Your last comment is very interesting. I'll have a look to state based testing vs interaction based testing, thanks

coming back to the thread, I've always felt that mock objects shine when you *actually* want to be in control:

  • you want to force failures all over the place
  • when you can record "external contexts" so you have state, and you associate your mock object with this external state. Pre-conditions and post-conditions (can be other processes!) can insure invariants. An example would be when your test suite incorporates snapshots of data in a few small (almost) flat databases (say switching on and off at will your big fat Oracle). Needless to say that collecting the data becomes part of the tests.
    • Actually, "internal testing" is the thing most talked about when the real situation is closer to "external testing", I guess. If we look at Chromatic's and Ian Langworth's "perl testing" the ratio is about 10 to one. Even unitary testing if often a mix, and it seems that a generic way to approach "external testing" mechanics would be very useful (if you have pointers about something actually general enough but still practical, IŽll be grateful).

    Maybe I am a paranoid, but I build my systems (even small prototypes) making them fail all over the place. Thinking early about recovery seems to make them better (not really something rational, more like a gut feeling ;)...probably because this over-emphasizes data sources.

    hth --stephan

    In reply to Re^3: Smallish mock objects by sgt
    in thread Smallish mock objects by diotalevi

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