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Title: Java Testing and Design : From Unit Testing to Automated Web Tests by Frank Cohen ISBN: 0-13-142189-1 Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR Pub. Date: 16 March, 2004 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $49.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Improve your web apps
Comment: Despite the curious title, this book focuses on the value that well planned and executed testing brings to a project. The subtitle "From Unit Testing to Automated Web Tests" does the book more justice, but still there is a lot more here.
In the first part of the book, the author focuses on a philosophy of testing. This includes a variety of testing protocols (i.e. unit testing, functional testing, performance testing), how they should be executed, and how to evaluate the results. He introduces a web rubric to use in the assessment of testing results. This gives the development staff an objective way to determine where to focus their corrective efforts. Testmaker, a toolset for intelligent test agents, is introduced. Testmaker is an open source product that can be used to automate much of the testing process and to evaluate the results. The author's concept of user archetypes for building the intelligent test agents is very effective.
In the second part of the book, the author brings the concepts of the first part to address some specific technologies like http/html, SOAP, and integrating with .Net web services. In each section, the author builds a little insight into the specific technology and addresses testing challenges that one may face. Finally, he addresses the big issue of turning these test results into actionable items. The final section of the book focuses on case studies of the successful implementation of the principles and toolset as described in the book.
This book has convinced me that automated testing can be an invaluable asset to a development project. It should be on your bookshelf along with "User Interface Design for Programmers" by Spolsky for practical advice on application development.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent guide to testing any Web application
Comment: This book is an excellent guide to testing web applications and web services. I expect it will benefit all readers, from the software developers or QA tech just getting started, through to the experienced coders and testers.
Java Testing and Design comes in three parts. The first part describes the things we developers, QA techs and IT folks deal with everyday - tough schedules, user needs, messed up management and test methodologies past and present. All this is shown being applied to building Web applications. The second part takes on the nuts-and-bolts aspect of building networked applications, including different connectivity methods (from http through XML and SOAP), from functional unit tests to testing sequences of messages and session data. It puts a whole new light on testing from the user's perspective using a new method called user archetypes - basically test scripts that mimic a user's behavior. It's a cool technique to make testing a lot more simpler.
The chapters describe the issues and the common areas where things go wrong. Then each chapter provides a detailed description of testing using the TestMaker free open-source test tool.
The third part of the book covers some case studies of tests that Frank Cohen had to devise. These include tests for scalability and throughput of SOAP-based Web Services. He also uncovers a huge scalability problem with Web Services that every Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) developer should know about. RPC-based Web Services do not scale and the book shows why and how anyone can find the results.
The book's title is a little weird since the book has little to do with Java itself. You could be a .NET developer and get just as much from the book. I would have liked to see more coverage of other test tools but since TestMaker is free and open source that's no problem for me.
Java Testing and Design provides excellent insights into testing and gives you tools and explanations for performing tests of Web-enabled applications. I recommend this book highly.
Rating: 4
Summary: Automated Test Agents
Comment: The testing of any computer code should ideally be as systematic and logical as the code itself. But given the parlous nature of some code, this is scarcely reassuring about the testing.
For Java code, Cohen attempts to inject some discipline. He describes the by now well known need for comprehensive unit testing. But this is just the lowest level. Above these are functional tests, scalability and performance tests, and quality of service tests. These require that you consider what users will typically do. In practice, he suggests that the users' collective behaviour might be considered polymodal. You try to divide the users into different categories of behaviour, and then represent each category by a generic user. He calls these archetypes. This effort is not trivial in most cases.
But, in his experience, the main difficulty is in the next step. You should try to build programs, called test agents, which can simulate each archetype. The test agents then access the main program in such a way that the latter cannot distinguish between these and real users. This takes automated unit testing to the next level.
If you are a programmer, you can appreciate the amount of work needed to do this. Much of the book revolves around explaining how to make a test agent and the various test automation tools available to help you.
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Title: Java Testing Patterns by Jon Thomas ISBN: 047144846X Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 02 August, 2004 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: Enterprise Java Development on a Budget: Leveraging Java Open Source Technologies by Christopher M. Judd, Brian Sam-Bodden ISBN: 1590591259 Publisher: APress Pub. Date: 29 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $49.99 |
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Title: Hardcore Java by Robert Simmons ISBN: 0596005687 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: Professional JavaTM Tools for Extreme Programming : Ant, XDoclet, JUnit, Cactus, and Maven by Richard Hightower, Warner Onstine, Paul Visan, Damon Payne, Joseph D. Gradecki ISBN: 0764556177 Publisher: Wrox Pub. Date: 12 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $44.99 |
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Title: Core J2EE Patterns: Best Practices and Design Strategies, Second Edition by Deepak Alur, Dan Malks, John Crupi ISBN: 0131422464 Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR Pub. Date: 10 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $49.99 |
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