LOGIN | REGISTER NOW | SUBSCRIBE
 
print Printable version 
Most Read Latest News Blog Resources
Does Windows cost Microsoft opportunities?
Microsoft's decision to focus .NET on Windows is stifling innovation due to the specter of...

Mono brings .NET to Android
At Microsoft MIX, Mono will unveil the ability to port .NET applications to the Android op...

Going 'all in' on .NET as default runtime
Programmers for Windows Phone 7 will need to use Silverlight and XNA for development

Digg!  Digg
Reddit  Reddit
Slashdot  Slashdot
Share on facebook  Facebook
Share on Twitter  Twitter

AgitarOne: Unit Tests For Old Code


By Alex Handy
December 1, 2006 — 
By now, every good developer knows that unit testing is of primary importance to the development process. However, Jerry Rudisin, CEO and president of Agitar Software, said that there’s one area of development that is perpetually left out of the unit testing tumult: inherited code.

“One of the things that got in the way of people [trying to do unit testing] has been the fact that they had this really nasty mass of legacy code written in Java that they knew they wanted to start modifying and enhancing, but they didn’t want to touch it because they had no unit tests for it,” said Rudisin.

To address the situation, Agitar in mid-November released AgitarOne, a new product that includes all of Agitar’s previous software offerings mixed together with server-side JUnit test generation.

“Unleash AgitarOne on your legacy code, and it will go through and generate a good set of JUnit tests,” Rudisin said. “They’re not as good as hand-generated JUnit tests on original code, but they serve as a really useful set of regression tests.”

AgitarOne includes all of Agitator 3.0’s standard features: a dashboard for viewing code coverage, support for exploratory testing and code standards enforcement. But AgitarOne’s server-side approach to the testing process brings some new abilities to the mix. For starters, AgitarOne automatically installs the open-source tool Ant to give developers the ability to do continuous integration testing.

But the real reason for running AgitarOne on the server and not on the desktop, said Rudisin, is that the product’s automated test generation is very CPU-intensive. Thus, off-loading automated JUnit test generation onto the server frees up desktops to deal with standard daily tasks. Rudisin added that AgitarOne is capable of utilizing multiple CPUs and servers for its computations.

A standard installation of AgitarOne costs around US$50,000, said Rudisin. The server-side tool is accessed through Eclipse plug-ins, which are included in the product. Developers simply install the AgitarOne plug-in, and are then able to add unit tests through the Eclipse project view. Tests can be generated on a small scale—testing a single class—or a large scale—testing an entire project. All of these tests are generated from scratch as needed.

And while the tests generated by AgitarOne will never be better than hand-coded unit tests written at the same time tested code is completed, the tool automatically generates its tests based on the user’s desired code coverage requirements. That, said Rudisin, means code with absolutely no unit tests can be 70 percent covered from top to bottom with only a few mouse clicks and some dedicated server-side CPU time.


Share this link: http://www.sdtimes.com/link/29870
 

Add comment


Name*
Email*  
Country     


  • Comment
  • Preview
Loading



 
 
 
 
News on Monday
more>>
SharePoint Tech Report
more>>


   

 
 
Download Current Issue
ISSUE 3/15/2010 PDF

Need Back Issues?
DOWNLOAD HERE

Receive the print Edition?


 
blogs tab
Google Code turns 5
Google Code Turns 5, and adds a Paxos Algorithm to make the system more stable and reliable.
03/17/2010 11:16 AM EST

Test your Visual Studio 2010 know-how
Microsoft is offering free beta certification exams for Visual Studio 2010.
03/17/2010 11:08 AM EST

Microsoft lifts the hood on IE9
Microsoft is previewing IE9.
03/16/2010 01:10 PM EST

 

Events calendar tab
EclipseCon
3/22/2010 to 3/25/2010
Santa Clara, Calif.
The Eclipse Foundation

DevConnections
4/12/2010 to 4/14/2010
Las Vegas
Penton Media

MySQL Conf. and Expo
4/12/2010 to 4/15/2010
Santa Clara, Calif.
O'Reilly Media

High Performance Computing Linux Financial Markets
4/19/2010
New York City
Flagg Management

Informix User Conf.
4/25/2010 to 4/28/2010
Overland Park, Kans.
IIUG