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Java Test Tools

Clara Ko — Thu, 29 May 2008 08:44:30 +0000

Selenium – automated functional web testing

Clara Ko — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:58:39 +0000

Last week, I set up automated functional testing for the test team using Selenium. So far, I’m thoroughly impressed with it.

Selenium comes in several version: IDE, core, remote-control, grid.

First, Selenium IDE is used to create tests and run them during test development. It comes as a Firefox plugin, which means that installation happens in one click. One of the biggest advantages of Selenium is that the tests are stored in HTML, which is easy to understand and easy to manage even without a lot of technical knowledge, making it perfect for functional testers. In addition to creating tests by recording user interactions, tests can also be manually built up from a large list of commands, implemented in Javascript. Some of these commands use XPath or DOM for specifying elements within a web page.

If the HTML/Javascript solution is not enough to expression your test scenarios, tests can be written in Java, C#, Perl, PHP, Python, or Ruby. Selenium IDE even converts an HTML script to any of the above languages for you as a starting point. But once code that cannot be converted back to HTML are introduced in the test, the test can no longer be run within the IDE, but must be compiled (if necessary) and run with Selenium RC (see below).

Second, Selenium RC (remote-control) is used for running the tests from the command line and remote from the application server, making it easy to integrate into a nightly build. Since Selenium is Java-based, it can be run in any OS that supports Java. Selenium RC encapsulates Selenium Core, which was the initial product that requires tests to be deployed together with a web app. This means that Selenium core is probably no longer used by itself.

Lastly, Selenium Grid encapsulates several Selenium RC servers and allows the tests to be run in parallel on multiple machines. This is useful to start the tests on several different OS at the same time, driven from one process.

Selenium seems to be perfect for functional testing. It is easy to adopt, but is flexible enough for more complicated test scenarios which can be written in a variety of languages.

Selenium references:

Poll: What is your Application Server of choice?

Clara Ko — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 20:45:40 +0000

What is your Application Server of choice?

Glassfish Application Server (53%)
JBoss Application Server (22%)
Other (9%)
BEA Weblogic Server (6%)
Resin Application Server (4%)
IBM Websphere Application Server (4%)
Oracle Application Server (2%)

Total Votes: 239

Loading …

If you choose ‘Other’, please leave comment.

jConsole – Application Memory Monitoring in Java 1.5

Clara Ko — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 12:05:08 +0000

Java 1.5 – Application Memory Monitoring Made Easy

TeamCity : a continuous integration and build management solution

Clara Ko — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 13:18:34 +0000

I first heard about TeamCity at Javapolis back in December.

It’s definitely the way forward in terms of team productivity and software quality. Finally a tool that does something to aid continuous integration.

What it does is it manages a number of machines that will run all the test each time someone checks code in. This frees up the developer from having to run tests that sometimes take hours. If a test breaks, the checkin is rejected and team members are notified. Then someone can indicate that he/she is working on it. So basically, TeamCity helps communication within a team, which is one of the most important aspects of software development.

They just released TeamCity 2.0 Beta. Anyone is welcome to be a beta tester by downloading it. A test-drive is also available online.

So even if you don’t have that many tests yet, do keep this product in mind because this is the way to go.

Java Profiling

Clara Ko — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 08:22:37 +0000

A while back, I was tracking a memory leak in an application and was able to track it down using a trial version of JProbe Memory. Because I was dealing with a monstrous piece of old code, the massive amount of data produced (i.e. the amount of time spent in each method over a set timespan, where you have to go deep into a tree) was not really helpful to see where the leak was. Instead, I continuously cut the application down by taking out pieces of code until the realtime line graph of the memory usage no longer showed an increase in memory. So, the profiler was a helpful tool in the diagnosis of the problem, but it’s really good old-fashion deduction that did it.

Since I fixed that memory leak, I haven’t had a chance to look into profilers and am just lately wondering about to do some performance profiling. The realtime graphs in JProbe has an advantage over cheaper options (no pricing on the website, since it’s really for big companies who care to profile).

What is your experience with profilers?

Google online document sharing application

Kees Broenink — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:54:21 +0000

Google’s online document sharing application http://docs.google.com is the online solution to MS Word and Excel.

The idea is that a document (either a richtext document or a spreadsheet) can be shared simultaneously online. This means that when the document is opened at the same time by the owner and a collaborator, the changes from both sides are continuously synchronized and viewable on the other side. Other than owner and collaborator, a user can also be a viewer, who cannot make changes but can view the changes being made to a document.

The part of the application for richtext documents keeps track of revisions similar to the way MS Word does. In the Revisions tab, you can see what has been added (highlighted) or deleted (crossed out) between revisions. A revision is made automatically every so often, or an explicit save can force a revision to be made.

Both richtext and spreadsheet parts of the application can export to the file system in a variety of formats.

http://docs.google.com allows for “pair document writing” (as opposed to pair programming), which is possibly a useful tool for teams that are located in different places. It can conceivably also be used as part of the development process for collaborative designing software and even to do some pseudo coding.