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Have we not all dreamt of the ultimate integration testing?

Have you ever achieved it in your company? I have worked in a couple companies and yet have to see it done the ultimate way.

Mostly it boils down to a combination of one, if not all, of these problems

  • not enough resources (invalid manager or lazy peon argument)
  • to many stakeholders and all use the same environment(s)
  • data is constantly changing, data is polluted
  • silo’s
  • unstable releases of dependencies wrecking tests
  • no automation what soever
  • no integration testing whatsoever (no kidding, it happens)
  • no build server ( huh what? you still build on your local machine??)
  • a backward ops team reluctant to do cool stuff

you can probably find some more reasons! feel free to let me know.

So let’s create a situation. Let’s say you have a simple infrastructure:

  • database servers
  • micro services ( API’s)
  • front end applications

All of them being built by different teams.

  • Team DB does databases,
  • Team MS builds the java backend services
  • Team FE does some nodejs fronted magic

Let’s also assume you have at least 3 different environments: development, test and production. Each of them a version of all applications on it.

Suppose that you have at least the problem of data consistency and unstable test wrecking dependencies. Then your current scenario could be something like:

  1. Team DB updates a database schema Z to version 2, tries it out on development. “Yay it’s works! Our update scripts are mighty cool! Let’s rollout to test.“
  2. Team MS, sitting close by, quickly noticing the failing build on the CI Server. “Ho Ho Ho! Wait let us update our service Y that uses your update DB X.“. Update done, deploy to development. Runs some tests to verify that implementations correctly use the new database with it’s new functionalities . “Yay it works! Rollout to test!” Run the integration suite all seems fine!
  3. BOOM, front end was just giving a demo to stake holders on the test environment. An angry product owner with on it’s tail 15 nodejs developer storms in the back end room shouting all over the open space. “WTF #$FJIEAÏOXCBVEEEE$HIT# what where you thinking releasing that to test! We search a street name in your service and we get only cities back!  And the search name we initially use in our demo isn’t there anymore!!  You broke our whole front end! Fubar our demo! AGAIN !”
    Frustration, depression, the downfall of the team spirits, the downfall of a company, IMPEDIMENTS.

Well now! WE ARE ALL SAVED from this!  Just call 1-800-DOCKERIZE – warning next up is simple theoretical docker porn 
Continue reading “Have we not all dreamt of the ultimate integration testing?”

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ReFRACKtoring

Once in a while one find itself on a task where numerous WTF moments appear. You can imagine such a task?

Yes you can. It’s adding new features to legacy code/database or to a ‘WTF’ code base.

A ‘What the F***’ code base, a collection of lines of code that make you shout WTF more than is healthy. You can usually hardly call it a program. It’s a collection of blunders after blunders. Not testable due to lack of interesting unit tests, thus not refactorable (if that’s even a word) without adding a unit test.

And then comes the day. ‘Hi mister, we’d like feature X, Y, Z added to this application.’  You say, ‘ok’ and come back with a rough estimation after carefully reading the specifications. Architect and Programmers decide: ‘Should take about 4 weeks in optimal man days’, what the client then hears that it will take around 3 months. And so the waterfall started spoiling it’s liquid.

Continue reading “ReFRACKtoring”

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Children’s wisdom

Today.
The first thing I noticed when exiting the train in Antwerp Central Station.
A police officer with a semi automatic machinegun.
The aftermath of the Charlie shooting in Paris.

Second thing: it doesn’t make me feel safer. On the contrary. I feel uncomfortable and don’t trust it.

In the evening when I tell my seven year old son what I saw, he replied: ‘No, it can’t be. Cops  do not carry machine guns’

Now that’s real wisdom.