Integration Testing

Sexy title, isn’t it? 🙂 Well, maybe not, but still, it’s an important aspect of system development.

What is Integration Testing?

Good question, Fredrik. Well thank you, Fredrik.

Yeah yeah, okay, enough with this, let’s get serious.

When I talk about testing I almost always get misunderstood. Why? Because we all have different views and words to use when we talk about testing, and specially automated tests. Have you seen the explanation of Integration Testing on Wikipedia? Well, it’s not explicit, that you can say 🙂 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integration_testing

When I talk about integration tests, I usually mean firing up my application in memory and probe the integration points. I like this approach because it let’s me get rid of third party application dependency. It means I can run my tests anywhere without the need of installing and handling third party applications during testing, for example a database.

It fits nicely into the continues integration process.

Test It While Hosting Your Windows Service

So, I’d like to introduce you to some of the home brewed testing frameworks I like to use when building applications. Let’s start with Test.It.While.Hosting.Your.Windows.Service (C#, .NET Framework 4.6.2), which is a testing framework that helps you simplify how you write your integration tests for Windows Service applications.

I’m not going to go into details, you will find that if you follow the link. BUT, I think integration testing is something all developers should have at some degree when developing applications. They cover much more than a unit test, but at the same time they are autonomous and non-dependent which means you can run them anywhere where the targeted framework is installed.

Just by being able to start your application in a unit test like manner you have come far in testing your application’s functionality. How many times have you not experienced problems with the IOC registrations of your application?

Okay, I’ll cut the selling point. I think you get the point anyway. Testing is important. Multiple levels of testing is important. Finding issues fast is important, at least in an agile world, and you are agile, aren’t you? 🙂

Hi!

My name is Fredrik. I’m a system developer, newly gone freelance, and (obviously) I like automated testing. I would not call my self a ‘tester’, I’m a system developer who likes simplicity and when things just work.

This is my first blog post for my new company, FKAN Consulting. I’ll try to continuously post new (hopefully interesting) posts here about my experiences as a developer and consultant.