My Sunday Research...

Shows that people visit and download anytime of the week. From East and West, people seems to be downloading betas, white-papers, snapshots.

It is feels like sunday press...

Variable Load!

Interesting visitors to our blog lately. Some have registered in the beta program, some have not.

We are looking at ways to cleanly allow the user invoke methods with a variable number of parameters. So far we are leaning towards double-clicking the parameters tab to insert a new parameter state tab.

The design on Load & Stress is going too. Before we try to measure memory and all that, we should make sure the user agrees with the state the object is after the beating. It requires some thought.

Why all that bloating?

As I move along with the VS add-in of DevRiot, I started to look again at the built-in features of VS.

What a mess! To end up asking the user the same information that DevRiot directly asks, there is an endless sequence of menus, options!

Orcas is following the same path. Why does the user need to deal with code? Because it executes faster? Obviously not.

That automatic code generation just works with native types. After that is back to set/get methods to set objects ready to tests. Or play PrivateObject nesting game.

Does it provide GUI testing for PC or devices? Nope.

Does it analyze build trees or AST? Nope.

Again, it is a step forward but short. Otherwise people would not still be asking "why white-box testing is ignored"

Beta FAQ:

A few questions have come up:

Do you Support Swing?

Yes. Actually, we are far along in that regard. We just wanted to release something that worked in J2SE and J2ME uniformly.

Swing is not an official J2ME package so we decided to remove it from the release.

How does the Private members access work?

Think of it as Visual Studio's PrivateObject but on steriods. And for Eclipse, too.

It is always there working for the user. But the user does not know it. The feature is transparent and does not require coding. It is also immune to refactoring changes.

It also works for all the types involved in a test (gui or unit): parameters, fields.

It also works like a drill: the user can click into an object state as deep as needed.

Is it only the plug-in/add-in?

No. The plug-in/add-in has two things in it: the plug-in/add-in logic and the reduced version of the engine. The plan would be to provide an automation server where the output of the plug-ins/add-ins are consumed and value added stats are gathered.

This could be provided as a service or as an attachement to SCM.

Virtual Solution 2209

Well, the actual performance increase over Nunit is 2209 times. Our average cost per test is around 8 ticks, while for Nunit 2.4 is 1700+ ticks per test.

So, I decided to look at the Test tools offered by VS 2005. Although a step in the right direction, not even close to the streamlining that most software operations need.

It is still a solution based on writing code (as if figuring out how to make code fail does not take time), they have to learn a never-ending list of attributes.

No wonder, people google for "why+white-box+testing+is+ignored" :-}

It allows to access private members (fields and methods) but their approach seems a babushka doll. It works fine if those fields are native types.

But if those fields are something more complex? Can the users apply the PrivateObject trick to types not-under-test?

After all, the type-under-test methods are affected by the internal state of any of its internal state components. Ah, the babushka doll!

For load testing, Visual Studio does not "require" to write code. It just puts the all the tests the user already wrote in a bundle.

What about daisy-chaining tests from the data layer or business logic layer to the gui to verify behavior across the layers? Even some tools, like code coverage, are there with the wrong crowd.

Hey, I am just trying to differentiate our product! ;-}

600+ Faster

As we polish the new architecture in .Net, we decided to compare the execution speeds of Nunit 2.4 and DevRiot.

DevRiot is still cookin!! Just considering the overall times, not the average, DevRiot is in the order of 600+ times faster. Plus it is also a GUI testing engine that runs in Windows as well as PocketPC.

Why do we consider this important? Testing and quality represents a huge percentage, according to NIST it could reach 80%, of a given project costs. Vista is another example of this efficiency problem.

The startling thing is very few, if any, high-tech strategy courses or implementations really address this. So which kind of strategy ignores altogether 80% of the problem?

A former, I think, SAP CEO mentioned the software industry needs to copy the auto industry. McKinsey & Co has written articles about it too. Microsoft Research aims in that direction also. But the facts seem to say something else. Just a look at the different internet forums will confirm this.

So if we want to improve the situation we need to use the scarce human time in more efficient ways, and let the computers use their cycles in something useful.

Anyways enough ramblings, here is the snapshot of DevRiot .Net

Weird Downloads!

Well, After announcing the beta availability really low key, we have had a great download rate. Although some weird downloads:

Somebody using msn downloaded the Mac version of DevRiot for Eclipse and some wip snapshots.

Switching to Visual Studio after some months of serious Eclipse plug-in development is a true shift in the way of developing tools. Enjoyable but different :-}

Beta Available for Download

DevRiot for Eclipse Beta is now available for download.

Some notes on the product:

• DevRiot is a testing engine that combines unit testing and GUI testing (without the problems that capture-and-replay cause).
  
• It does not require coding or scripting. Tests are automatically created from minimal user input.
  
• It allows the user to reach any member without regard to their protection level. It also has an internal maintenance process that keeps the tests continuously updated.
• It is small: 56Kb (plugin + engine). This makes it possible to run on both J2SE and J2ME devices.
• It is fast: approximately 200 times faster than Junit.
  
• Features planned for future development: support for arrays and generics, EJB(with dynamic type generation), WS, and JDBC.
  
• Both unit testing and GUI testing interfaces are available for Linux and Windows. Currently, only the unit testing interface is available for Mac users.

Your feedback is essential to us, so we are asking those that download the DevRiot Beta to fill out a short registration form. We will not share your information with anyone - promise!

Depending on the version you are evaluating, you can contact us with feedback or questions at the following addresses:

• beta_linux AT efekctive.com
• beta_mac AT efekctive.com
• beta_windows AT efekctive.com

Please state in the subject line if you have a problem to report [Bug], or a feature request [Feature].

Any general questions can be sent to: beta AT efekctive.com.

Thanks for your interest in DevRiot!

Download DevRiot Beta here.

Funny Searches...

These are a couple of search strings that have been used to download the whitepapers or hit the blog:

What+the+heck+do+you+use+the+java.awt.Robot+class+for

or

why+white-box+testing+is+ignored

Kind of entertaining while making the Linux install work on Eclipse 3.2

DevRiot .Net gets going, Beta for Eclipse almost available!!

3 People got their hands on DevRiot for Eclipse 3.X (Windows version) meanwhile I decided to get the .Net version a jolt.

Here is a snapshot of the GUI in the .Net environment. Pretty much the same as in Eclipse/Java. That's the idea: no new tricks to learn, no new tests to write. They are portable right off the start.