Tag: refactoring

Fragmented integration tests – aka the questionable value zone

Posted on by RickDing

Fragmented integration tests – aka the questionable value zone

In TDD, different styles of tests can be applied to cover different levels in your code base. Two or three years ago, if you asked me what they were, I would probably have listed them as:

  • Highest granularity – unit tests, quick to run, drive low-level class design
  • Fragmented – integration tests, testing higher-level components and external dependencies (e.g. real SQL database, fake message bus)
  • Whole system at once – slow end-to-end tests, testing for story/feature acceptance at the UI or client API level

However, it has become increasingly clear that fragmented integration tests (somewhere in the middle between unit and full-blown end-to-end integration tests) don’t really provide the same value as their brothers.

They suffer all the disadvantages of both unit and end-to-end tests:

  • Like unit tests, they require setting up mocks/test doubles for collaborating modules
  • Like end-to-end tests, they have a high cost of maintaining external components like databases and integrated third party systems (setting them up, populating them with the right test data, reverting changes for next time etc)
  • Like unit tests, they are brittle and not friendly to refactoring
  • Like end-to-end tests, they are slow to run

… and, over the lifetime of the code base, the only real benefit they provide is slightly faster feedback of problems than end-to-end tests. Is it really worth keeping them?

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Architectural examples: how does your app fit together?

Posted on by RickDing

Architectural examples: how does your app fit together?

I had the pleasure of hearing a talk by Stewart Baird today, and I liked one of his ideas so much I thought I’d mention it here.

Object-relational mappers, IoC, ESBs, REST etc are all a big deal when you’re introducing them to teams or working with contractors who haven’t used them before.

To explain how it all fits together, you should create an architectural example — a reference system that implements a single, simple behaviour. To be effective, it should:

  • Be end-to-end. It should demonstrate how events and data flow from the user interface through to the database and back, including any and all services in between.
  • Be checked into source control. Publish it alongside the production code so everyone can see it.
  • Lead your production code. When you introduce a new component — e.g. a distributed cache — add it to the architectural example first, before rolling it out to your main system.

It’s always nice if you can explore and see everything working for yourself. An architectural example can help explain new topics to less-experienced developers, and provide a nice reference of how you want to see things implemented in future.

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Find missing foreign/primary keys in SQL Server

Posted on by RickDing

Find missing foreign/primary keys in SQL Server

Last week I wrote a SQL query to estimate how many columns are missing from foreign or primary keys. This works because of our naming convention for database keys:

  • We use a Code suffix for natural keys e.g. CountryCode = NZ
  • We use an ID suffix for surrogate keys e.g. EmployeeID = 32491

This script looks for any columns that match this naming pattern, but aren’t part of a primary or foreign key relationship.

-- Find columns on tables with names like FooID or FooCode which should-- be part of primary or foreign keys, but aren't.SELECT        t.name AS [Table],        c.name AS [Column]FROM        sys.tables t        INNER JOIN sys.syscolumns c ON                c.id = t.object_id                -- Join on foreign key columns        LEFT JOIN sys.foreign_key_columns fkc ON                (fkc.parent_object_id = t.object_id                AND c.colid = fkc.parent_column_id)                OR (fkc.referenced_object_id = t.object_id                AND c.colid = fkc.referenced_column_id)                -- Join on primary key columns        LEFT JOIN sys.indexes i ON                i.object_id = t.object_id                and i.is_primary_key = 1        LEFT JOIN sys.index_columns ic ON                ic.object_id = t.object_id                AND ic.index_id = i.index_id                AND ic.column_id = c.colidWHERE        t.is_ms_shipped = 0        AND (c.name LIKE '%ID' OR c.name LIKE '%Code')        AND        (                fkc.constraint_object_id IS NULL -- Not part of a foreign key                 AND ic.object_id IS NULL -- Not part of a primary key        )        AND        (                -- Ignore some tables                t.name != 'sysdiagrams'                AND t.name NOT LIKE '[_]%' -- temp tables                AND t.name NOT LIKE '%temp%'                AND t.name NOT LIKE '%Log%' -- log tables                                -- Ignore some columns                AND c.name NOT IN ('GLCode', 'EID', 'AID') -- external keys        )ORDER BY        t.name,        c.name

Using this script, I found over 200 missing foreign keys in one production database!

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St9exception with libstdc++

Posted on by RickDing

St9exception with libstdc++

Here’s something I encountered today when writing some C++:

try{    throw std::runtime_error("some message");}catch (std::exception e){    std::cout << "error: " << e.what() << std::endl;}

When run, this code will write “error: St9exception”, instead of “some message” to stdout. “St9exception” comes from libstdc++, in which the default value returned by std::exception::what() is the mangled symbol name. The mistake was that I was catching the exception by value, not by reference. (Too much C# perhaps?)

Instead it should have of course been:

try{    throw std::runtime_error("some message");}catch (const std::exception & e){    std::cout << "error: " << e.what() << std::endl;
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