December 4, 2009
November 18, 2009
Abstract Testability Patterns
Abstract—Testability is a software quality characteristic that exposes the degree to which a software artifact facilitates the testing process. Software testing is a technical and economical problem, it is important to help identify patterns that would improve the industry’s software testing capabilities. This position paper proposes five abstract patterns that improve software testability, which serves as a reference for testers and developers to evaluate the testability support for high reliable software.
(full paper)
http://patterns-wg.fuka.info.waseda.ac.jp/SPAQU/proceedings2009/3-P2-AbstractTestabilityPatterns.pdf
April 18, 2009
Gerard Meszaros on XUnit Test Patterns
Gerard Meszaros talks about problems and challenges doing unit testing in real-world projects. Starting from a short discussion about the importance of automated unit testing we spend most of this episode to talk about every day problems doing unit testing and how those problems can be solved. Based on this book on xunit testing patterns, Gerard talks about his experiences with unit test smells as an analogy to code smells. He describes an impressive set of unit testing patterns to overcome those difficult testing situations and illustrates them with nice examples everybody doing unit testing will feel familiar with.
listen to the complete podcast interview at sowftware engineering radio, episode 70.
March 19, 2009
Importance of testability: Can we test it?
Several specialists talk about the importance of software testability for software developement. In special, when applied for large-scale systems, this attribute should be fundamental to project success. Jungmayr (Jungmayr, 2002) compile some important references about this issue:
During the design of new systems we do not have only to answer the question ‘can we build it?’ but also the question ‘can we test it?’. Good testability of systems is becoming more and more important (Pol, Koomen, & Spillner, 2000 apud Jungmayr, 2002).
The absence of design for testability in large systems can greatly reduce testing effectiveness (Binder, 1999).
Design for testability, although rarely the first concern of smaller projects, is of paramount importance when successfully constructing large and very large C++ systems (Lakos, 1996 apud Jungmayr, 2002).
Lakos, J. (1996). Large-Scale C++ Systems. Addison-Wesley.
Binder, R. V. (1999). Testing Object-Oriented systems: models, patterns and tools. Addison Wesley.
Pol, M., Koomen, T., & Spillner, A. (2000). Management und Optimierung des Testprozesses: Praktischer Leitfaden für erfolgreiches Software-Testen mit TPI und TMap. Verlag.
Jungmayr, S. (2002). Design for Testability. Nürnberg, DE: CONQUEST.
