Tech Page @

by Ferry Firmansjah

Congratulation!! You have found my personal tech page. This corner will mainly contain some technical (read, computer related) tips that might be of some use to someone out there.

Hopefully, this page will not simply be "just another tech page" kind of thing. I would really like to offer some information that is not widely available out there, or no one has bothered to provide on the Internet. Sounds good?

Since the page was created, my role and responsibilities have evolved. I'm currently the head of a quality assurance group, implementing some of the most ingenious home grown quality assurance automation process.

Anyway, enough said. Please feel free to browse through some of items that I've put up here, and hopefully these pages will help you in some way.

Mercury Interactive's Tools:

• Using Mercury's WinRunner and LoadRunner for stress testing the WinFrame server. Totally written in TSL. I think there is a 'cleaner' way to perform Stress testing of WinFrame server (by using another WinFrame server to host the multiple WinRunner sessions) -- Check with Mercury Interactive on this paper that was presented at Mercury's user conference. I guess at this time this information is probably best described as a proof that TSL can be used to make WinRunner perform a quasi-multi-tasking work of controlling multiple WinFrame sessions (especially the WinFrame load testing module). Might be interesting for the more serious TSL programmers out there.
• Using Mercury's WinRunner (and LoadRunner) to load testing the WinFrame server (coming soon). 'Soon' is a relative term... :-)
• String functions that Mercury forgot to include. Tired of WinRunner's barebone string manipulation functions? This custom module contains all the advanced string functions you may need - especially for those people who love regular expression. Totally written in TSL.
  Note: If you are having problem with the regular expression in WinRunner 5.x and 6.x, it is due to a known bug in the regular expression module. I have been able to verify that the regular expression DLL in version 6.x is also broken -- and Mercuy has a bug open on that. One workaround is to get the rexp.dll from WinRunner 4.x (which works correctly) and replace the same file in your WinRunner's arch directory. Note Update Jan 8, 2001
• Array functions that Mercury forgot to include. Need to do more with the arrays in WinRunner? Totally written in TSL (of course). Updated March 15, 2004!
• Array sorting functions that you can only dream Mercury will include in WinRunner. Implementation of bubblesort, mergesort, and quicksort are all included here. As usual, in TSL. Updated September 11, 2002!
• Queue and stack implementation in TSL for WinRunner. Did someone say 'Queue' ?? I guess this is more useful for the testers who were programmers in their previous life. Oh well, I needed it, so I built it. Purely written in TSL. Version 2.1: Updated August 15, 2001!!
• Performance tuning LoadRunner 6.5 installation. New August 16, 2001

News Update

• I know some people have been waiting for the PowerBuilder DataWindow related functions, and I know I promised to put these functions up. However, due to the dependency of these functions on the PowerBuilder dll"s that is provided with WinRunner, I feel that the functions are not going to be portable enough to be useful in the long term. Most of these functions take advantage of the dw_describe function that is provided by Mercury to call the PowerBuilder"s describe api. October 19, 2000
• I have been playing around with PHP (first version 3, and then 4) and MySQL, which seems to be a pretty good scripting language to compete with ASP or simple JSP (I said simple). So far it seems to be pretty good, and fairly robust. I've created a fraction class in PHP which facilitates fraction representation in PHP. In addition, I have used PHP to create an Indonesian recipe web site: resepmami.com (it"s currently in Bahasa Indonesia only, but can support English easily -- if I have the time). October 19, 2000
• An upcoming project that I'm working on is a performance tuning site. All the performance tests that I have been conducting (and my impatience) convince me that there must be a central repository to finding the necessary information to improve the performance of whatever application (or operating system) you are working with. August 7, 2001
• Another project that I'm working on (in between the performance tuning site) is an implementation of the Keyword Driven Automated Testing using WinRunner's TSL. For references, look at Keith Zambelich's excellent Methodologies for Automated Testing page and Carl Nagle's Test Automation Framework. I already know of several companies that are selling the implementation as a package, and I think I can implement it for my projects too. October 8, 2001
• About me. November 27, 2000
• My resume.