John Luif

I’m a big fan of FIT or maybe I should say FITnesse.  I have used it for several projects but I have currently reached a road block.  My current usage for FIT is mocking messages that will be sent by other systems.  So let me step back and explain the architecture.  A message bus is being built along with a central data repository that has a web service sitting on top of it.  So data from many disconnected system is being sent through the message bus then stored in a central repository via a web service to get a better view of data across the enterprise.

The testing challenge is mocking messages coming from these disconnected systems into the message hub, through the web service and into the database in an easy to use interface that the end user can leverage.  FIT works great for small input messages and small-large output messages.  This is the case for a simple retrieve or search operation.  The difficulty comes in when an input message has 700+ elements.  I’m building messages using input data from tables in FITnesse then sending them into the message bus.  As you could imagine 700+ elements is a big table and totally defeats the purpose of FIT which is to allow the end user to write system level tests.  This particular input message is calling a ‘save’ operation but the kicker is this is a one way operation so there is no response message to compare against and there is not a retrieve operation for what was just saved.  This may seem illogical but the information being saved is for aggregated view purposes using reports.  Where it is being saved is not the system of record so the sending system does not care what happens on the other end.  So to check if the massage saved correctly one has to go to the database and retrieve the information.  The input message is shredded into several tables so the SQL can get quite large.

As you can probably tell from the above I’m punting on FITnesse for this testing effort.  As much as I wanted the end user to be able to construct a message easily using FITnesse this particular case just does not work well with FITnesse.

The alternative is using pre-built message files that can be feed into the system, then interrogate the database for the expected values.  This will still be automated to a large extent but will not be as flexible as FITnesse.  I’m sure this idea will evolve over time and will lead to something pretty useful.

The good, the bad, but damn good looking

I just received a new Dell XPS M1330 today and here are my first impressions.

The Good:  Dell’s expected ship date was 3 weeks from now so I was very pleased that I received it five days after ordering it.  The laptop is small but seems somewhat heavy mostly because of the 9 cell battery.  The weight is not an issue to me but something worth noting. I opted for the default screen which I’m very pleased with thus far.  The display is crisp and clear and is easier on my eyes than the anti-glare screen on a Dell D820.  The remote is very nice when using the laptop with media center.  The internal hard drive (7200rpm 160GB SATA) is reasonably fast by not as fast as a 7200rpm 3.5inch SATA drive but this is to be expected from a 2.5inch drive.  The finish of this laptop is very good, it feels solid and has a good feel to the keyboard.  I opted for the finger print reader which is really nice since I don’t like typing in a ton a passwords.

The Bad:  The battery was the first thing I noticed.  I did not realize that the 9 cell battery would be sticking out the back end.  The battery ends up limiting movement of the screen to a near vertical position which I want if I’m using a stand with another monitor.  I would recommend going with one of the smaller battery options.  The second big beef I have with all Dell laptops right now is even if they are 64 bit Dell is shipping them with the 32 bit OS.  I did not find this out until after emailing with Dell.  This really pisses me off after getting 4GB of memory which will not all show up on a 32 bit OS.  The last thing I have to complain about is the HDMI output.  When I first saw this feature I thought it was a great idea provided it was actually used for what it was intended for; output for uncompressed digital video and audio signal.  Well Dell got it half right, it outputs a video signal but no audio.  Why the hell even have HDMI output!  Remove the VGA and HDMI output from the laptop and just have a DVI output if there is not going to be audio output from the HDMI.  I don’t know if the lack of audio output is a limitation of the hardware or the software but I hope it is the software/driver and it can be fixed soon.

I will post a followup after using this laptop for a few weeks.

I sure hope DevExpress does not keep releasing this often…

I have updated the references in CR_ClassCleaner to the latest DXCore release 2.5.1.

Very minor updates in this release of CR_ClassCleaner.

• Updated References for DXCore 2.5.0
• Removed unneeded references