[Webtest] Dynamic field naming

[Dierk König]

Hi Eric,

> >> Logic is to be handled by Unit Tests. (cf <http://www.junit.org>)
> Does anyone have a more specific reference?

Behind the link is the best collection of information about unit testing.
You may want to refer to the "articles" section for intoduction.

For the topic of logic and unit testing I don't disagree with your view.

It seems you have a number of testers, developers and non-developers, that
are capable of writing webtests. That is great! Make your users define
their expectations as written tests and you will have a huge benefit.

My statement about "logic" (maybe a bad wording) was based on some feature
requests that would extend WebTest into a full-blown programming language.
And it is my considered opinion that it needs a programmer to handle
a programming language. WebTest is very restricted as much as programming
logic is concerned. A WebTest is always linear in execution without any
complicated control flow. We believe this to be a benefit.

BTW: for those who want to write WebTests using a full-blown programming
language, the can do so: just write your tests in Java using HttpUnit
directly.

While functional tests like WebTests are about the externally visible
behaviour of your system, unit tests are about the internal logic,
program design, interface conditions and communication between developers.
They enable the development team to refactor continously. The internal units
cover much more logic than what the user normally cares about
(correct handling of DB error conditions, correct construction of dynamic
SQL statements, proper implementation of loops, recursions, lookups, and
the like).

Well unit tests really play in a different ballpark.

Functional tests are like drawing samples from the countless possible
combinations.

Well, I just found that I'm not able to tell the whole difference in
a mail. I can only point yout to the resources and try to make you
curious about trying to use unit testing yourself.

cheers
Mittie

BTW: You will find that WebTest itself has a number of functional tests
but also a reasonable number of unit tests. Maybe the WebTest sources give
some hints on where the differences are.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: webtest-admin@lists.canoo.com
> [mailto:webtest-admin@lists.canoo.com]On Behalf Of
> Erik.Ostermueller@alltel.com
> Sent: Mittwoch, 1. Mai 2002 20:57
> To: webtest@lists.canoo.com
> Subject: [Webtest] Dynamic field naming
>
>
> First, thanks for providing the community with such a great product.
>
> I'd like to revisit a thread that ended with this email:
> http://lists.canoo.com/pipermail/webtest/2002q1/000038.html
>
> Dierk Konig wrote:
> >> Logic is to be handled by Unit Tests. (cf <http://www.junit.org>)
> Does anyone have a more specific reference?  I looked and could not find
> it.
> If one assumes that logic is only for unit tests, then that suggests
> that only developers can test logic.  Is this a correct assumtion?  This
> doesn't seem right to me.  We have a great number of non-developers in
> our organization that are capable of using XML files to test the logic
> of the system.  We want to share the ownship of testing between
> developers and non-developers.  That is tough to do when logic testing
> is encoded in source code.
>
>
>
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