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I use my last article about Continuous Integration as an opportunity to introduce you another XP (eXtreme Programming) practice: Test-driven Development. Actually, CI is often intricately linked with the practice of TDD. To know more about XP, click on the logo below.

Testing is a critical part of good software development. Test-driven development also known as Test-first development (TFD), is a technique, associated with XP and Agile Programming methods, in which unit test cases are incrementally written prior to code implementation. Unit testing and selected aspects of Test-driven development can be used to improve learning and encourage emphasis on quality and correctness. Most users of Test-driven development use automated testing tools to facilitate code review and to encourage frequent and thorough regression testing throughout the development. These tools, such as JUnit, are very popular.

Two years ago, the main subject of my last-year project was TDD. I have decided to share with you the report I wrote. It presents an analysis of the TDD method, but not only in general, it focuses also on using TDD with the Enterprise JavaBeans specification (EJB).

The EJB specification is one of several Java APIs in the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition. EJB is a server-side component architecture that encapsulates the business logic of an application. This technology is relatively new and complex. One of the biggest issues is that testability has not been taken in consideration, at least not until EJB version 3.0.

TDD in a few words

First, we imagine and write a test (a failing test because no code has been written yet). Then, we write the code in order to pass the test (just the code needed, no more!). Finally, we find the best possible design for what we have (code refactoring) and ensure that the test is still passing.

Usually, developers design, code and, at the end, they test. The reversion between the first and last steps is disconcerting but that does not mean this is a bad thing… You can read my report to learn more.