Category: Editorial

Test Coverage

I’ve never had to work full time in a QA group, but I have had to perform software testing of an application and it wasn’t fun. Even as I worked through the various features, looking for edge cases, common mistakes, etc., I realized that running tests was something that really required more discipline and process than I was giving it at the time. Too often I ‘d realize that my regressions weren’t 100% duplicates of previous executions because I’d allowed too much “human effort” into my process.

These days most testing of software is automated. I know QA groups still exist, and they need to handle some of the manual checks that are very hard to automate. However more and more testing is being pushed back onto developers to handle, with frameworks like NUnit and JUnit. In the database world, we haven’t done a great job of including testing into the code we write, but there’s a great testing framework we can use.

TSQLT is a framework written by Sebastian Meine and Dennis Lloyd and it’s free. It’s been developed to help you write tests that can exercise your T-SQL code to determine if it’s doing what you expect. I’ve used it a little, and while I see the potential, I also realize that this will take some practice to learn how to more easily write tests that can cover the various potential places where bugs can be introduced.

However, if you use version control, and you should, then you can easily spread the load of writing tests to all of your developers. Since the tests are stored procedures, they can be included in your VCS project and shared by all your developers. With a little effort from each member of your team, you might be surprised at the code coverage you can achieve with this framework.

Testing is important, as we see over and over again as software is released and doesn’t work as expected. I think much of that is our fault, as software developers, for not improving our testing skills and discipline.

Steve Jones

If you want more automated ways to easily share tests between developers and execute them, take a look at SQL Source Control and SQL Test from Red Gate Software.

Video and Audio versions

Today’s podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

Follow Steve Jones on Twitter to find links and database related items and announcements.

Windows Media Video ( 20.9MB)

MP4 iPod Video ( 24.8MB)

MP3 Audio ( 4.9MB)

Feeds are available at iTunes and Mevio

To submit an article, rant or editorial,
log in to the Contribution Center

November 12, 2013

Cyberwar

There are no shortage of books about cyberattacks and hackers. Some of these fictional stories even postulate that countries will build armies and engage in digital war with other countries. Some of this has come true, with the US and Israel attacking Iranian targets, suspected Chinese hackers targeting the US, and the announcement that Britain is building their own cyber army.

While there are certainly no shortage of attacks made on corporations every day, how long before countries make determined efforts to disrupt their enemies’ economies with digital war? It’s a scary thought, and given the poor security habits of so many developers, it’s possible that many companies might find themselves struggling to conduct businesses while under attack. It might not be any different than if conventional weapons were being used near our facilities.

The state of coding by so many “developers” today is somewhat scary. It’s not even old applications that are vulnerable to SQL Injection, but even new systems that have poor security practices being used that are vulnerable.

I think that secure coding practices like these should be implemented by anyone writing software. I think examples, frameworks, and presentations about coding shouldn’t use simple passwords and bypass checks. Yes, it’s a pain for those that teach, but it also means that shoddy coding practices aren’t proliferated as people borrow your code and alter your examples.

Security is a problem, but I think a lot of the issues would be minimized if we, as an industry and professionals, learned to write more secure code as a matter of habit, not as an additional feature to be added later.

Steve Jones

Video and Audio versions

Today’s podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

Follow Steve Jones on Twitter to find links and database related items and announcements.

Windows Media Video ( 17.0MB)

MP4 iPod Video ( 19.9MB)

MP3 Audio ( 4.1MB)

Feeds are available at iTunes and Mevio

To submit an article, rant or editorial,
log in to the Contribution Center

November 11, 2013

What Do You Want to Learn?

This is a busy time of year for me. Between September and October, I’ve attended 11 events in 7 cities and given 23 talks on 8 topics. It’s been a hectic time and I’m looking forward to snow falling in the Colorado mountains and taking some time off to relax and enjoy life away from work.

It seems that every year I’m working on and delivering 3 or 4 new sessions on a variety of topics. I find the challenge of learning more about a technology or feature of SQL Server to be exciting, and it seems there’s no shortage of new things I’d like to learn. As I watch different presentations, I find myself itching to work with the topic and learn how it might be useful for me. I often end up taking some area of SQL Server that interests me, and I think will interest other, and building a talk.

However I rarely hear from the rest of the community about the topics they’d like to learn about. This week I’d like you to think about the topics that you wish someone would present at your next user group, SQL Saturday, or conference:

What do you want to learn?

Let me know this week. I don’t know that I’ll tackle many of the ideas, but I’m sure there are speakers out there that will examine your opinions and consider building a presentation that might be in demand.

Steve Jones

Video and Audio versions

Today’s podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

Follow Steve Jones on Twitter to find links and database related items and announcements.

Windows Media Video ( 13.4MB)

MP4 iPod Video ( 15.7MB)

MP3 Audio ( 3.3MB)

Feeds are available at iTunes and Mevio

To submit an article, rant or editorial,
log in to the Contribution Center

November 8, 2013

Effectiveness

I saw a great quote recently on an internal email at Red Gate. We had deployed a new feature to a website, the application seemed to be working, but someone questioned the architecture of the implementation. The person that was in charge of the project sent this back at the end of an explanation:

“It’s a little clunky, but we decided it was better to get it done than make it perfect.”

That’s a great quote. In fact, that’s what I’ve aimed for in most of my career. Move things forward, get them done in an effective manner. That’s what I’ve tried to do as long as I’ve been in technology. Examine a problem, consider various solutions, and then choose one to move forward with. At the end of the day, as has been said by many people, “shipping is a feature“.

This doesn’t mean giving up on quality or accepting anything, but it does mean that you continue to move forward. You may make compromises on code quality, but small compromises. Your code has to still solve the problem. Your database still has to handle the load. You still need quality work, but a solution you can get done quickly that performs 10% worse may be better than a faster solution that takes twice as long to develop.

Lots of code lives in systems for years. We want this code to be “good” in that it needs to work, handle the load, and contain few bugs. However lots of code also gets refactored over time. We should minimize bad code as much as possible, but less than perfect code isn’t bad. Sometimes it’s just a little clunky, but it gets the job done.

Steve Jones

Video and Audio versions

Today’s podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

Follow Steve Jones on Twitter to find links and database related items and announcements.

Windows Media Video ( 14.7MB)

MP4 iPod Video ( 17.2MB)

MP3 Audio ( 3.6MB)

Feeds are available at iTunes and Mevio

To submit an article, rant or editorial,
log in to the Contribution Center

November 7, 2013