Unittests and external data....

[Mike Meyer]

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:
> Mike Meyer wrote:
> > While I'm really fond of unit tests, I keep running into problems of
> > their needing more framework than can easily be captured in the
> > unittest module.
> > 
> > For instance, I'm working on a project to interface a data source to
> > an SQL database. Doing unit tests properly means I need to have
> > multiple different versions of the source around, or I need to modify
> > it on the fly. Neither of those is really very practical. 
> Why do you think changing it on the fly is not "very practical"?

Because the data the test is using is generated on a different - and
very limited - platform than the one the test is running on. To change
it on the fly requires going back to the other platform, changing it,
and then rerunning the export process. This isn't practical for
automated testing.

        <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.