Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Fitnesse versus Unit Testing
My feelings on Fitnesse are as follows. I don't think users want to use html to design tests. Users really want to see the results of unit tests presented in a way they can understand. The easiest mechanism for them to use is to see the results as html on a web page, and such that they can see or trust that the tests have been run.
Unit tests are not very good in this respect. There is no standard way for test inputs, test outputs, and the result of the test to be presented back to the user.
Given this was in place, I doubt that Fitnesse would be an attractive option.
So as a guess, it would work something like this in NUnit
Output should be in the form of XML, with a style sheet and optional XSLT sheet to transform to XHTML.
I have seen people try and use Fitnesse as a precondition tester for the system as a whole. For example, has all the requisite static data been set up. Fitnesse can test to see if known static data has been set up. However, if you provide a report in the system for displaying the static data, you have a much more useful result.
The real test is a reconciliation test. Does the data in a particular system reconcile against a gold standard of static data.
ie. So far in my limited experience of Fitnesse, all the testing problems are better solved using standard regression testing techniques, particularly if there are some useful extensions provided do the testing frameworks.
Unit tests are not very good in this respect. There is no standard way for test inputs, test outputs, and the result of the test to be presented back to the user.
Given this was in place, I doubt that Fitnesse would be an attractive option.
So as a guess, it would work something like this in NUnit
OutputTestName (name)
OutputTestParameter(name,value)
...
OutputTestResult (name,value)
OutputTestAnswer (boolean)
...
Output should be in the form of XML, with a style sheet and optional XSLT sheet to transform to XHTML.
I have seen people try and use Fitnesse as a precondition tester for the system as a whole. For example, has all the requisite static data been set up. Fitnesse can test to see if known static data has been set up. However, if you provide a report in the system for displaying the static data, you have a much more useful result.
The real test is a reconciliation test. Does the data in a particular system reconcile against a gold standard of static data.
ie. So far in my limited experience of Fitnesse, all the testing problems are better solved using standard regression testing techniques, particularly if there are some useful extensions provided do the testing frameworks.
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