Data-Driven Transaction Based

Unit Tests

Data-Driven Transaction Based

Unit Tests

Engin YorgancEngin Yorgancııooğğlulu

Volkan SevinVolkan Sevinççokok

TurkeyTurkey

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Why automate unit tests?

Automation of unit tests allows regression testing, by which functionality and quality can be continuously tracked.

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What is DTUT?DTUT “Data-Driven Transaction-Based

Unit Test” helps fast test development with increased test-case maintainability in applications based on similar architectures to that of application-under-test.

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What do we mean by “transaction”?

“Transaction” in this context refers to the specific transactional operations of the architecture used in the application-under-test, rather than database transactions.

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About Application-Under-Test /1

The application’s architecture similar to Microsoft’s Enterprise Development Reference Architecture (EDRA)

Uses ASP.NET and C# on Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 using Oracle 10g database

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About Application-Under-Test /2

This architecture mainly operates on Request and Response objects communicated through pipelines.

Requests are generated upon user interactions with the interface.

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About Application-Under-Test /3

Transaction objects process the incoming request

They generate a Response object to send to the UI

Data-access layer classes are created by using an O/R mapping tool

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The Application Framework

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DTUT Framework /1

Writing unit tests for each smallest unit was unfeasible due to business constraints.

We take transaction classes as our “test units”.

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DTUT Framework /2

Writing trivial unit-tests: as simple as inserting a row in the test database.

Transaction-level unit tests: Achieving high coverage quicklyIntensifying unit tests in critical areas of the

system.

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DTUT Framework /3

Uses reflection to execute all transactions in a generic way.

Test cases added as rows to test database.

Connects to this database and retrieves these rows one by one and executes them.

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DTUT Framework /4DTUT have wider coverage than the

simplest unit tests, but they still remained more focused than integration-level ones.

Code Generation For Framework To further speed up the process, a code

generation tool is designed and implemented. The generator produces the test class and

creates the test data table in which test cases will added.

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DTUT Framework Usage and Testing Process /1

Test suite design: The design is made so that it involves positive and negative test cases.

Test class and test-data table generation: The test class(es) for the specified unit and table(s) to hold test data are created using the generator tool.

Forming test cases: Each designed test case is entered in the test-data tables as a row.

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DTUT Framework Usage and Testing Process /2

Running tests: The tests are run using Visual Studio Team System 2008.

Reporting: Visual Studio reports successful and failed tests visually. Each test can be tracked down to its data rows and the reasons for unexpected results can be found easily. If a defect is discovered, it is entered into the defect-tracking system.

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Sample metrics (AUT)Lines of Code : 859,897Total screens: 780Total database tables: 820Methods/Class : 3.2Average Complexity : 3.05

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Sample metrics (Testing)4500 Unit Tests with DTUT: 10 developers x 3 Months

For testing a sample entity;Without DTUT: 18 methods in 560 LoCWith DTUT Framework: 2 methods in 50 LoC 18 rows was created in test database where

each row corresponded to a test method.

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The team’s approach to testing

Project manager Software project managerDevelopers

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DTUT Framework v2

Why need the second version?

How different is it?

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DTUT Framework v3

Future work

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Advantages

DTUT Generation reduces trivial unit test generation time to a simple user-interface selection effort and inserting rows to the test.

This enables rapid creation of unit-tests which is especially important for testing projects that have sizeable amounts of existing untested code.

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Limitations

DTUT is that its applicable domain covers only projects based on similar frameworks working on .NET architecture, and adhering to certain naming conventions (because of reflection).

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Conclusion

As with all frameworks, DTUT framework can be useful in its own defined scope and domain. Although it is not a silver bullet, it can facilitate rapid production and standardization of unit tests.