A.: Currently AQdevTeam supports Microsoft SQL Server 8.0 (SQL Server 2000), Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE 2000), InterBase 6.0 Server Edition and FireBird 1.0-1.5.

A.: MIDAS (Multi-Tier Distributed Application Service, which is called DataSnap now) is a suite of files and components used to create database applications. AQdevTeam uses the MIDAS technology to provide interaction between AQdevTeam Server and Client.

AQdevTeam was built with a Delphi version, in which DataSnap licensing allows developers to create multi-tier applications royalty-free. So, you do not have to purchase a MIDAS Deployment license when using this version of AQdevTeam in any configuration.

A.: Yes, you can. Some of our customers created call-logging centers using AQdevTeam. Some other customers use AQdevTeam for support purposes. We use AQdevTeam as well to organize the work of our support team.

In AQdevTeam, the item structure (documents stored in the AQdevTeam database are called items) is entirely customizable, so items can store any information you need. To create a call logging or support center, you need to create one or several item types that will match the document structure adopted in your company. An item type used for the call logging may hold the following fields:

Note that each item has a number of predefined fields (Assigned To, Created On, Created By and others) that are filled by AQdevTeam automatically. You can use them to log calls instead of creating your own fields. For instance, AQdevTeam automatically saves the date and time of the item creation to the Created On field, so you may not create a field that will store the date and time of a call. Another example: the Created By field of an item holds the name of the AQdevTeam user created that item, so you can use this field to determine who received a call, etc.

To create a support center you should also create one or several item types, whose structure and workflow graphs will match the standards adopted in your organization. For example, you can create the following item types:

and pass a customer message through these item types using macros.

Using AQdevTeam, you can create a macro that will receive e-mail messages sent to your support mail account and create items of the Incoming mail type on the base of each message. A support person reads the items of this type and determines what to do next: he (or she) can mark the message for further processing or delete it, if it is spam, virus-infected file, etc. To pass a message, you can create a macro that will create an item of the Messages type on the base of the Incoming mail item and add that Messages item to the AQdevTeam database.

The Messages item type serves for internal processing of messages. The items of the Messages type are what your team members work with. These items are processed within your organization. They can hold any thoughts or suggestions concerning the reported problem. A support person can answer a message or assign it to a tester (if the message is a bug report) or to a developer (if the reported problem is too complex).

The Outgoing mail type is used to compile the final answer to a customer. The answer can be written on the base of the Messages item or from scratch. You can create a special macro to pass an item from Messages to Outgoing mail. Another macro can send Outgoing mail items as e-mail messages to customers.

You can also link the Incoming mail, Messages and Outgoing mail items to each other to find references between them faster. For more information on this, see the answer to the question about linking.

The described approach is only a sample way to organize your support center. You can create and use another processing scheme in your company. But whatever approach you will use, the fully customizable document structure and macros will help you create document-management schemes that will fully suit your needs

A.: Yes, sure. AQdevTeam lets you customize item types at your desire. Items can store not only information about bug reports, tasks or suggestions. Actually, an item can store any information you want. So, you can create a new item type to store information about customers. Each item of this type will store information about a customer. The items may have the following fields:

The figure below is a sample Edit Form for an item of a sample Customers type:

Note that each item type includes a number of predefined fields (Assigned To, Status, Created On, etc.) Since some of these fields cannot be used to store information about customers, you can remove them from the Issue Explorer so that they are not displayed in the Preview Pane and Edit Form (see the image above). However, these fields are predefined ones and they must always hold a value. This is not a problem for Created On or Created By fields, but the Assigned To field should be initialized if the project does not have a manager specified. To solve the problem, you can use any of the following approaches:

A.: AQdevTeam includes two field types that can be used for time tracking: Raw data.Date and Raw data.Period. The fields of the Raw date. Date type can be used to specify deadlines. The fields of the Raw data.Period type can be used to specify the time period needed to fix a bug or to perform a task. For instance, the items of the Bug reports and Tasks types that exist in the Default AQdevTeam database contain such fields (they are called Estimated Time and Deadline). So, Bug reports and Tasks support time tracking by default.

You can create a macro that will scan items stored in the database and check the values of these fields. This macro would be able to e-mail notifications to programmers responsible for the bug reports that have not been fixed and tasks that have not been completed on time. The macro will also build a list of these bug reports and tasks and send it to the printer.

You can schedule macro runs at your desire. For instance, you can make AQdevTeam Server run the macro every night. As a result, every morning you will have a list of unsolved tasks and unfixed bugs.

A.: Yes, it is possible to do this. This is what AQdevTeam's Authentication by OS feature was designed for. It lets users log in to the AQdevTeam database using the same names and passwords they use to log in to the operating system.

By default, this way of authentication is off. To turn it on, launch the AQdevTeam Server for ADO (AQdevTeam Server for InterBase) applet in Windows Control Panel on the computer where AQdevTeam Server is installed. In the resulting AQdevTeam Server Properties dialog, switch to the General page and check the Enable OS Authentication checkbox. Now there is no need to specify any user name and password when connecting to any AQdevTeam database registered on this server. The users have just to check the Authenticate by OS box in the Login dialog and click OK. The only requirement of such an authentication type is that the users must be the members of the same domain as the computer where AQdevTeam Server is installed.

Note that this type of authorization requires domain servers. Peer-to-peer networks are not supported.

A.: Yes, we offer 10-25% discounts depending on the number of purchased copies. You can find information about discounts on AQdevTeam's order page.

A.: The support is free and unlimited. Currently, AutomatedQA offers an e-mail support only. We also answer user questions in our newsgroups. Our support team does its best to provide answers within 24 hours. However, if some issue is complicated, it may take us more time to prepare an answer to the message.

A.: Yes, in most cases this is possible. The way you import bug reports depends on the bug-tracking system you use. If your bug-tracking system supports OLE or allows you to export data to some other format (for example, to an Excel sheet or an XML file), you can create a macro that will parse the exported data and import it to the AQdevTeam database.

You can work with OLE objects, such as Excel.Application or Msxml2.DOMDocument (it is used to parse XML files), from the macro. To instantiate the desired OLE object, use the GetOleObject function:

[VBScript]
Set r = GetOleObject("Excel.Application", ExcelApp)

The AQdevTeam Client also includes the ADO and BDE plug-ins that can be used to directly access any database that supports ADO or BDE.

The following code demonstrates how you can add a new item to the AQdevTeam database:

[VBScript]
Dim Project, Item

' Find the project
Set Project = AQdevTeamManager.GetItemManager.GetProjects.ProjectByTitle("My Project v.1.0")
' Create an item of the necessary type
Set Item = Project.GetItems.BaseItemByTitle("Bug reports").CreateItem(-1)

' Find the Subject field and set the value for it
Item.GetFields.GetFieldByDisplayedName("Subject").SetAsString "Value of the Subject field"
' Find the Description field and set the value for it
Item.GetFields.GetFieldByDisplayedName("Description").SetAsString "Description text"
' To save changes in the item, call the Commit method
Item.BaseItem.Commit Item

A.: AQdevTeam macros can run AQtime and TestComplete, so you can profile your applications with AQtime and test them with TestComplete directly from AQdevTeam. Since macro runs can be scheduled, you get an excellent possibility to automate your testing and profiling cycles. For more information on this, see Automation Testing and Profiling Cycles.

AQdevTeam includes a number of examples that demonstrate how all tree products are integrated.

A.: AQdevTeam Client can connect to AQdevTeam Server using any of the following connection types: DCOM, Sockets and HTTP.

If the client and server computers are connected to the same local network, we recommend that you use the DCOM connection. Among the three supported connection types, DCOM provides the fastest data transfer.

If you cannot use DCOM for some reason (for instance, if your computer is out of the local network where AQdevTeam Server resides), you can use the Sockets connection. It is slower than DCOM, but faster than HTTP. You can use Sockets, for example, when you need to connect to AQdevTeam Client installed on your home computer to AQdevTeam Server that is installed on an office computer. Note that normally, to use the Sockets connection, you need to "open" an extra port in your office proxy.

The HTTP connection is similar to Sockets, but it does not require "opening" an extra port. If you use the HTTP connection, all the data is transferred through the HTTP port (80 by default). Since data goes through this port, the HTTP connection is more secure and is better controlled than the Sockets one.

The connection type is specified in AQdevTeam Client's Connection Wizard (it is called from the Login dialog). There is no need to specify any connection type in the AQdevTeam Server settings. The Server equally supports all these types provided that they are properly configured on the Server.

A.: Yes. AQdevTeam Client allows you to create and modify items in offline mode. Normally, AQdevTeam Client switches to offline mode if the current connection to AQdevTeam Server has been lost for some reason. However, you can switch to offline mode intentionally when you are logging to AQdevTeam (by checking the Offline Connection box in the Login dialog) or when the main AQdevTeam Client window is already visible (it is invoked by selecting File | Go Offline).

The items you create in offline mode are stored on your computer and added to the database next time when you connect to the database. AQdevTeam displays a special dialog that lets you synchronize your changes with the AQdevTeam database.

Working in offline mode has the following restrictions in comparison with online mode:

A.: AQdevTeam is a client/server application. AQdevTeam Client gets data from the server, stores it in the cache on the client computer, works with this data and sends the changes to the server when it is needed. We call LocalData the client-side cache that stores data that was loaded from the server. This cache is organized into several files that are located in the <AQdevTeam Client>\LocalData folder.

The files contain all the changes you made on your local computer: new items, modified items and deleted items.

You should not change these files in any manner. Do not modify their contents and do not change file attributes (read-only, date, time). This may cause the loss of changes that were made on your computer.

Removing the LocalData folder may solve some problems with client-server synchronization (these problems may occur if you change system time when AQdevTeam Client is running). However, we recommend that you always contact our support team before deleting this folder.

A.: You can upgrade to a new version of AQdevTeam Client without uninstalling the existing version. All your settings (panel layout, views, etc.) will be saved.

Note that if you are going to install AQdevTeam Client via Terminal Services, you should start the upgrade using the Add New Program tab in the Control Panel | Add or Remove Programs dialog. The same should be done if you want to install AQdevTeam Client on the server computer, on which the Terminal Services are running.

A.: Yes. To do this, you should first back up your AQdevTeam Server database using the AQdevTeam Database Manager tool, which comes with AQdevTeam Server. Since the resulting database snapshot file (.PDX) has universal structure for both InterBase and MS SQL Server formats of AQdevTeam Server databases, later you can restore the database in the format you need. For instance, if you backed up an AQdevTeam Server for InterBase database to a .PDX file, you can install AQdevTeam Server for ADO and then use its AQdevTeam Database Manager to create a new database by restoring it from that .PDX file. The reverse transformation of the AQdevTeam database is also possible.