SSWUG Expo – Today
SSWUG is hosting a Virtual expo today wrapped around Windows Azure and SQL Azure, Micorosft’s Cloud offering. Do you know what it is, how it works, when is the right time to use it, when it isn’t a good fit? If you have these questions and many others, then get in here for our in-depth sessions with leading experts. It’s running now!
Unit Testing
IMHO, Unit Testing is one of the most valuable Software Development skills an individual may command. One interview question I always ask a candidate is, “How will you test that?” I especially like that question as a follow on to having them demonstrate some coding expertise.
Unit Testing causes you to write software differently. When writing the code, the first thing you think about how the code can be exercised through some form of testing. Generally, this results in better code. Instead of writing long, run on, blocks of code, the code tends to be written in smaller components that may be tested independently from other factors required for the overall business rules.
Unit testing tends to be utilized in Agile software development lifecycles more often than traditional waterfall lifecycles. I use it in either methodology, because of the benefits of unit testing are always present
I worked in one company using a waterfall lifecycle where developers were allowed to decide if they would use unit testing or not. The company had a large QA team to keep up with the amount of code being developed. The QA team loved the developers who used unit testing. They had less bugs, the turnaround for fixes was much quicker when bugs were identified, and they never had recurring issues. The QA team identified the difference in quality as simply being Unit Testing.
There are a few different strategies regarding how to use unit testing. Next time we’ll explore some of the different strategies and the benefits they bring.
Do you have an experience with unit testing you would like to share with our readers? Any favorite tools you like to use? Do you take advantage of the test integration with software development IDEs such as Eclipse or Visual Studio? Share your comments with our readers by sending Email to btaylor@sswug.org.
Cheers,
Ben
Introduction to SQL Server Analysis Services – Next Tuesday
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