REPORT

11th April 2010

EWT – 13

Mission:

Mission: The Gerald R. Ford International Airport got to know there are serious flaws in his
parking lot fee calculator. Investigate the root cause of every problem you may find, so that
our developers can nearly directly fix them.

Application Under Test: Parking Fee Calculator page of The Gerald R. Ford International
Airport.

Start Time: 11th April 2010 11:07 AM IST.

End Time: 11th April 2010 06:04 PM IST. (I have taken breaks in between.)
Session-ID: EWT-13-S2.

Browser: Firefox 3.6.2

OS: Windows XP SP3

*Note: I was not able to get what ‘serious flaws’ mean to mission maker. Possible root
causes of few observations are written below.

Context: A person who has never traveled in flight and traveling for first time abroad.
This traveler is not a regular user of internet. He or she use to book flight tickets and
other needed facilities through service providers. Now the traveler has decided to
make everything by her or him for the complete traveling time period. Traveler is
looking at this website for information on parking the vehicle which she or he has
taken on rent for few days while stay in that country.

Observations:

1. Looking at the page ‘ParkCalc.php’ found no option or hyperlink that can navigate to page
about how the parking prices are calculated or different facilities and its features.

If the user is new to this place or the user is not a frequent user of web, user may difficult
in navigating across the pages to find information.

2. Traveler did not what does ‘Short-Term Parking’, ‘Economy Parking’, ‘Long-Term Surface
Parking’, ‘Long-Term Garage parks’ and ‘Valet Parking’ mean?
 Traveler was not able to find the information what all these mean. It was new words for
her or him, which was not heard in place from where traveler is. Might be the link or
content is available, but it was not to find where it is.

3. The color of objects used in page may be of trouble for people who want to keep the
brightness and contrast of the screen to minimal.

In this context, the brightness and contrast was reduced to 40. It was tough to read the
words. While viewing the below snap, changing the brightness and contrast may reveal
that. Or navigating ParkCalc.php page and looking by changing the brightness and
contrast may help to experience the problem.

4. Clicking on button ‘Calculate’ neither entering nor selecting any values in the available
fields, showed the below content for couple of seconds (may be dependent on internet
speed). Later the earlier shown page was shown with message “ERROR! ENTER A
CORRECTLY FORMATTED DATE”.

5. Tried to view the source code of page ParkCalc.php. And found below details, where I was
not able to access at that point of time.
6. I remembered the message that was shown while clicking on button ‘Calculate’ without
entering any details. Did it again. And used the link that was shown for few seconds. I was
not taken to action file ‘ParkCalc.php’.

Tried to remove few contents from the link and find if I can get any thing. Later I was able
to see the action file contents with URL:
http://www.grr.org/Includes/Calculator.inc

This piece of code helped me to understand little to my knowledge what it was.

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Note:

By now I have crossed 30 minutes time of the session, which I had given for myself.
Since the session kept me interesting, I myself broke the rules of 30 minutes session and
continued to look what more can I see here?

7. Navigating through menu PARKING & TRANSPORTATION  Parking Rates & Map,
found calculator but not the map. Looking for map, navigated across menu under
parking. Under Handicap Parking, found a hyperlink for map. Found the map for parking
lot and different fares. And came to know that physically challenged person have been
considered in this Airport.

Parking Map was not where it said. It was under the Handicap Parking.

8. Looking at numeric value twelve it was in double quotes i.e, “12” as a character. But, the
other values were as numeric value.

Not sure whether this numbers are hard coded or not. If hard coded user or admin may
need to rebuild the php pages. If it was configurable from a configuration kind of page, it
would be helpful for user.
9. If minutes exceed 60, it is not converted to hours numerically. The numeric hour number
remains unchanged in the text field Entry and Exit time. The hour displayed while
displaying the cost for parking shows the hour which user may feel confused to see it.

On user entering more than numeric character that exceeds 60 in entry or exit time’s
minute region, if it changed to hours it would help user.
Possible Root Cause: The minute calculated exceeding 60 may not be add to $hours as
another one hour.

10. User will be charged extra one dollar in Short Term Parking, when the minute not yet
crossed additional 30 minutes. If the minute ticks into 29th minute, an extra one dollar is
added to parking fee.

Is 30th minute is starting from 29th minute? Or 30th minute is after completion of 29th
minute? If the time 12:00:05 PM, still I say it as 12 PM. When the time is 12:01:05, I say
it as 12:01 PM. Then, 12:29:05 PM is 12:30 PM or 12:30:05 PM is 12:30 PM?

If the user is checked out at one hour 29th minute and she or he is out of the parking lot,
still one dollar has to be paid i.e., total of three dollars. If the user checks out at one hour
30th minute, now she or he needs to pay two dollars extra plus 2 dollars which is total of
four dollars.
 Root Cause: If that is a problem, then possible cause may be the c0ndition on which
grand total is calculated i.e, $TotalElpasedMinutes > 29 and $TotalElapsedMinutes <
60 which has a AND condition between two.

11. There was no validation for entered data in the fields available in page ParkCalc.php. And
this was obvious from the piece of code that was visible.

12. Adding a minus sign to an entry time or exit time or both, will give time that were
unrealistic to user.
In above scenario as per STP scheme, the clock is not ticked 24 hours but the parking fee
is already $24.00. As per the calculation from code, I need to pay extra $4.00. And
maximum daily premium for STP is $24.00.
 Above are the symptoms for not validating calculations when user entered other
operators accidentally at:

13. I get a thought if keyboard key got struck and it happened such that more than two
numeric keys were entered for time. What happens if the same happens while entering a
date?

Will the parking lot allows a user to park for such a long period of time. Will the user
will be able to pay that amount? Now I get another thought, how to enter maximum
number? How if I use x power y function in calculator? 9 to power of 99 gives
2.9512665430652752148753480226198e+94 in Microsoft calculator.
I have to pay $2 for 0 days, 0 hours and 0 minutes?

For two days, I need to pay $48.00. But it shows I need to pay $50 for 2 days, 0 hours
and 0 minutes under STP scheme. Above are the symptoms for but not validating the
time field entries.
14. ‘/’ character is not asked while calculating the date.
 I am able to enter previous day’s, months or years date and select as well. May be this
will help in scenario where user has parked her or his vehicle previous day and
calculating the parking fee amount today.

Will a user be able that amount and will be allowed to park for that period of time? If
the heavy vehicle are parked in any of the available parking slots, will extra fare need to
be given?

Root Cause: Possibly ‘/’ is asked mandatorily while calculating the date or entering the
date manually. Above are the symptoms for the bug which does look for / in date.

15. I was able to use the parking page while date picker was on foreground. The date picker
was not modal and had gone to background. If user thinks no date picker was opened and
clicking on date picker again, does not bring the date picker. User need to if any date
picker is in background and to use it or close it then open a new date picker instance.

Root Cause: Possibly date picker is not made as a modal instance.

16. Not entering neither entry nor exit date and ‘/’ replaced by ‘-’ or any other symbol
calculates the parking fee amount.
Possible Root Cause:

And
17. Incorrect calculation for 7th day free parking.
Possible Root Cause: the condition asking adding daily rate when total elapsed hour in
parking is greater than 6. While calculating rate per minute, total elapsed hour is considered
as 7th hour where as in other parking scheme which has discount on 7th day it calculates for
8th hour. Is this 8th or 7th is default parking hour? The above symptom may be due to the
above given conditions.
18. Marked part of the code is not exercised for the below entered condition.

Condition:

Possible Root Cause: Since grand total is not calculated to zero. The upper segment of
code where days, hours and minutes are calculated should be tested.

19. Statement “$12 for five hours or less” may be confusing. What if I exceed 5 hours and
not a day yet? Will it be a free parking? Still do I have to $12 or $18.
20. Word “PARKING CALCULATOR” if said as “PARKING FEE CALCULATOR” will it be
more meaningful? What it calculates in parking?

-------- End of session -------

Stopping the session for here; testing for other parking scheme will be continued in next
session.