FitNesse Testing

on Thursday 25 May 2006
I took my first look at a new testing framework called FitNesse. It certainly looks interesting. It's like a combination of natural language requirements specification, wiki documentation, a testing tool, a web server, and a collaboration tool. Tests are actually conducted on the wiki pages themselves, with test results being produced as page updates.

This is not meant as a replacement for unit testing strategies (xUnit). In fact, they're meant to work together; unit testing for checking that the code has been built correctly, and fitnesse testing to ensure that the correct code has been built.

It's also a collaboration tool because the tests are not only created by the developers, but the testers, managers, support staff, and users as well; to ensure that the requirement is interpreted exactly as it was meant to be. This means those who write requirements can actually produce something the developers can use as measurable targets, as opposed to natural language specifications. Tests can be produced much earlier as well.

Should be interesting to see how it all goes when I dig in deep later on.

EDIT: Testing is about specification, not verification.

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