JavaWorld
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Reged: 06/20/03
Posts: 482
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Should we be doing more automated testing?
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arijit_arijit
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Good work, Ben! This writeup would be really useful for the development teams who did not spent adequate time and effort on the testing part of their delivery. The analysis of having the automated testing into the scene was very good.
I would expect some more in-depth discussions on the types of testing and how those can be broken into automated and manual modes. As the application goes complex, performing functional testing becomes a major point of consideration. Having a suite of applications integrated with each other (loosely/tightly) to perform multi-functional user activities towards a common goal (one end result for all) makes the work of functional testing even more complex and time consuming. I would really appreciate if Ben could highlight on these areas (might be a separate writeup broken into multiple editions) to discuss the key areas to look at, and the processes that could make the testing faster and efficient.
Looking for some more thoughts on this.
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Cozmo
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Nice article! I know you didn't want to interfear in the discussion in your article, althow I think you forgot an important issue whether to do automated testing or not.
It is not only about the cost of testing to deside to automate or not. Some other things that might decide the automation:
- Is there a lot of time between releases to manual test everything back again? Yes the writing of automated test asks a lot of time but maybe you have to because you don't have enough time to manually test between the releases.
- When you have to do regression testing it means you have to do several times the same test cases, the same actions. The testers are going to be bored and less motivated, so the danger exists that they make assumptions and be less carefull when executing the test cases.
- When the test cases are complex to run, there always is a chance of not executign the tests 100% correctly. By automated testing you are guaranteed that the tests are executed 100% correctly once the testscript is set up correct. The quality assurance might be higher then with automated testing
My point is it is not only about cost reducing or time recuding, but there also some other facets that influence the dessision, like the quality of the performed tests, motivation of the testers,regression test time before release,...
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Clinton
Unregistered
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Thanks Ben. One thing I was confused about is the type of testing you're referring to - it sounded like you were talking about system testing, which is typically the realm of dedicated testers, not developers. Where do developers "draw the line" in regards to testing?
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