMPP 1.7.3 but i will recommend old version because it is more stable and tested by most of dev communityDownload from appropriate version according to OS XAMPP, for windows download from SourceForg
Start To Work

1. Install JDK
2. Download Ant Zip file.
3. UnZip in any folder (e.g. C:\Program Files\Ant)
4. Right click on My Computer
5. Click on Properties
6. Click on “Advanced” Tab
7. Click on “Environmental Variables”
8. Click on “New” button in “User Variables” section
9. Insert Variable name = “ANT_HOME” and Variable Value = “C:\Program Files\Ant”  and Save
10. In “User Variables” section, Select “Path” from the list and click on “Edit” button.
11. And insert “;%ANT_HOME%\bin;” at last in the path and Save
12. Click on “New” button in “User Variables” section
13. Insert Variable name = ANT_OPTS and Variable Value = -Xmx1024m and Save
Note: steps 12 and 13 are Options Steps and it is used to avoid “Out of memory exception” because some tasks may require more memory.

Check Ant Installation is done properly or not?

1. Open dos/command prompt by typing “Cmd” in run text menu
2. Type “Ant –version” user will get information of ant version as below:
C:\Documents and Settings\Prince>ant -version
Apache Ant version 1.7.1 compiled on June 27 2008

nginx (pronounced as “engine X”) is a HTTP server and mail proxy server written by Igor Sysoev. nginx  is a lightweight, high performance web server/reverse proxy and e-mail (IMAP/POP3) proxy, licensed under a BSD-like license. It runs on UNIX, GNU/Linux, BSD variants, Mac OS X, Solaris, and Microsoft Windows.

Nginx is one of a handful of servers written to address the C10K problem. Unlike traditional servers, Nginx doesn’t rely on threads to handle requests. Instead it uses a much more scalable event-driven (asynchronous) architecture. This architecture uses small, but most importantly, predictable amounts of memory under load.
Even if you don’t expect to handle thousands of simultaneous requests, you can still benefit from Nginx’s high-performance and small memory footprint. Nginx scales in all directions: from the smallest VPS all the way up to clusters of servers.

Basic HTTP features:
Handling of static files, index files and auto-indexing
Reverse proxy with caching
Load balancing
fault tolerance
SSL support
FastCGI support, with caching, although it doesn’t have CGI support.
Name- and IP-based virtual servers
FLV streaming
MP4 streaming, using the MP4 streaming module
Web page access authentication
gzip compression

Mail proxy features:
User redirection to IMAP/POP3 backend using an external HTTP authentication server;
User authentication using an external HTTP authentication server and connection redirection to internal SMTP backend;
Authentication methods:
POP3: USER/PASS, APOP, AUTH LOGIN/PLAIN/CRAM-MD5;
IMAP: LOGIN, AUTH LOGIN/PLAIN/CRAM-MD5;
SMTP: AUTH LOGIN/PLAIN/CRAM-MD5;
SSL support
STARTTLS and STLS support.

Suppored Operting Systems:
FreeBSD 3 — 7 / i386; FreeBSD 5 — 7 / amd64;
Linux 2.2 — 2.6 / i386; Linux 2.6 / amd64;
Solaris 9 / i386, sun4u; Solaris 10 / i386, amd64, sun4v;
MacOS X / ppc, i386;
Windows XP, Windows Server 2003.

Performance:
nginx has reverse proxy server feature
nginx has Load balancer feature

Other HTTP features:
name- and IP-based virtual servers;
keep-alive and pipelined connections support;
flexible configuration;
reconfiguration and online upgrade without interruption of the client processing;
access log formats, bufferred log writing, and quick log rotation;
4xx-5xx error codes redirection;
rewrite module;
access control based on client IP address and HTTP Basic authentication;
PUT, DELETE, MKCOL, COPY and MOVE methods;
FLV streaming;
speed limitation;
limitation of simultaneous connections or requests from one address.

Experimental features:
embedded perl.

Question: When Smoke & Sanity Testing is performed in the STLC? Which of them is performed earlier & the other later & why?

Ans: Sanity testing: It is just to test the basic functionalities of a software product and application. it is done by testers.
Sanity Testing is subset of regression testing and a group of test cases are executed that are related with the changes made to the application.

Smoke testing: it is a form of regression testing. When an application made some new changes to modules or added new modules to a application then a smoke test is performed that it is working fine or not. It can be done by both developers and testers but most of time dev team perform this.
In software engineering, a smoke test generally consists of a collection of tests that can be applied to a newly created or repaired computer program. Sometimes the tests are performed by the automated system that builds the final software. In this sense a smoke test is the process of validating code changes before the changes are checked into the larger product’s official source code collection or the main branch of source code.
A Smoke test is designed to touch every part of the application in a cursory way. It’s shallow and wide
There are no certain rules for this, the both ensure whatever we are releasing it should be defect free and tester should catch defect ASAP so we can reduce time and cost to deliver best product.
In Some organizations, Sanity Testing is done first and then Smoke testing because Sanity Testing is a sub set of major function testing to check build is stable or not and major function working fine or not and smoke testing is like cursor testing where user just touch every part of the application it can be called as ad-hoc.
But in some organizations, Smoke is done first and later the sanity, but again its depend on organization to organization
Software sanity tests are commonly conflated with smoke tests. A smoke test determines whether it is possible to continue testing, as opposed to whether it is reasonable. A software smoke test determines whether the program launches and whether its interfaces are accessible and responsive. If the smoke test fails, it is impossible to conduct a sanity test.
In contrast, the ideal sanity test exercises the smallest subset of application functions needed to determine whether the application logic is generally functional and correct. If the sanity test fails, it is not reasonable to attempt more rigorous testing.
Both sanity tests and smoke tests are ways to avoid wasting time and effort by quickly determining whether an application is too flawed to merit any rigorous testing. Many companies run sanity tests and unit tests on an automated build as part of their development process.