Executable tests are the best form of requirements documentation. They improve quality through early discovery of bugs and by fostering a more detailed "what-if" analysis: what if we have this input X? What if the user does Y?
Configuring a WCF service across security boundaries can be a tricky business,
or so I learned recently. Testing went well, but the move to production failed
for a WCF client/server scenario, with the client application encountering an
error: SOAP security negotiation with '<myEndpointAddress>' for target '<myEndpointAddress>' failed. See inner exception for more details. Inner
exception: The Security Support Provider Interface (SSPI) negotiation failed.
Follow-up to Building a Test Script Environment with C# and IronRuby, pt 1, wherein we change emphasis from coding tests in Ruby to writing them in English (Gherkin) with the help of SpecFlow.
After that October post, I managed to construct a full system/regression test suite for a key data-management application, using the combination of Ruby and C# as described. My team has been able to go through several cycles of…
A co-worker overheard the comment that "agile [software development] is not always a good fit for introverts," or something along those lines, while listening to a webinar on agile testing. On the surface, it is hard to deny that claim. Right there in the Agile Manifesto we have two obvious yellow or even red flags:
Now jumping over to the Principles, we find two more orange flags:
Sometimes you need to go back to the basics - including basic technology. In this case, I mean sticky notes. Yes, they are a remarkable form of technology. I like doing everything the digital way. I abhor using paper when not necessary, because of the waste factor. Although I love the idea of note cards for user story development, I've been thankful that they are impractical for my development team. But, I think it is time to heed good advice.
We build a lot of console applications, and Windows services, that process inbound and outbound files in one way or another. Most depend on configuration data and some load (or unload) business data from a database, in addition to accessing the files. Testing these has always been a chore, to say the least: configurations change, data are deleted, and there's never enough time. After building a few rudimentary tools that have helped, necessity, and Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams, has convinced me that it is time to get serious about system/integration test automation, just as I did about unit test automation a few years ago. This is the first of a n-part series of posts on this process
using Application Settings in a .Net project, you find that there are so many entries that some organization is needed.
create custom, serializable data types for logical groups of settings.
Need to move rows up and down, and from one table to another, in an HTML page.
careful use of jQuery. There are probably many different solutions already out there, but I wanted to learn how to write one for myself. Key functions: closest, detach, append, prev, next, before, and after.
Wherein I record a few tips on the use of System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations, which I am likely to forget if I do not need to think about them again for some months…
Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests by Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce
I did not realize how much I still have to learn about writing good object-oriented (OO) code, and about hewing to a tight test driven development (TDD) methodology, before I read Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided By Tests. My education in OO and unit testing has been largely theoretical, with no time spent directly learning from experienced OO programmers; my best mentor was a COBOL coder. Books like Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software ("Gang of Four"), Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture, Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development, Xunit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code, and others are wonderful but have few detailed real-world business-case examples.
