Thursday, September 29, 2016

The Benefits Of IBM I Series Unit Testing As Efficient

By Daniel Stone


There is no such thing as a perfect code. When it comes to software programming bugs are bound to be plenty during the development stage. Leave the clean up to quality assurance before alpha and beta release. With no proper work flow and organization during development stage, the process of development is going to take longer.

Linux and Microsoft 2000 are some of the Operating systems that work with the IBM AS/400. Also known as the I series, this system can compile programming languages such as C, assembly, C++, Perl and so on. This makes IBM I series unit testing an efficient method the test IBM applications.

This method is essentially writing a code to exercise each functional fragment of the whole software, or in this case a module or a class from what is being developed. So when the module is being written, the unit test is also written with it. It is vital to add the tests during version control. Firstly it serves as a form of documentation, second this allows other developers to run and test the local features for themselves.

The main benefit is how bugs are discovered early. The unit tests are not done when all the source code is compiled and integrated. This is a debugging method in test driven development. During the continuous integration process, while the software program grows and grows, automated tests are done to functional parts of the programming.

This is a precaution to future add on features to the application. Looking at the bigger picture, it saves developers more time and money from debugging and revising the source code in case of post beta test errors. Putting these additional features will not have a domino effect of logical errors on the already existing functions.

The program is protected from time and space bound factors. When the tests are done, the code is guaranteed to work under all circumstances even after updates done later. Like mentioned earlier, the whole system is protected from the domino effect of bugs and errors when an edit is done or when a feature is added. This makes sure that while the testing is compartmentalized, its connection to other modules remain.

In software development, the more code is added to the repository, the more difficult it is to find the faulty piece of programming if something crashes. This is not the case with unit testing. This results to other developers being reluctant to add in the program already written in fear that if they added to the repository it might destroy everything.

Deployment of changes and fixes also become faster. Since the goal of this method is to automate testing during the development and serves precaution for future edits and additions wanted by the client, it is designed for flexibility. There are no side effects to worry about.

Some may argue that this method of testing is way too time consuming to even consider. But the benefits can more than compensate for the time it takes to do the tests. In the long run, having unit tests can guarantee a smoother work flow as the software starts growing and then starts having extra features.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment