[Webtest] Dynamic field naming

[Dierk König]

Hi Ben,

thanks for your posting. It is full of insight about XP.

You may have noticed that XP wasn't mentioned so far
neither on the website nor in the mailinglist. This was
mostly do avoid the possible misconceptions that 
WebTest would only be applicable to XP projects.
Instead, we strongly believe that WebTest is a real
help for every web application, whatever the development
method may be.

Speaking in XP terms, WebTest covers quite some ground
for functional testing as well as for acceptance testing. 

We experienced that the focus is different for certain types
of users.

Some focus totally on acceptance testing. We have seen 
real end users writing webtests. They usually have no 
problem with the syntax. The minimal "logic" that is
possible in webtests helps with this. This is really 
XP-style acceptance testing.

We have seen special testing-groups writing acceptance
tests with webtest on behalf of the end user. I leave it up to
you to say whether this still falls into the XP-style.
Same with developers writing acceptance tests on behalf
of the end user.

There is a different "focus group" that cares more about
the functional testing aspect of webtest. This is about
technical issues, sometimes even monitoring. Chris is 
a typical representative (cf. his postings). 
In this case you typically see the "verifylinks" steps in use.

This group typically calls for more "logic" and more
transparent access to HttpUnit.

One of our current problems is to balance the conflicting
needs of both groups.

We are aware that WebTest does not cover everything that
it needs to do acceptance or functional testing. Every
project and every user group is different and needs some
additions. Luckily, experience shows that it is fairly
easy to write those additions. Some projects allow
constuction of webtest from spreadsheets for acceptance
testing of financial applications, others generate 
thousands of WebTests from templates for functional
testing. Both is fine.

cheers
Mittie