Today, friends and readers, I coin for your amusement a term in the testers’ cant, a secret language spoken to confound developers. Just as developers confound us with talk of materialized views, mainClasses, and environmental PATH variables (all of which we testers know to be fictional), we testers have devised our own secret language with words and terms we can use to explain problems and then, with exaggerated patience and a healthy eye-rolling, define those terms for the silly developers who really don’t know anything about testing.
Today’s term: a zool.
Zool: a row in a database, added via an INSERT command, or rendered in the presentation layer (client application or Web interface) that is expected to contain information, but because of defective behavior of the software does not.
Used in context: "There is no data, only zool."
Try to use it in a sentence today. Extra credit goes to those who use it but don’t actually work in IT.
