DZone
Java Zone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
  • Refcardz
  • Trend Reports
  • Webinars
  • Zones
  • |
    • Agile
    • AI
    • Big Data
    • Cloud
    • Database
    • DevOps
    • Integration
    • IoT
    • Java
    • Microservices
    • Open Source
    • Performance
    • Security
    • Web Dev
DZone > Java Zone > What Assumptions Do Your Tests Make?

What Assumptions Do Your Tests Make?

Howard Lewis Ship user avatar by
Howard Lewis Ship
·
Feb. 27, 12 · Java Zone · Interview
Like (0)
Save
Tweet
3.49K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free

Does your test suite launch your application or expect it to be running already? This question came up while working on a client project; I launched the Selenium-based test suite and everything failed ... no requests got processed and I spent some time tracking down why the test suite was failing to launch the application.

I chatted about this with my client ... and found out that the Selenium test suite expects the application to already be running. It starts up Selenium Server, sure, but the application-under-test should already be running.

And suddenly, I realized I had a Big Blind Spot, dating back to when I first started using Selenium. For years, my testing pattern was that the test suite would start up the application, run the Selenium tests, then shut it down ... and this makes perfect sense for testing the Tapestry framework, where the test suite starts and stops a number of different mini-applications (and has to run headless on a continuous integration server).

But an application is different, and there's a lot of advantages to testing against the running application ... including being able to quickly and easily reproduce any failures in the running application. Also, without the time to start and stop the application, the test suite runs a bit faster.

Certainly, the command line build needs to be able to start and stop the application for headless and hands-off testing. However, the test suite as run from inside your IDE ... well, maybe not.

So ... how do you handle this on your projects?

From http://tapestryjava.blogspot.com/2012/02/tests-auto-launch-application-or-expect.html

Testing Test suite application

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Popular on DZone

  • The Definitive Guide to Building a Data Mesh With Event Streams
  • 5 Skills SecOps Will Need to Effectively Protect Their Organization Going Forward
  • Setting Up a Dedicated Database Server on Raspberry Pi
  • Building a 32-Core Raspberry Pi Cluster From Scratch

Comments

Java Partner Resources

X

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Send feedback
  • Careers
  • Sitemap

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • MVB Program
  • Become a Contributor
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 600 Park Offices Drive
  • Suite 300
  • Durham, NC 27709
  • support@dzone.com
  • +1 (919) 678-0300

Let's be friends:

DZone.com is powered by 

AnswerHub logo