Technical Presentation
Globalization Testing
We all know the sooner we find the bugs the cheaper they are to fix. Unfortunately too many bugs affecting our customers around the world are found late in the development cycle. Although we may not localize our software into any particular language, any software running on the Windows platform should support the national conventions and textual data used by any of our customers regardless of where they are in the world or what language they speak. Testing of various national conventions (time, date, number, and currency formats) used around the world, and using textual data using strings composed of non-English Unicode characters is a great way to increase effectiveness and find more bugs then you might just using strings with English (ASCII) characters. The best part is that testers don't have to know how to speak or read the various languages in order to use the characters from those languages in their test strings.
This talk provides detailed instructions on how to configure the English Windows platform to perform globalization testing, how to customize regional options to more efficiently test the various national conventions used around the world, how to install various keyboard layouts and input method editors to input non-English strings composed of Russian, Japanese, Hindi, and Arabic textual data. Attendees will also learn how to execute practical tests to verify string parsing, character conversion of East Asian languages, and key sequencing and bi-directional support of complex scripted languages used in the Middle East. This talk also provides examples of typical bugs found in globalization testing, and techniques to generate random test strings in test automation. Attendees will learn:
- The purpose and value of globalization testing
- How to customize national convention settings to improve testing
- How to input non-English characters to extend string testing
- How to perform basic tests of input fields using input method editors and complex scripts
- How to identify common globalization defects
