Java Testing and Design: From Unit Testing to Automated Web Tests [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

This is a supremely useful book for software developers working on Java and J2EE-based Web-enabled applications, including Web Services. Frank Cohen is the "go-to" guy for enterprises needing to design, build, and test complex information systems. The author helps you go beyond learning the language to understand how design choices impact scalability, functionality, and performance. Your application might run perfectly in the lab, but it crashes in production. Or, you might already know Java, but you don't understand why your application runs so slowly. If that is the case, then this book will help you better understand your application and optimize it for maximum performance.

From the Back Cover

This book shows how to understand what application you want to write, what strategies are likely to get you there, and then how to measure your level of success. This book offers practical, concrete advice about how to stay in tune with your project and ensure that your products are at least as good as your plans.—Phil Goodwin, Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems.

Produce scalable, reliable, high-performance Web-enabled applications in Java

Web infrastructure is everywhere. And yet until this book there was no guide to show how your choices in design, coding, and testing impact the scalability, performance, and functionality of your Web-enabled applications.

Java Testing and Design: From Unit Testing to Automated Web Tests teaches you a fast and efficient method to build production-worthy, scalable, and well performing Web-enabled applications. The techniques, methodology, and tools presented in this book will enable developers, QA technicians, and IT managers to work together to achieve unprecedented productivity in development and test automation.

With Java Testing and Design, you will be prepared for a laundry list of new APIs, protocols, and tools being packed into the next generation of J2EE, .NET, and open-source systems. While these new software libraries, tools, and techniques are a big move forward for all of us, they push us to learn even more technology to turn out complex, highly functional, and interoperable software applications.

Author Frank Cohen shares proven best practices based on his extensive experience at leading enterprises (General Motors, BEA, AMP, 2Wire, Elsevier, U.S. Navy, Sun) and delivers an immediately useful set of open-source tools, techniques, and code that will automate the testing of your Web-enabled applications.

Coverage includes:

• Software development and test automation methodologies
• Exposes the scalability problems in SOAP-based Web Services
• Building, testing, and monitoring integrated multiple-protocol Web-enabled applications
• Performance kits for developers using BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, and Sun Java System (formerly Sun ONE)
• Architecture, code, and test agents for J2EE, Web Services, P2P, and .NET
• Secure Internet services using current and next-generation technologies and much more!

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR; illustrated edition edition (March 16, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131421891
• ISBN-13: 978-0131421899
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,381,059 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Some good information, but..., July 1, 2004

By	Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I recently received a review copy of Java Testing And Design - From Unit Testing To Automated Web Tests by Frank Cohen (Prentice Hall). While there is some good information to be gleaned from the book, there were a few things that got in the way.

The chapter layout: The Forces at Work Affecting Your Web-Enabled Software; When Application Performance Becomes A Problem; Modeling Tests; Java Development and Test Automation Tools; Bridging from Methodology to Design; Design and Test in HTTP/HTML Environments; Tuning SOAP and XML Web Services; State, Design, and Testing; Integrating with .NET Web Services; Building and Testing Intranets and Secure Environments; A Web Application Framework from Construction to Test; Turning Test Agent Results into Actionable Knowledge; Concurrency and Scalability in a High-Volume Datacenter; Making the Right Choices for SOAP Scalability; Multiprotocol Testing in an Email Environment; Index

When I first requested the book, I was thinking it would help me to understand how to adequately test my Java programs using software like JUnit and such. Throw in some methodology and best practices, and I was ready to go. To be fair, the author does cover the topics of testing quite throughly, and especially testing of web-based HTTP applications. If you're not looking for software how-to or detailed discussion of many different products, then you'll benefit from the book.

Where I had problems is that most of the technical parts of the book involve showing the reader how to use an open source package that he wrote called TestMaker by PushToTest. There is, in my view, too much "using the software that we wrote" material. All the code uses JavaDoc comments that show the particular PushToTest developer who wrote the code. Before too long, I felt as if I was in a 500 page infomercial for TestMaker. The software might well be excellent, but I felt somewhat lead astray in that I felt as if I was being pushed towards TestMaker rather than towards a variety of tools that one could use. I would have felt better about the whole thing had the title been "Java Testing And Design Using TestMaker".

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent guide to testing any Web application, April 17, 2004

By	Bart Thompson (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This book is an excellent guide to testing web applications and web services. I expect it will benefit all readers, from the software developers or QA tech just getting started, through to the experienced coders and testers.

Java Testing and Design comes in three parts. The first part describes the things we developers, QA techs and IT folks deal with everyday - tough schedules, user needs, messed up management and test methodologies past and present. All this is shown being applied to building Web applications. The second part takes on the nuts-and-bolts aspect of building networked applications, including different connectivity methods (from http through XML and SOAP), from functional unit tests to testing sequences of messages and session data. It puts a whole new light on testing from the user's perspective using a new method called user archetypes - basically test scripts that mimic a user's behavior. It's a cool technique to make testing a lot more simpler.

The chapters describe the issues and the common areas where things go wrong. Then each chapter provides a detailed description of testing using the TestMaker free open-source test tool.

The third part of the book covers some case studies of tests that Frank Cohen had to devise. These include tests for scalability and throughput of SOAP-based Web Services. He also uncovers a huge scalability problem with Web Services that every Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) developer should know about. RPC-based Web Services do not scale and the book shows why and how anyone can find the results.

The book's title is a little weird since the book has little to do with Java itself. You could be a .NET developer and get just as much from the book. I would have liked to see more coverage of other test tools but since TestMaker is free and open source that's no problem for me.

Java Testing and Design provides excellent insights into testing and gives you tools and explanations for performing tests of Web-enabled applications. I recommend this book highly.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars This book disappointed me , June 11, 2004

By	Anshuman Purohit (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews

The complexity of Java technology compounds the challenges associated with web-based applications testing. That's why I was excited when I noticed this book. However, the book disappointed me once I read it.

The complexity of Java technology compounds the challenges associated with web-based applications testing. That's why I was excited when I noticed this book. However, the book disappointed me once I read it.

The Name
The first disappointment was the book's title. The first word of the title is "Java," but the author avoids showing any Java code. The closest he gets to Java is Jython, a scripting language implemented in Java. If you are designing or testing performant Java applications, you will be better off reading Enterprise Java Performance by Steve L. Halter and Steven J. Munroe, also from Prentice Hall. If I were to name this book, I'd call it "Testing Webservices with TestMaker & Jython."

Topic Organization
This book is a collection of very wordy, unclear, and unrelated notes. The diary-like organization of topics, left me wondering, "where is the meat." Repetition of subject matter, unfocused discussion and abrupt transition of topics will bound to make you lose your attention. Examples don't build upon one another. If you are very dedicated and focused, you are left with tons of irrelevant text to skim through to derive any real value. Some ancillary topics could have been better located in an appendix. A list of acronyms or glossary of terms would be nice.
You will notice frequent typo/errors in this book.

Vague Notions
While building the context to promote TestMaker and "intelligent agent" as the be all and end all of Software Engineering (Part I, about 200 pages), the book cared less to define the term itself. TestMaker is a free, open-source tool for unit testing, load testing, and system monitoring developed by the book's author.

Target Audience
Contrary to a few comments about this book, this book provides little value to Java developers. However, Web Rubrics (an objective performance grading matrix), User Archetype (a Prototypical User, modeling user behavior and habit. Is an extension of UML Actor), WAPS (Web-enabled Application Points System - A matrix to measure software quality based on functionality, performance and scalability) and The Micromax Lifecycle (many small improvement to software application and techniques to categorize and prioritize micro-tasks) might be of interest to "QA technicians" and "IT Managers."

Reference/Textbook
I normally look for two qualities to assess a book. First, does the book cover a generic ground in sufficient depth to serve as a reference? Poor organization and shallow coverage of concepts doesn't put this book on my reference bookshelf. Secondly, I look for hands-on examples that can serve as a tutorial for the reader. This book doesn't provide a single line of Java code.

To summarize, I do not recommend this book for Java developers interested in learning more about Java testing and design.