Fit for Developing Software: Framework for Integrated Tests
384
Fit for Developing Software: Framework for Integrated Tests
384eBook
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Overview
The Fit open source testing framework brings unprecedented agility to the entire development process. Fit for Developing Software shows you how to use Fit to clarify business rules, express them with concrete examples, and organize the examples into test tables that drive testing throughout the software lifecycle. Using a realistic case study, Rick Mugridge and Ward Cunningham--the creator of Fit--introduce each of Fit's underlying concepts and techniques, and explain how you can put Fit to work incrementally, with the lowest possible risk. Highlights include
- Integrating Fit into your development processes
- Using Fit to promote effective communication between businesspeople, testers, and developers
- Expressing business rules that define calculations, decisions, and business processes
- Connecting Fit tables to the system with "fixtures" that check whether tests are actually satisfied
- Constructing tests for code evolution, restructuring, and other changes to legacy systems
- Managing the quality and evolution of tests
- A companion Web site (http://fit.c2.com/) that offers additional resources and source code
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780321629951 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pearson Education |
| Publication date: | 06/29/2005 |
| Series: | Robert C. Martin Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 384 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
About the Author
Rick Mugridge runs his own company, Rimu Research, and is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He specializes in Agile software development, automated testing, test-driven development, and user interfaces. Rick is one of the world's leading developers of Fit fixtures and tools, and is the creator of the FitLibrary.
Ward Cunningham is widely respected for his contributions to the practices of object-oriented development, Extreme Programming, and software agility. Cofounder of Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc., he has served as Director of R&D at Wyatt Software and as principal engineer at the Tektronix Computer Research Laboratory. Ward led the creation of Fit, and is responsible for innovations ranging from the CRC design method to WikiWikiWeb.
Read an Excerpt
Fitness, agility, and balance apply as much to software development as they do to athletic activities. We can admire the movements of a highly skilled dancer, skier, or athlete. Gracefulness comes from wasting no energy on unnecessary tension or balance recovery, so that effort can be focused exactly where it is needed, exactly when it is needed. The expert is continuously making small adjustments to stay aligned and in balance. Agile responses to unexpected changes distinguish the expert from the nonexpert, as their rebalancing adjustments are fluid and subtle and go unnoticed by nonexperts.
Injury, pain, distractions, and poor concentration can wreck balance, reducing the expert's ability to respond well in a focused way. Much more effort is required to perform even at a substandard level.
A high degree of fitness and practice is needed in order to build the required concentration, balance, agility, and focused power. This, inevitably, is a process of refinement over time, with attention given to more subtle aspects of risk assessment and response as expertise increases.
The achievements of athletes have continued to improve over time, sometimes through changes that break assumptions about the activity or how best to train. Big changes are often met with skepticism but will slowly become accepted as the norm as they prove their worth.
When we look at the efforts of most software developers, we see a lot of energy being wasted. In the rush to get software completed, there is often little time to reflect on how to improve the way we do things, how to get that special fitness, balance, and agility that allow us to be graceful in our intellectual efforts in order to achieve inspired results with less effort.
We get unbalanced when we have to fix old bugs, losing flow. We often have to speculate about what's needed, and feedback is too slow. Our software becomes less than elegant and is difficult to change, with tensions and stresses building up in us and in our software.
This book is intended to help improve your fitness and agility in two areas of software development where we can make huge improvements to current practice. First, improving communication between the people who need the software and the people who develop it, as well as show you how to express the business rules that are at the heart of a software solution. Second, how to use automated testing to provide immediate and effective feedback so we can maintain balance and agility and avoid "injury."
The book also questions some common assumptions about the way in which software is developed. But we don't expect that you'll make a big leap of faith: We start with current practice and show how you make small yet effective improvements.
Just like the dancer and the athlete, you will have to do more than simply read about how to do this. It is also necessary to practice.
Rick Mugridge Ward Cunningham
Table of Contents
Foreword.
Preface.
Acknowledgments.
About the Authors.
1. Introduction.
The Need for Fit
The Value of Fit Tables
Fit and Business Roles
Organization of the Book
The Book's Use of Color
I. INTRODUCING FIT TABLES.
2. Communicating with Tables.
Fit Tables
Tables for Communicating
Tables for Testing
Tables, Fixtures, and a System Under Test
Reading Fit Tables
3. Testing Calculations with ColumnFixture Tables.
Calculating Discount
Reports: Traffic Lights
Calculating Credit
Selecting a Phone Number
Summary
Exercises
4. Testing Business Processes with ActionFixture Tables.
Buying Items
Actions on a Chat Server
Summary
Exercises
5. Testing Lists with RowFixture Tables.
Testing Lists Whose Order Is Unimportant
Testing Lists Whose Order Is Important
Summary
Exercises
6. Testing with Sequences of Tables.
Chat Room Changes
Discount Group Changes
Summary
Exercises
7. Creating Tables and Running Fit.
Using Spreadsheets for Tests
Organizing Tests in Test Suites
Using HTML for Tests
Summary
Exercises
8. Using FitNesse.
Introduction
Getting Started
Organizing Tests with Subwikis
Test Suites
Ranges of Values
Other Features
Summary
Exercises
9. Expecting Errors.
Expected Errors with Calculations
Expected Errors with Actions
Summary
10. FitLibrary Tables.
Flow-Style Actions with DoFixture
Expected Errors with DoFixture
Actions on Domain Objects with DoFixture
Setup
CalculateFixture Tables
Ordered List Tables
Testing Parts of a List
Summary
Exercises
11. A Variety of Tables.
Business Forms
Testing Associations
Two-Dimensional Images
Summary
Exercises
II. DEVELOPING TABLES FOR RENTAPARTYSOFTWARE.
12. Introducing Fit at RentAPartySoftware.
RentAPartySoftware
Development Issues
An Initial Plan
The Cast
The Rest of This Part
Summary
Exercises
13. Getting Started: Emily and Don's First Table.
Introduction
Choosing Where to Start
The Business Rule
Starting Simple
Adding the Grace Period
Adding High-Demand Items
Reports
Seth's Return
Summary
Exercises
14. Testing a Business Process: Cash Rentals.
Introduction
Cash Rentals
Split and Restructure
Which Client
Summary
Exercises
15. Tests Involving the Date and Time.
Introduction
Charging a Deposit
Dates
Business Transactions
Sad Paths
Reports
Summary
Exercises
16. Transforming Workflow Tests into Calculation Tests.
Introduction
Testing Calculations Instead
Using Durations
Reports
Summary
Exercises
17. Story Test-Driven Development with Fit.
Introduction
The Stories
The First Storytests
The Planning Game
Adding to the Storytests
Progress During the Iteration
Exploratory Testing at Iteration End
Summary
Exercises
18. Designing and Refactoring Tests to Communicate Ideas.
Principles of Test Design
Fit Tests for Business Rules
Workflow Tests
Calculation Tests
List Tests
Tests and Change
Automation of Tests
Summary
19. Closing for Nonprogrammers.
The Value of Fit Tables
Getting Fit at RentAPartySoftware
III. INTRODUCING FIT FIXTURES.
20. Connecting Tables and Applications.
Writing Fixtures
Fixtures and Traffic Lights
21. Column Fixtures.
Fixture CalculateDiscount
Extending Credit
Selecting a Phone Number
ColumnFixture in General
Summary
Exercises
22. Action Fixtures.
Buying Items
Changing State of Chat Room
ActionFixture in General
Summary
Exercises
23. List Fixtures.
Testing Unordered Lists
Testing Ordered Lists
Testing a List with Parameters
Summary
Exercises
24. Fixtures for Sequences of Tables.
Chat Room Fixtures
Discount Group Fixtures
Summary
Exercises
25. Using Other Values in Tables.
Standard Values
Values of Money
Values in FitNesse and the Flow Fixtures
Summary
Exercises
26. Installing and Running Fit.
Installing Fit and FitLibrary
Running Fit on Folders
Running Fit on HTML Files
Running Tests During the Build
Other Ways to Run Tests
Summary
27. Installing FitNesse.
Installation
Locating the Code
Larger-Scale Use with Virtual Wiki
Debugging FitNesse Tests
Summary
Exercises
28. FitLibrary Fixtures.
Flow-Style Actions with DoFixture
DoFixtures as Adapters
Using SetFixture
Expected Errors with DoFixture
Actions on Domain Objects with DoFixture
DoFixture in General
Setup
CalculateFixture Tables
Ordered-List Tables
Testing Parts of a List
Using Other Values in Flow Tables
Summary
Exercises
29. Custom Table Fixtures.
Business Forms
Testing Associations
Two-Dimensional Images
Summary
IV. DEVELOPING FIXTURES FOR RENTAPARTYSOFTWARE.
30. Fixtures and Adapting the Application.
Introduction
The Programmers' Perspective
System Architecture
Test Infecting for Improvements
The Rest of This Part
31. Emily's First Fixture.
The Table
Developing the Fixture
Summary
Exercises
32. Fixtures Testing Through the User Interface.
Introduction
Spike
The Fixtures
The Adapter
Showing Others
Summary
33. Restructuring the System for Testing.
Test Infecting
Slow Tests
Setup
Barriers to Testing
Transactions
Transaction Fixture
Split Domain and Data Source Layers
Reduce Interdependencies
Summary
34. Mocks and Clocks.
Introduction
Changing the Date
Time-Related Object Interactions
Date Formatting
Changing the Application in Small Steps
Summary
35. Running Calculation Tests Indirectly.
Testing Directly
Testing Indirectly
Summary
36. Closing for Programmers at RPS.
The Value of Fit Tables
Getting Fit at RPS
V. CUSTOM DEVELOPMENT.
37. The Architecture of Fit.
Running Fit
Parse Tree
doTable()
Counts in Class Fixture
The Fixture Subclasses
TypeAdapter
Summary
Exercises
38. Developing Custom Fixtures.
Using SetUpFixture
SetUpFixture
ImageFixture
Summary
39. Custom Runners.
Runners
Calculator Runner
Reading Tests from a Text File
Reading Tests from a Spreadsheet
Summary
40. Model-Based Test Generation.
Symmetries: Operations That Cancel Each Other
Generate a Simple Sequence
Generate an Interleaved Sequence
Summary
Exercises
VI. APPENDICES.
Appendix A: Background Material.
Testing
Agile Software Development
Ubiquitous Language
Appendix B: Book Resources Web Site.
Appendix C: Fit and Other Programming Languages.
Table Portability
Other Programming Languages
Bibliography.
Index.
Preface
Fitness, agility, and balance apply as much to software development as they do to athletic activities. We can admire the movements of a highly skilled dancer, skier, or athlete. Gracefulness comes from wasting no energy on unnecessary tension or balance recovery, so that effort can be focused exactly where it is needed, exactly when it is needed. The expert is continuously making small adjustments to stay aligned and in balance. Agile responses to unexpected changes distinguish the expert from the nonexpert, as their rebalancing adjustments are fluid and subtle and go unnoticed by nonexperts.
Injury, pain, distractions, and poor concentration can wreck balance, reducing the expert's ability to respond well in a focused way. Much more effort is required to perform even at a substandard level.
A high degree of fitness and practice is needed in order to build the required concentration, balance, agility, and focused power. This, inevitably, is a process of refinement over time, with attention given to more subtle aspects of risk assessment and response as expertise increases.
The achievements of athletes have continued to improve over time, sometimes through changes that break assumptions about the activity or how best to train. Big changes are often met with skepticism but will slowly become accepted as the norm as they prove their worth.
When we look at the efforts of most software developers, we see a lot of energy being wasted. In the rush to get software completed, there is often little time to reflect on how to improve the way we do things, how to get that special fitness, balance, and agility that allow us to be graceful in our intellectual efforts in order to achieve inspired results with less effort.
We get unbalanced when we have to fix old bugs, losing flow. We often have to speculate about what's needed, and feedback is too slow. Our software becomes less than elegant and is difficult to change, with tensions and stresses building up in us and in our software.
This book is intended to help improve your fitness and agility in two areas of software development where we can make huge improvements to current practice. First, improving communication between the people who need the software and the people who develop it, as well as show you how to express the business rules that are at the heart of a software solution. Second, how to use automated testing to provide immediate and effective feedback so we can maintain balance and agility and avoid 'injury.'
The book also questions some common assumptions about the way in which software is developed. But we don't expect that you'll make a big leap of faith: We start with current practice and show how you make small yet effective improvements.
Just like the dancer and the athlete, you will have to do more than simply read about how to do this. It is also necessary to practice.
Rick Mugridge
Ward Cunningham