Re: Frameworks and versioning
Re: Frameworks and versioning
- Subject: Re: Frameworks and versioning
- From: Chuck Hill <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 14:21:17 -0800
Hi Arturo,
On Jan 5, 2006, at 1:28 PM, Arturo Perez wrote:
Chuck Hill wrote:
I believe a healthy combination of CVS-log monitoring (read them
daily and write good ones), JUnit et al, and black-box testing
(JMeter, HTTPUnit, et al) can keep an application functioning
properly in the face of frequently updated frameworks.
What if you have not touched the application in three years? What
if you have 10 or 20 such applications? Can you monitor all the
log messages and consider them in the light of what each app does
and run all the tests and still get work done? I can't.
I have spent significant amounts of time doing the above and
getting work done (assuming a developer's mentality of
work="writing code"). This was in a shop of about 40 developers
with daily reports of code changes generated out of Clearcase. I
watched for the changes that impacted my area of interest (my apps,
if you will).
Are you talking about apps in active development, or stable, deployed
apps in production that are not undergoing any development? I am
thinking of the latter.
If I didn't understand the changelog then I asked the developer
about it. It helped that I had the organizational clout to stick
my nose into whatever I felt like although many developers didn't
appreciate having my nose there :-).
Grin.
Automated unit testing does most of (if not all of) the running of
the tests for you. I think linux.com just ran an article on
Anthill which sounds like a neat solution to automated building and
testing of applications.
I see a distinction between unit tests (code level tests, developer
tests) and functional tests (from the GUI, domain level, are the
requirements met? tests). Unit tests are easily automated. It is
the functional ones that I have had troubles automating. I have not
yet gotten to the point where I feel that my unit tests are complete
enough that I don't also need to perform functional tests to be 100%
confident that changes have not changed functionality. Perhaps that
is just my failing.
I agree that UI testing is a special case but an argument can be
made there that UIs should be designed with testing in mind (a
position I believe you have articulated in the past, Chuck).
I agree that they should be designed with testing in mind, I just
have never founds a way of testing WO UIs that I thought was
effective. I think what I said in the past was that the Java code
for the UI should be kept so simple that it does not require unit tests.
Even 15years ago the CAD/CAM company I worked for had automated
UI testing. It was unattended and usually ran over the weekend.
Then there was the week-long automated test before the tapes (yes,
tapes, that's how long ago this was) were cut.
I have used GUI testing with desktop based apps and been pleased with
it.
Large organizations often have dedicated builders etc. In my early
days I was such and I built a automated build system with several
thousand lines of /bin/sh and sed (it was fun, if you can believe it).
Fun? I don't think that would meet my personal definition of fun.
Not anymore. ;-)
Finally, if an app hasn't been touched in three years then I
wouldn't be the first one to open up that can of worms :-)
I'm happy / proud to say that we have done that several times and
never had a problem. Updated to the current WO version, updated to
our current framework versions, ran the tests, made any changes
needed, added the new functionality, again with the unit tests,
functional tested, and then deployed. I've worked on (non-WO)
projects in the past where I would not have been as willing to
attempt that. :-(
Just MHO and worth no more than the electrons that brought it to you.
And no less either.
Chuck
--
Coming in 2006 - an introduction to web applications using WebObjects
and Xcode http://www.global-village.net/wointro
Practical WebObjects - for developers who want to increase their
overall knowledge of WebObjects or who are trying to solve specific
problems. http://www.global-village.net/products/practical_webobjects
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