testing-strategies

What Makes a Good Unit Test?

I'm sure most of you are writing lots of automated tests and that you also have run into some common pitfalls when unit testing. My question is do you follow any rules of conduct for writing tests in order to avoid problems in the future? To be more specific: What are the properties of good unit tests or how do you write your tests? L...

What are the first tasks for implementing Unit Testing in Brownfield Applications?

Do you refactor your SQL first? Your architecture? or your code base? Do you change languages? Do you throw everything away and start from scratch? [Not refactoring] ...

How do you mock params when testing a Rails model's setter?

Given the code from the Complex Form part III how would you go about testing the virtual attribute? def new_task_attributes=(task_attributes) task_attributes.each do |attributes| tasks.build(attributes) end end I am currently trying to test it like this: def test_adding_task_to_project p = Project.new para...

What is the most accurate method of estimating peak bandwidth requirement for a web application?

I am working on a client proposal and they will need to upgrade their network infrastructure to support hosting an ASP.NET application. Essentially, I need to estimate peak usage for a system with a known quantity of users (currently 250). A simple answer like "you'll need a dedicated T1 line" would probably suffice, but I'd like to have...

What not to test when it comes to Unit Testing?

In which parts of a project writing unit tests is nearly or really impossible? Data access? ftp? If there is an answer to this question then %100 coverage is a myth, isn't it? ...

Test Automation with Embedded Hardware

Has anyone had success automating testing directly on embedded hardware? Specifically, I am thinking of automating a battery of unit tests for hardware layer modules. We need to have greater confidence in our hardware layer code. A lot of our projects use interrupt driven timers, ADCs, serial io, serial SPI devices (flash memory) etc.. ...

How do you measure if an interface change improved or reduced usability?

For an ecommerce website how do you measure if a change to your site actually improved usability? What kind of measurements should you gather and how would you set up a framework for making this testing part of development? ...

automated system testing approaches for combination of PC + embedded SW

The system consists of a hardware device and a PC. The PC runs a GUI that controls the hardware device. To test the device various test hardware is used that can be controlled by RS232 or GPIB. To automate this testing the test software would have to control the test hardware and interact with the PC GUI. What is the best way you know o...

How will you categorise the various software testing methods?

Would this be right?? Black Box 1.1 Functional 1.1.1 Equivalence 1.1.2 BVA 1.1.3 Use case 1.1.4 Regression 1.1.5 UAT 1.2 Non Functional 1.2.1 Testing the System Design White box 2.1. Functional 2.1.1 Unit 2.1.2 Integration 2.1.3 System Do the above fall under the right categories?...

Is there a difference between TDD and Test First Development (or Test First Programming)?

Both ideas sound very similar to me, but there might be subtle differences or the exact same thing, explained in different ways. What is the relationship between TDD and Test First Development/Programming? ...

How to detect the context from which an application is being executed? Whether from Command Prompt or from within a Windows Form

I am trying to run a set of test cases through one of our internal applications. I need to be able to automate these tests and run them through the command line and log various things. The problem is that the existing code does not separate the view from the controller and throws MessageBoxes and Alerts everywhere that ask the user to cl...

How to use automation for testing application involving highly complex calculations?

Hi, I want to following things for testing a application involving complex calculations: How to use test automation tools for testing calculations?(using automation tools like QTP or open source tools) How to decide coverage while testing calculations, how to design test cases? Thanks in advance, Testmann ...

Best practices for testing infinite input domains like a parser or rule based system?

Testing a text-to-speech engine is a rather daunting task. The engine itself parses input and applies rules for pronunciation based on phonetic analysis of individual words. In addition exception lists for the pronounciation rules exist to improve the end result. Projects such as The Guttenberg Project allow you to literally throw the ...

How to automate testing where the quality of results is largely subjective

I have been evolving an automation and statistics generation program through a series of rapid prototypes to see if the license cost of an API generates a good return on investment. The limited time frame, and my own limited experience has led to a useful tool with no automated quality or correctness tests and metrics. The program deals...

Introducing Test Driven Development in PHP

My workplace consists of a lot of cowboy coders. Many of them are junior. Which coincidentally contributes to a lot of code quality issues. I'm looking for suggestions on how to best wane my team into using TDD (we can start with Unit tests, and move into regression tests, and later more automated testing). Ultimately, I want us to l...

Project nearing completion. Time to begin testing. Which methods are feasible towards the end of the development cycle?

Let's assume one joins a project near the end of its development cycle. The project has been passed on across many teams and has been an overall free-for-all with no testing whatsoever taking place along the whole time. The other members on this team have no knowledge of testing (shame!) and unit testing each method seems infeasible at...

Good introductory text on static analysis for bug finding?

I'm looking for a good introductory text on the theory of static analysis for bug finding. Any recommendations? ...

How to manage Build time in TDD

Hi in my project we have hundreds of test cases.These test cases are part of build process which gets triggered on every checkin and sends mail to our developer group.This project is fairly big and is been for more than five years. Now we have so many test cases that build takes more than an hour .Some of the test cases are not structure...

How Much Should Each Unit Test Test?

How much should each of my unit tests examine? For instance I have this test [TestMethod] public void IndexReturnsAView() { IActivityRepository repository = GetPopulatedRepository(); ActivityController activityController = GetActivityController(repository); ActionResult result = activityController.Index(); Assert.IsInst...

How to manage test fixtures for end-to-end testing?

Having just set up a test framework for a new web application, I realized I missed one of the big questions: "How do I make tests independent from each other?" Years ago I have set up some complicated Ant scripting to do full cycles of deleting all database tables, creating the schema again, adding test data, starting the application, r...