The More You Know

OPP 2007 East - Session 5 – Quest Stoftware’s PL/SQL Code Tester

The last session of the day included a first look at Quest Software’s PL/SQL Code Tester which brings something very new and exciting to the world of Oracle development, easy and intuitive regression testing! Very much like JUnit for Java, Code Tester brings a great UI to the user and offers the ability to quickly create test cases.

Of course the skeptics at this point will start spinning their worst PL/SQL function calls in their heads. Attempting to think of the impossibilities of such a task. Be assured cursor variables, collections, and even hierarchal data have all been considered. Granted, the tool’s helpful quick building methods do not cover every complex case possible out of the box,. but it does give you the ability manually specify setup and teardown functionality as well as editing end conditions to add any missing functionality. This means even if Code Tester does not support a specific aggregate data type or a specific type of complex comparison, then you can manually include it yourself. That means that the tool isn’t limited by its programmed interface.

It is also important to remember that as your function’s complexity increases the higher the probability that Code Tester will need special attention to properly create test cases. However, this is inherent in all automatic regression testing tools. Programming languages are inherently complex and thusly testing all possible operations is also complex.

If you are familiar with Clover, then you are familiar with “test coverage testing” or simply just coverage testing. This methodology of testing ensures that a set of test cases actually covers every branching possibility within a function. While this feature is missing at current, it has be verified that the ability will be available and that Oracle already supports such meta data via the DBMS_PROFILER package. At this point, one would conclude that it is just a matter of leveraging the data rather than coming up a with a homebrew method.

I would suggest taking a look at the demo that Quest Software offers. If you are not used to Test Driven Development this may be a leap. For most people involved in the PL/SQL development community this will be new territory, but believe me, give it a chance and the results will come.