Writing the Fitnesse posts turned to be harder than I thought.
I do have a bit of tests ready for the triangle case, but not enough text to make an interesting post. As I’m not using Fitnesse in my day-to-day work, it makes it harder to bring cool insights or to explore on the framework.

But I just discovered someone who not only uses Fitnesse at work, but also writes articles about Fitnesse that give the Fitnese feeling:

Stuart writes at http://working-thought.blogspot.com/.
It seems as if his company has been trying Fitnesse for a while, and they’re over the initial pains. Now they’re on more advanced pains , but with apparently good results.

If you ‘ve already seen the Two Minute Example at the Fitnesse page, then you know what Fitnesse if used for.
Then start reading from “Fitnesse for Dummies” at Stuart’s blog (and laugh at the ilarious GenericFixture.jar error page). There are further posts later, like the very insightful love/hate relationship with Fitnesse.

As for me, the post I liked most was the one about test automations, that has nothing to do with Fitnesse, but explains well many of the web-app testing tasks.

I wish luck to Stuart, and who knows? Maybe I’ll get back at posting about Fitnesse somewhen.

In 1979 (yes, I am that young ), Glenford J. Myers wrote what was to be the first classic book on Software Testing.
Called “The Art of Software Testing“, this book is very old, and written with old software in mind – most technologies and methodologies existing today were not dreamed of back then.
Well, it turns out the principles of software – from writing it to testing it - are still pretty much the same. Software is still written on sort of punchcards, the punchcards just got more complex and flexible… The book content is surprisingly relevant for today’s testers – so much, that it was updated only once in almost 30 years.
If you haven’t, read the book. Unfortunately, I have read it only partially meanwhile.

Maybe the most known contribution of Mr. Glenford in this book is the testing self-assessment challenge in the introduction.

It goes like this:

A Software is given, which receives three inputs (numbers) that define the size of a triangle’s sides. The SW can, then, categorize the triangle in one of these categories: Equilateral, Scalene, Isosceles or Invalid.
How many test cases can you build for testing this triangle?
The more heterogeneous the cases the better, and: The more effective, better yet.

Myers brings then an assessment criteria. If the test cases you came up fit into enough categories such as the ones below, you are in a good way:

• Test cases that represents a valid scalene/isosceles/equilateral triangle.
• Test cases that represent valid isosceles triangles such that there are all three permutations of two equal sides.
• Test cases in which one side has a zero value, or negative value.
• Test cases that represent invalid triangles.
• … 

The example is famous, because it grasps clearly the distance between coding and testing. Writing such a program may take about 30 minutes of work to a programmer (I did this first version in 20 minutes), but testing the program can be a never-ending task.

We will use this problem as the example to do all the acceptance tests from FitNesse.

We’ll have this DLL – based on the C# code above – and we will connect this to our FitNesse server. We will then start checking inputs and outputs. All this in Part 2 of the FitNesse Series!

1. Google Search – “software testing triangle equilateral”
   http://www.google.com/search?q=%22software+testing%22+triangle+equilateral
   You’ll find most of what’s online and cool here.
2. Example with working application (!) for you to test:
   http://www.testobsessed.com/2007/03/21/testing-triangles-a-classic-exercise-updated-for-the-web/
   Quality Tree Software’s Elisabeth brought the triangle to the   attention of all again when she posted it on her website.
   The working example by Elisabeth: http://www.testobsessed.com/exercises/triangle.html
3. Challenge Definition by Alex Samurin
   http://www.geocities.com/xtremetesting/TriangleTest.html
   Alex has a short explanation of the original problem as it was presented by Myers.
4. Malik’s Code Inspections
   http://codeinspections.blogspot.com/
   Malik summarizes in two paragraphs the two most interesting points on the abovementioned application by Elisabeth: Floating point calculations and sorting algorithms.
5. The exercise, Bollywood style
   http://venkatreddyc.wordpress.com/2007/03/24/taking-on-testing-triangles-a-classic-excercise/
   Venkat has written some insights (in a dramatic voice) on the triangle javascript app. I recommend this one, because the pace and steps are very didactic.
6. Last but not least :
   My post on it: A Triangle mystery (not the Bermudas’). I turned this post into a page/article, ’cause it is a useful subject.
   Pay attention, I am not trying to really test the triangle application. This is new stuff – we are using the triangles to test the FitNesse framework! Go for it!

I’ll (as soon as I get to do a lot of things I want to get done) post some impressions and examples on FitNesse, the cool tool for cool testers.

What I plan to do:

1. Install and set a FitNesse setup;
2. Make a simple standard easy program – the System Under Test!
3. Start testing and making the program better with FitNesse.
4. And all this, with screenshot goodness!

When will that be?

• Ouch. It may take a long time. Let’s talk about this again on July…

Meanwhile: “FitNesse is designed to support acceptance testing rather than unit testing in that it facilitates detailed readable description of system function”. More information can be read in FitNesse’s website.