Keep posting reports to QualityCentral!
For the last several years, I’ve been encouraging Borland customers to use QualityCentral to tell Borland about issues and requests with our products. Here are some of the blog posts:
The result of this effort was discussed in this blog entry:
Then we did more fixes:
Now, with Delphi 2006 we have greatly improved product quality, as I discussed in this BDN article. You can also track statistics on your favorite Borland products. But we’re not stopping there! So, please keep posting your bug reports and feature requests to QualityCentral. The team is actively working (constantly) on improving the quality and responsiveness of the product, and the earlier we see the QC reports, the greater the chance of them getting fixed in our next release.
We have pleasantly surprised the entire industry with the quality, features, and performance in BDS 2006, thanks in large part to the participation of our Delphi and C++Builder communities. Borland thanks you for your participation in QualityCentral, and we hope you like the results!
Please keep using QualityCentral and helping us make our products better for you.
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Posted by John Kaster on January 12th, 2006 under CDN, CodeGear products |17 Responses to “Keep posting reports to QualityCentral!”
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January 13th, 2006 at 11:19 am
I have have often the feeling that some QC’s are being fixed in the product but still open in QC. Please keep that in sync!
January 13th, 2006 at 11:22 am
Thanks for the reminder, Ralf. We’re constantly updating QC with additional bug report status changes, based on feedback from both our customers and Borland staff.
January 14th, 2006 at 8:05 am
One major gripe is the "Deferred" list seems to be growing instead of being handled. The deferred should be "reset" at the beginning of your product cycle so that they are considered and not lost.
January 14th, 2006 at 11:02 am
Deferred is reset at the beginning of each product cycle. However, we don’t have full synchronization yet between the internal and external (QC) repositories so the closed reports in QC don’t get re-opened. We’ll implement that soon.
January 14th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
I don’t understand why you guys re-invented the wheel with QC. Why don’t you guys use a single Bugzilla installation for both internal and external use? I prefer a Bugzilla type environment.
January 14th, 2006 at 10:39 pm
We evaluated all public bug tracking systems before developing QC. There was nothing else on the market that did what we needed, and nothing else that was as convenient to work the way we wanted it to. Does BugZilla actually have a web service interface now? It didn’t when I looked at it before. It didn’t have support for InterBase. I couldn’t synchronize bugs with another system. Furthermore, customization of BugZilla would have been far more expensive than writing our own with the features we needed, from scratch, in Delphi. The ongoing costs for BugZilla customization would be much higher than the cost of customizing our current applications.
So, we didn’t reinvent the wheel. We built a better one.
If you tell me what features you prefer in your "Bugzilla type environment" I’m sure we can duplicate them pretty quickly. Or, you could implement it yourself using the web service. Several people have written their own clients for QC.
The final factor: BugZilla wasn’t built with Borland tools. QC is, and uses Borland products for its backend integration and database (InterBase) as well.
January 18th, 2006 at 8:09 am
I’ve posted 6 bug reports and one enhancement request for BDS2006 to QC. The first two were posted 2005-12-12 but so far none of them have been opened, even though they have test projects attached and two even suggest possible modifications to the source that fixes/works around the issues.
What kind of response times to QC reports are expected?
I don’t expect you to fix all issues immediately but I’d at least like to get some feedback on the reports. Even a minimal "thank you for the report" would be nice.
(If anyone is interested, the reports are: 22215 22218 23251 23617 23618 23620 23685)
January 18th, 2006 at 10:53 am
I apologize for the somewhat harsh tone in my previous comment.
Still, it would be nice to know what policy you (Borland) have for handling QC items - do you aim to respond to each report within a specified timeframe? With respond I don’t mean provide a fix, but at least confirm the issue or request more info/provide some sort of human response.
Keep up the good work!
January 22nd, 2006 at 6:03 pm
but when I try to report some, your web keep me out of it. It shows:
______________________________________
An error occurred in the application:
The exception type is:
InvalidCastException
The message that came along with the exception is:
Object cannot be cast from DBNull to other types.
You were attempting to access this link:
——————quote over.
What’s the wrong?
January 22nd, 2006 at 8:58 pm
that issue with the web client login is being worked on and hopefully will be resolved soon. You might want to try the Windows client for now. Thanks for your efforts!
January 23rd, 2006 at 6:27 pm
your "hopefully resolved soon" really come soon, this morning I found your web work correctly and I post my report. (sure my morning is not your morning, the earth is a ball so our morningS is opposite)
Hope the issue me reported will catch their attention and be covered soon too. It is very import to our team, but few serious to most of JBuilder user.
Seems you are an expert in Delphi?
January 24th, 2006 at 10:15 am
Leen, glad the problem is successfully resolved for you. Yes, I do know Delphi better than JBuilder, but I also know, use and love JBuilder. The Delphi community tends to be more active on BDN than the JBuilder community for a variety of reasons, and we definitely would like more involvement from our Java users for all BDN systems.
January 30th, 2006 at 12:57 am
I and my customers need my reported bug fixed now! A complex product like BDS will have bugs so regular updates should be released. I have paid my own good money for BDS 2006 and expect a finished product. I do not want to wait for BDS 2007 with (no-doubt) a fresh set of problems.
February 10th, 2006 at 2:05 am
I reported a rather annoying bug in the JBuilder 2005 JSP editor over a year ago. It was confirmed I think but never heard from again.
I’ve seen quite a few bugs like that, in fact the majority.
So maybe the Delphi community is more active on QC and BDN because they’re taken more seriously by the Borland people responsible for their product?
March 7th, 2006 at 10:34 am
Leen Ray, please try the QC web client again. This problem should be resolved. Sorry for the difficulty.
March 8th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
Maybe I have had unrealistic expectations of QC. I submitted a critical defect (21410) against Delphi 7 in 11/05 and so far no comments or any signs of activities. Now I understand the focus on BDS2006, but I don’t believe critical defects in earlier releases should be ignored. A suggestion for improvement in QC is to give email notification back to the submitter on any state change on the submission. Right now I see no benefit of submitting issues to QC over posting to the new groups.
Thanks
Bill
March 8th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
Bill, you can already get email notifications of changes to any existing report, or new or changed reports on any area in QC. See http://blogs.codegear.com/johnk/archive/2004/12/15/2187.aspx for more information.