QA decision example
Mar. 30th, 2006 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jenkA former coworker of mine, Raymond Chen, posed a "what would you do?" question about how Windows Vista should handle getting incomplete data back from a server. Click here to read his post ;)
I think this provides a window into day-to-day software quality decisions that most people don't usually see. In particular, the amount of interdependency that occurs when dealing with an open platform like Intel/Windows.
Note that Raymond does not name the buggy server software in question, other than to note it's not Windows. This is SOP when discussing things outside of NDA.
For the less-initiated, the information would travel from
the server -> Microsoft's network driver -> Windows OS file APIs & Windows Explorer
APIs (Application Program Interface) are how programs interact with each other. Compare to UI (User Interface).
As for what I'd do: "Doing nothing" would be data loss, which is NEVER acceptable. As XP currently works with this solution, best bet would be to continue to implement things the way XP does - at some loss of speed. Whether to do that all the time or just when this particular server is identified would depend on things like market share, detection certainty, et cetera - and would require that error messages be added for this "weird" error to notify the user if not all items have been returned.
I think this provides a window into day-to-day software quality decisions that most people don't usually see. In particular, the amount of interdependency that occurs when dealing with an open platform like Intel/Windows.
Note that Raymond does not name the buggy server software in question, other than to note it's not Windows. This is SOP when discussing things outside of NDA.
For the less-initiated, the information would travel from
the server -> Microsoft's network driver -> Windows OS file APIs & Windows Explorer
APIs (Application Program Interface) are how programs interact with each other. Compare to UI (User Interface).
As for what I'd do: "Doing nothing" would be data loss, which is NEVER acceptable. As XP currently works with this solution, best bet would be to continue to implement things the way XP does - at some loss of speed. Whether to do that all the time or just when this particular server is identified would depend on things like market share, detection certainty, et cetera - and would require that error messages be added for this "weird" error to notify the user if not all items have been returned.
