The test framework

When you’re testing your database code with DbFit, you’re actually using the FitNesse test framework to the edit and run your tests. The following pages give a good overview of FitNesse:

• A two-minute example
• Editing and creating pages in FitNesse
• Getting test tables onto the page
• The FitNesse wiki markup language reference
• The FitNesse cheat sheet

Test execution

Test results and cell outcomes

When a test is run, FitNesse prints out a result summary. Here’s an example:

Assertions: 5 right, 1 wrong, 0 ignored, 0 exceptions (0.004 seconds)

The test runner calculates this summary by summing the number of table cells that passed, failed and threw exceptions. Any cell in the different DbFit tables could potentially have any one of these outcomes. The general convention is:

• cells comparing expected results against database resultsets will either be matching (right = green colour) or non-matching (wrong = red colour)
• cells that cause database exceptions will show the exception (and be coloured yellow)
• the other cells generally don’t affect the results (they remain a white colour)

When a failure occurs

If a cell fails:

• the test runner doesn’t stop - it will continue executing the remaining tables in the test, and the remaining tests in the suite
• there will be at least one failure in the result summary
• the test will be marked as failed in the suite summary

Framework misconfiguration (eg missing fixture files, missing driver libraries) or keyword typos manifest themselves as exceptions.