Now that we have a good base understanding of unit tests we can dive a little deeper into the subject. When reading through the previous blog I saw mentions of different types of unit tests and my interest was piqued. From past examples I had seen, I assumed all of these tests followed the same format. Thus for this week’s post I wanted to discuss the different types of unit tests, as I only just learned that there were multiple. To aid in this I found a blog post from a programmer named Jonathan Turner who clarifies what each type is.

This blog post identifies three major types of unit tests, these being arrange-act-assert, one act, many assertions and finally test cases. The arrange-act-assert format is the more traditional method of unit testing and the one that most people are probably familiar with. This format involves setting up the conditions for the test, running the code with the test conditions, and subsequently examining the results of the test. As for the one act, many assertions pattern it uses the same basic setup as the previous pattern, but differs in having multiple assertions about the code at the end of the test. Finally there is the test cases patterns, which takes a different approach than the other two by using a collection of many inputs to check their respective outputs. Now that we understand what each of these patterns are we can discuss their advantages.

Each of these tests have their own use cases where they will be most efficient. The arrange-act-assert pattern is the traditional method and, thus, the most straightforward to implement. This pattern should mostly be used for testing specific conditions or situations of a certain system. The one act, many assertions pattern is best used when you have code that has different sections that each act independent of each other. To clarify, use this if testing a method that has multiple blocks of code that do not affect each other, but must each be validated. Finally, the test cases method is very advantageous if you have a program that has a wide span of input output values. This could be one implementing an algorithm that converts values; the blog post gives a very good example. I hope that this post gave you a glimpse into the variety of unit tests available and would recommend checking out the blog post by Jonathan Turner for further information.

Source:

https://www.pluralsight.com/tech-blog/different-types-of-unit-tests/

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Bizarre Coding Adventures by Michael Mendes and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

            I was interested in learning more about how software testing works in the professional world on a software development team. Since we are learning about the crafting of software tests in our class, I thought it would be interesting to learn how the pieces are put together, like how developing requirements goes into crafting tests and then executing them. It’s an essential part of a software development team, of course, and I’m sure I’ll be doing plenty of it in my future. I found this resource: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/stlc/stlc_overview.htm from Tutorials Point that gave an overview of the “Software Testing Life Cycle” (STLC) which help put the pieces together for me.

            First, what is the STLC? It deals strictly with testing and “starts as soon as requirements are defined… by stakeholders.” Sidenote, this reminds me of test-driven development, which, by my understanding, is a common practice in software development these days. The STLC consists of 7 parts. The first is requirement analysis, at which point the team analyzes the application under test (AUT) at a high level. Then comes test planning where a strategy for testing is devised. Then is test case designing which is applying the requirements and making tests according to the planning. Then is the test environment setup for integrated testing. This is the last step before actual testing. Next is test execution which yields defect reporting. This either validates tests or finds bugs. Last is test closure, where testing is finished and matrix, reports, and results are completed.

            This was great to see the pieces come together. This very basic overview helps me see what working on software testing in the professional world would be like. Seeing a timeline also provides context for some of the things we’ve been learning in class.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Marcos Felipe's CS Blog by mfelipe98 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.