Introduction

Unit testing is an indispensable means of ensuring high quality software. Unit testing generally refers to concentrated and focused testing of each smallest logical unit of your software. This unit may be a module, a package, a file, or a class. It is highly recommended that unit tests be conducted at the smallest unit of your software. For most Java developers, a class represents a typical unit to be tested.

Unit tests are the building blocks of your testing infrastructure. As you develop new "units" of your software, you should also simultaneously develop units tests for them. Once the new units are integrated into your software, the unit tests should also be integrated into the suite of unit tests that already may exist.

While most developers recognize the importance of unit testing, often due to lack of time, unit tests are not designed and run in a comprehensive and consistent manner. To save time, many developers tend to run unit tests in some form of automated manner. In fact, many users use advanced tools to help with generation and execution of unit tests. This is where AppPerfect Java Unit Test comes into the picture.  

Need for AppPerfect Java Unit Test

AppPerfect Java Unit Test performs the following key functions for you:

• Automatically generate unit tests for your source
• Automatically update unit tests as your source changes
• Automatically execute the tests when asked for

AppPerfect Java Unit Test uses JUnit and HtmlUnit as the unit testing frameworks. Using AppPerfect Java Unit Test can help developers save significant amount of time that would otherwise be spent on manually creating and running the tests.

AppPerfect Java Unit Test Key Features

With the AppPerfect Java Unit Test the effort you, as a programmer, have to put into unit testing is greatly reduced. It automates Test Case generation and execution with extensive reporting for reference and analysis purpose. In addition it also provides comprehensive test-case management tools. AppPerfect Java Unit Test offers you a variety of features to ease and streamline your process of Unit Testing:

• Uses JUnit and HtmlUnit framework: AppPerfect Java Unit Test uses JUnit framework, the most commonly used framework, to generate and test Java source. To unit test server-side Java source (JSP/Servlets/EJB) it uses HtmlUnit framework.
• Automatic Generation of test cases: AppPerfect Java Unit Test automatically generates full test cases, by going through code and understanding it. AppPerfect Java Unit Test goes beyond generating simple stub classes for JUnit testing. It generates fully functional, highly intelligent test classes that understand your application and test your source files thoroughly. It also provides easy to use UI to edit your test cases. It automatically maintains these test cases as your code changes, so if you delete any method in your source, AppPerfect Java Unit Test will take care of deleting the corresponding test cases from test class files and so on.
• Functional Test cases: AppPerfect Java Unit Test provides an uitlity called Object Tracer which allows users to run their application normally and monitors the object creation during the normal working of application. It records this information and later creates test cases by creating exactly same objects, this way user can generate functional test cases for their applications and can use these test cases for regression testing.
• Object Repository: AppPerfect Java Unit Test uses concept of mock objects to unit test your source code. It generates mock objects and stores them in a repository called Object Repository. You can manage these objects using Object Repository Manager.
• Supports Stubbing: AppPerfect Java Unit Test supports stub code generation, this is useful when some part of application is not available or is not developed yet. For example your application requires a database connection but same is not available then you can stub getConnection call and return some dummy connection object in place, Unit Test will take care to execute your stubbed code in place of actual getConnection call while unit testing the code.
• Supports Mock Database: AppPerfect Java Unit Test supports mock database functionality. This functionality is provided: a) to allow users to test their code during development phase without actually going to original database, b)During development some times users enter junk data hence to prevent original database from getting corrupt. c) To save developers time as during development if users enter junk data and it goes to original database then users are required to spend some time cleaning database, d) At lot of time database must be in some state for testing certain piece of code hence to maintain that state of database for users.
• Importing of existing JUnit tests: AppPerfect Java Unit Test can import a existing JUnit test cases and and execute them along with Unit Test generated test cases and can report the results.
• Browser recording: You can use the browser recording facility to create the tests as you would normally work with your application. There is no need to learn any proprietary scripting language. You can then edit and run the test fast and easily. All web browsers are supported for recording, including Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, and Firefox.
• Support for basic authentication, cookies, SSL: With the AppPerfect Java Unit Test, you can unit test JSP applications that require basic authentication as well as those using HTTPS by allowing the configuration of the SSL Provider. It also handles the sending of cookies with the appropriate requests and supports URL rewriting if your application uses it. Two way SSL authentication is also supported.
• Informative and User friendly reports: AppPerfect provides comprehensive reports that help you identify failure points of the test. These reports can be viewed in the UI or exported to HTML, PDF CSV, XLS, XML etc.
• Scheduling and Notification: You can automate your testing by scheduling them using the Test Manager product. You can also use the Notifications manager module of the Test Manager product to send an email, SMS or file notification when a test is complete.
• IDE Integration: AppPerfect Java Unit Test supports IDE integration with most commonly used IDEs. This enhances ease-of-use and productivity. Currently supported IDEs are Eclipse, NetBeans, IntelliJ, JBuilder, JDeveloper and Workshop.
• ANT Integration and Command line execution: AppPerfect Java Unit Test supports ANT integration so it can be easily integrated into most development/build environments. Unit Test also supports command line execution so you can unit test your source code by invoking product from a bat or sh file.

About AppPerfect Products

AppPerfect offers following products for complete and comprehensive solution for testing and monitoring the performance of your application. These products that are designed to help you test your application throughout the development life-cycle.

AppPerfect Java Unit Test:

AppPerfect Java Unit Test is a feature-rich wrapper for the popular JUnit and HtmlUnit testing frameworks for non-web and web-based Java projects respectively. It provides the Java programmer with an easy to use and fully customizable unit-testing environment, which can be integrated with popular Java IDEs as well as the project's build process.

AppPerfect Java Code Test:

AppPerfect Java Code Test reads your software code and analyzes it for optimization, errors, coding conventions, complexity and style based on industry-standard rules. Over 750 pre-defined, high-value rules can be applied to your code. AppPerfect Java Code Test is an ideal tool to perform code reviews on an on-going basis to ensure high quality of code.

AppPerfect Java Profiler:

AppPerfect Java Profiler profiles a Java Virtual Machine to assist you in understanding the behavior of your application as it performs its functions. AppPerfect Java Profiler recognizes that your application does not operate in a vacuum and hence provides a unique blend of Java information combined with operating system information.

AppPerfect App Test:

AppPerfect App Test performs regression and functional testing of your Windows/Desktop applications. Performing manual functional testing by having a person sit and manually click away at the application is extremely expensive and error-prone. AppPerfect App Test provides the means to perform such labor-intensive activity in an automated manner.

AppPerfect Web Test:

AppPerfect Web Test performs regression and functional testing of your Web applications. Performing manual functional testing by having a person sit and manually click away at the application is extremely expensive and error-prone. AppPerfect Web Test provides the means to perform such labor-intensive activity in an automated manner.

AppPerfect Load Test:

AppPerfect Load Test is a stress/load testing tool that can simulate hundreds of virtual users from a single machine. Features supported include site recording, dynamic variable substitution, cookies support, session tracking, SSL support and run strategies. It can run tests based on a variety of strategies such as burst, incremental, exponential, quadratic or loop. It also provides you a comprehensive solution to monitor various attributes of various operating systems present in your application infrastructure.

AppPerfect Test Manager:

The AppPerfect Test Manager is central server with a Web-based UI for accessing various modules in the server. AppPerfect Test Manager consists of five main modules:

Requirements Manager: This module is used to create requirement specifications around which your tests will be designed and executed. Functional, business, performance, technical and usability requirements should be defined here to ensure the tests cover all defined criteria.

Test Manager: Once tests have been designed, the Test Manager can be used to manage the execution of your tests. Automatically running tests on a specific schedule, notification of test results, saving of test results, etc. can be defined in this module.

Results Manager: Once results for your various tests have run a few iterations, the Results Manager can be used to manage the archived results. Trend Analysis of multiple results to detect key quality trends is a key feature of this module. Storage management can also be performed via this module.

Issues Manager: As tests are run, issues such as defects, enhancements, modifications, etc. will occur. This module can be used to create and track such issues. This module is designed as a light-weight issues manager that seamlessly integrates with the rest of the server and is not intended to replace full-featured issues management system.

License Manager: Floating/site licenses are managed using this module. This module acts as the central manager for issuing and reclaiming floating licenses for the AppPerfect products.

AppPerfect Agentless Monitor:

The AppPerfect Agentless Monitor is an agentless, Web-based monitoring solution. It helps you monitor your applications and the underlying system resources. The AppPerfect Agentless Monitor consists of:

AppPerfect Monitor: A pure Web-based solution that helps you monitor your application infrastructure. Provides a rules engine to define alerts: a notification server for email and SMS notifications. Also includes a powerful report designer to create custom reports to analyze and understand the performance data.

AppPerfect Monitors: A series of modules designed to support specific devices. AppPerfect Monitor does not use the traditional agents-based approach to monitoring. Apart from being expensive, agents-based approach is also highly complex and error-prone. AppPerfect Monitors are designed to impose negligible overhead on the monitored system. These monitors are superbly optimized programs providing the maximum amount of information while imposing the lowest possible overhead.

Currently, the following devices are supported:

• Java/J2EE App Servers (Tomcat, WebLogic, WebSphere, etc.)
• Operating Systems Resources (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X)
• Databases (Oracle, MySQL, MS SQL, DB2, Sybase)
• Web Servers (Apache HTTP Server, MS IIS)
• SNMP Monitors (v1 and v2)
• Ping Monitor (Device heartbeat monitor)
• Mail Server (MS Exchange)

About AppPerfect Corporation

AppPerfect Corporation is an independent software development company dedicated to providing the developer community with the best-in-class tools throughout the entire software life-cycle. Our aim is to be your primary vendor for most of your development- and deployment-tool needs. Our mission is to help you reduce your software development costs, increase your productivity and help improve the availability and scalability of your applications. Please visit us on the Web at www.AppPerfect.com for more information.