Testing Applications on the Web: Test Planning for Mobile and Internet-Based Systems, Second Edition

Appendix C. Error Analysis Checklist: Web Error Examples

Check for the Existence of DNS Entry

Symptoms

No response when clicking on certain links. This only happens when you are outside of the intranet.

Possible Problems

This symptom may be caused by a number of problems. The most common is that the server cannot be found due to a missing DNS entry rather than coding error.

Examples

When you are outside of the intranet and click on the QA Training or TRACKGEAR button in the page illustrated in Figure C.1, the browser appears to hang or you don't get any response from the server. However, when you report the problem, your developer who accesses the same links could not reproduce it.

One of the possible problems is the DNS entry for the server in the links is only available in the DNS server on the intranet and is not known to the outside world.

Tips

1. Use the View Source menu command to inspect the HTML source.

2. Look for the information that's relevant to the links.

   In this example, you will find that clicking on the QA Training and the TRACKGEAR button will result in requests to the server named "authorize" in the qacity.com domain.

   ...
   <td>
   <map name=01b238de91a99ed9>
   <area shape=rect coords="0,0,88,20" href=https://authorize.qacity.com/training-login.asp?>
   <area shape=rect coords="0,20,88,40" href=https://authorize.qacity.com/trackgear-login.asp?>
   ...
   ...
   </td>
   ...

3. Try to ping authorize.qacity.com to see if it can be pinged.

4. If the server cannot be pinged, tell your developer or IS staff so the ...