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Automated testing

February 12, 2013

Introduction

Automated tests are an integral part of any modern application: they allow to minify expenses of support, refactoring and development, leaving more resources to the new features development, to add new developers into the stack faster, and to create robust software products. By itself, as automated tests are nothing more than a code used to automate manual actions, they must consist of a clean good readable code. This means that all of the good coding practices are relevant for the automated tests as well, and sometimes are even more important in the test code than in production code. In particular, good tests are:

  • Maintainable
  • Readable
  • Have single responsibility (i.e. testing only a single business rule)
  • Isolated
  • Deterministic

Legacy and complex web applications can be a real challenge for software development teams. With a large codebase and a long history of changes and additions, it can be difficult to ensure the quality and reliability of these applications. That’s why automated testing is so important for these types of applications.

In this blog post, we’ll explore why automated testing is critical for legacy and complex web applications and how it can help you overcome the challenges that come with these types of applications.

  1. Maintaining Quality: With a large and complex codebase, it can be difficult to maintain the quality of a legacy web application. Automated tests can help you ensure that new changes and additions to the codebase don’t introduce new bugs or break existing functionality. By automatically testing your application after every change, you can catch issues early and prevent them from becoming bigger problems down the line.

  2. Improved Reliability: Legacy and complex web applications often have a long history of changes and additions, which can lead to a complex and fragile codebase. Automated tests can help you ensure that your application remains reliable, even as you make changes to the code. By automatically testing the application after every change, you can catch any issues before they have a chance to cause problems.

  3. Speed and Efficiency: Manually testing a large and complex web application can be a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. Automated testing can help you speed up the testing process and be more efficient, allowing you to test more of your application in less time. With automated testing, you can test your application more thoroughly and more often, increasing the chances of catching issues early.

  4. Consistency: Legacy and complex web applications often have a large number of interdependent components. Automated tests can help you ensure that changes to one part of the application don’t have unintended consequences for other parts of the application. By automatically testing the application after every change, you can catch any issues before they have a chance to cause problems.

  5. Regression Testing: Regression testing is an important part of ensuring the quality and reliability of a legacy or complex web application. Automated tests can help you perform regression testing more efficiently and effectively, ensuring that changes to the code don’t break existing functionality.

In conclusion, automated testing is critical for legacy and complex web applications. With its ability to maintain quality, improve reliability, speed up the testing process, ensure consistency, and perform regression testing, automated testing can help you overcome the challenges of these types of applications and ensure that your application is of the highest quality. So if you’re working with a legacy or complex web application, make sure to include automated testing as part of your development process.