HTML clipboardIntroduction
Unit testing is validation and verification methodology where the developers
test the individual units of source code. Some key points to remember are -
A unit is the smallest part in the application which can be tested. So it can be
a method, function or class.
These tests are conducted during development.
Unit testing belongs to the white box testing category.
Objective
The objective of unit testing is to test not only the functionality of the code,
but also to verify that the code is structurally sound and robust, and able to
respond appropriately in all conditions.
The main objectives of Unit Testing could be:
-
Code review.
- Coding standard violation.
- Code coverage.
Code review:
For every day changing code, unit tests allow developers to perform quick checks
against individual or collections of methods to ensure that functionality
continues to perform as expected, especially after adding more code to the
project. As the code is changing drastically, we need one level of review from
experts whether the code is potentially acceptable and stable. Example: infinite
loop, deadlocks, time expiration, Dispose() method not called for some bigger
objects, check the loop statements for performance and scalability, calling GC
for garbage collection when required, Depth of Inheritance, Cyclomatic
Complexity.
Coding standard violation:
Static analysis features in VSTS allow you to perform a code review against a
set of rules that can be customized and extended. With Visual Studio Team System
you have fine control over the code analysis rules that apply to class library
projects, web site projects, and source code control. With this configurability
you can enforce coding standards to improve the quality of your code, while
ensuring inapplicable rules never get in your way. There are lots of rules
available in code analysis tool of VSTS. But if they are not sufficient we can
create our own rules to check for coding standards. We can also create report of
failures for each class same like code coverage report which is attached in next
section.
Code Coverage:
Code Coverage ensures a good coverage of the use case based test cases. It also
helps to identify any unused paths and redundant or dead code.
After running unit tests against your code, you may want to determine how
complete your unit tests are and what code has not been tested by the current
collection of tests. VSTS Code Coverage provides both a visual tool as well as
tabular metrics on the effectiveness of your unit tests.
Finding Code coverage is very essential when code is changing daily or weekly
basis. There are certain ways to find the code coverage using VSTS. After
running unit tests we can get code coverage results in Code Coverage Result
pane. We can create report after changes in class and compare it with previous
results.
The problem with VSTS 2008 is we are not able to find the code coverage of
assemblies situated in GAC. Your options are to not have the dll in the GAC.
Resolution: VSTS 2010 does not have that issue and we can find code
coverage of any managed type of dll through code coverage using VSTS 2010, dll
can be anywhere including GAC. But keep in mind that code coverage doesn't run
in debug mode. Also we need to check the dlls for code coverage from test config
file settings.
Procedure for code coverage using VSTS
-
Load the product and test sources in a single solution in Visual Studio Team
System.
- Perform a full build.
- Open the Run Configuration you intend to use for this run ('localtestrun.tesrunconfig'
is the default)
- Select the Code coverage page in the resulting Dialog
- Check the Binaries you wish to be instrumented
- Execute the tests you desire to run, either through Test Manager or Test View.
When tests are finished, open the Code Coverage window and review the results.
Automate process to test functions that has database entries by creating insert
and delete scripts for functions.