I recorded a new video  introducing developers to one of my favorite features in Code Tester for Oracle: the rather plainly-named Run Program. I like to call it "Run-to-Test".

It has become clear in the years since we first released Code Tester that a whole...

We are excited to announce the upcoming release of Toad for Oracle version 11.6 which will be released tomorrow, Tuesday October 2nd, 2012. This blog serves as a early look at the updates and enhancements to Toad for Oracle v11.6 including its corresponding bundled components. Toad for Oracle is the most widely used database management solution on the market today with over 2 million users. Toad brings operational efficiency...

Written by Steven Feuerstein

My good friend, Marcelle Kratochvil, an expert in multimedia and PL/SQL, asked me to give you all notice about a new SIG she is establishing: the Oracle International Unstructured Data with Multimedia SIG. Here's a description of the SIG:

With iPhones, iPads, Android and other devices now dominating how we access information, businesses and the government are increasingly embracing...

Written by Finn Ellebaek Nielsen

This blog post describes a best practice for comparing datasets with Quest Code Tester for Oracle (CT).

The Quest Code Tester for Oracle development team is making more and more extensive use of the XMLTYPE datatype in the Oracle database. XML documents are a perfect fit for several requirements of Code Tester, in particular storing values for nested structures like collections of records, which in turn contain collections as fields.

After adding an XMLTYPE column to our table, we then updated our table API packages to...

Written by Finn Ellebaek Nielsen

This blog post is a follow up to my blog post "Continuous Integration" adding description of automating deployment of the test definitions to various environments.

Quest Code Tester for Oracle v2.0 is now available for production use; download this new version from Quest SupportLink. The most important new and improved features in 2.0 are:

Redesign of user interface-The dashboard is now replaced by the Test Explorer, offering greater usability and functionality. Powerful Suite Management- You can now define suites within suites and set up test workflow with branching...

I received an email from a PL/SQL developer who wants to use Code Tester to test the backend of his application. He asked me a number of questions and I thought I'd share my answers with everyone.

Is it possible to create end-to-end tests? Because I am afraid I won't be able to write unit tests for every last procedure in our schema. I'd rather like to write some big test (multiple procedure calls, some trigger...

I recently received this email:

Hi Steven, I am looking for tools to measure code quality and via which you can drill  down to the problem areas and for tools to refactor PL/SQL. Recently we insourced a team that is doing maintenance on an Oracle product. We are an Agile company and are now in the process of transforming the team to a Scrum team. The other teams develop Java desktop applications and have all the means to support Agile development. As a Scrum master of the insourced team I want to stimulate the team to explore ways to improve PL/SQL code quality, small steps at a time.  An important aspect of Scrum is continuous improvement. One of the bigger problems I see is code duplication....

We are pleased to announce availability of the final beta release (build 575) of Code Tester version 2. We currently plan to release Code Tester 2.0 in January 2011. This is a feature-complete beta; while the Help documentation is still being finished up, all features present in this build will be available in the production release of Code Tester 2.0. Key features of Code Tester 2.0:

Redesigned main window:...

You can now download Code Tester 2.0. beta 2 from http://unittest.inside.quest.com/beta.jspa. We are making this beta available primarily to get your feedback on the overall direction of design and workflow. We look forward to that feedback, which you can post in the Beta discussion forum.

On 24 May 2010, I presented a one-hour webinar on some of the challenges we database programmers face setting up regression tests for programs that change database tables.

 

Here's the description:

"Most PL/SQL programs modify the contents of one or more tables. How can you verify that the modifications were correct? This is one of the biggest challenges facing PL/SQL developers. "Join Steven Feuerstein...

When it comes to making sure your program works as it should, there are two general categories of test cases:

Tests of requirements: every requirement needs to have at least one test case devoted exclusively to verifying that the requirement has been met: the code performs as required. If you don't test for a requirement, then you do not know if it works. It is, ahem, theoretically correct. In other words, it is very likely buggy....

Having just released version 1.9.1 of Quest Code Tester, our development team is now hard at work on Code Tester 2.0 (tentatively scheduled for release in late Q3 2010).

We are still in the very early stages of our work, but I thought it would be helpful to share some of our concepts and general direction with you - and to ask for your feedback.



I will post this document in the Code Tester forum under...

by Steven Feuerstein

An object type is Oracle's version of an object-oriented class. It shares some of the features of a class, but falls a bit short. In Code Tester 1.9 and higher you can define and run tests for methods of an object type. You can also directly test the contents of an instance of an object type.



Click here...

Getting a happy green face after running your tests is, of course, very important. It is also important, however, to understand how much of the code in your program is being exercised by your tests. If, for example, you discovered that all your tests are successful, but only 10% of the lines of code in your program are actually run, you would have to conclude that either your tests are inadequate or you wrote a lot of code...

You can now download version 1.9 of Code Tester. This release features the following enhancements:

 

Object type support   You can now test directly the methods of object types, test the contents of object type instances for equality and inequality, and specify the values of attributes through a grid.

 

Default value support   You now...

Written by Finn Ellebaek Nielsen. A short introduction to Continuous Integration (CI) and a description of how to integrate testing Oracle code with QCTO in a CI environment.

Sometimes you need to reference the value of an IN argument (an input, in Code Tester terminology) in your outcome. For example, under certain circumstances, the string returned by your function should be the same as the input value. Or perhaps the out value should be some part of the input value.

You could hard-code the same value you supplied in the Input Grid, but then if you change the input value, you have to...

Did you know that in Code Tester 1.8.5 you can now perform in-line validation of your customization code? For more complex tests, this will save you lots of time and make it easier to build your regression tests.

 

The ultimate objective of Code Tester is easy to state: allow developers to test arbitrarily complex PL/SQL programs without writing any test code....

In case you missed my announcement on the Code Tester community forum, we have now posted a beta version of 1.9.

 

The major focus for 1.9 to date has been to add support for automated testing of object type methods. This beta release offers the first glimpse of this functionality; you should now be able to define tests for constructors, static methods, and member procedures and functions.

...

Written by Steven Feuerstein   Code Tester is a relatively young tool (first released for production use in February 2007), but it has matured quickly (hey, at least I think so!) and is packed full of handy features.

 

As with all other tools, however, it can sometimes be hard to find the "jewels," so I thought I would highlight a couple.

 

1. Dynamically generated test cases

 

Rather...

Written by Finn Ellebaek Nielsen. Best practices for determining test amount required through analysis of product risk.

I just fixed a bug in Quest Code Tester for Oracle, and I thought I would share my experience with you.

The bug was reported by our most excellent QA tester, Danny Pham. He is not only good at going through the defined test cases to verify correct behavior. He also takes devilish delight in trying all sorts of "crazy" stuff to see what happens.

So Danny encountered this error after he set up a test case with three outcomes, all built on cursor variable expression tests (something that is very unlikely for a customer to have done):

...

Written by Finn Ellebaek Nielsen. Best practices for a test approach that implements the test policy and strategy Oracle code laid out in a previous blog post.

As many of you may be aware, Toad for Oracle is available in a number of different Editions and Suites. For those of you who have Toad Development Suite for Oracle or Toad DBA Suite for Oracle, there are a number of recent product updates which you can take advantage of now (GA Release Date July 8th) rather than waiting for the next full scheduled release of Toad (due in October).

The below listed products are, of...

Written by Finn Ellebaek Nielsen. Best practices for establishing a test policy, as well as a test strategy for Oracle code.

Written by Steven Feuerstein. Version 1.8.3 of Quest Code Tester is now available.

Written by Finn Ellebaek Nielsen. Reasons for testing Oracle code in the database.

Written by Steven Feuerstein. Introduction to the "Real Automated Code Testing for Oracle" blog.

It's truly one of the oddities of the PL/SQL language that it does not offer a delimited string parsing program. The closest we can get is DBMS_UTILITY.COMMA_TO_TABLE, and that is sadly deficient (it only parses comma-delimited strings and each item between the commas must be a valid PL/SQL identifier).

 

So I built one myself (the parse package) and put it in the demo.zip file...

I have, for the past several years, focused heavily on designing and building an automated code testing tool for PL/SQL: Quest Code Tester for Oracle. One feature that is often requested as a part of code testing is analysis of code coverage, answering questions like:

When I run my program do I use 50% of the code? 75% of the code?   Are there chunks...

Test your code! Debug your code! Trace your code! We all hear about how we should or at least could perform these activities with our programs. And all too often the terms and usages seem to blur, and be confused. In reality, these three activities – test, debug, trace – are all quite different in nature and serve different purposes.

This blog entry offers my perspective on how they differ. I hope you find it useful...