DVP302 - Automating Test Creation
Something clever to automate creation of integration tests:
SpecExplorer 2007
Keith Stobie demonstrated a tool that automatically generates tests based on a simple model of a system. You start by defining
states and
actions. Actions have an effect on the System Under Test and cause a transition to another state. You also define
expectations (the expected results of those actions). The evaluation of those expectations either causes an error (and the test fails) or results in a transition to another state.
In other words you model your system with a state machine.
The whole point of the tool is to generate all possible ways of navigating through the state transition graph. You end up with non deterministic tests that go through scenarios you didn't necessarily think of.
This makes the tool relevant to
integration testing, not unit-testing.
Last night's UK Country drinks at BroadBar badly affected my attention span so all I remembered right after Keith's talk was:
Lots of little tests is better than a single big one
There are no perfect models, only useful ones
Start small: even very small models can find bugs
DVP01-IS Model Based Testing with Spec Explore
In the afternoon Keith did another demo of SpecExplorer 2007 followed by Q&A session.
- How does SpecExplorer interact with the System Under Test ?
You use adapters that hide the concrete implementation of the actions (such as calling an executable, sending a message, calling a sproc, clicking a button, etc...)
- SpecExplorer is a free add-in to Visual Studio that will be available as a powertoy in the beta of VS2010.
There is a video about SpecExplorer
here.
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