Overview

Open Source testing tools are being used aggressively and there are many tools over the web for Java Applications. These tools are great asset to the development teams and provides many features / services over the quality of applications under development. We can use this as the starting point and focus more efforts on the uncovered areas for better quality.

It’s very important to know the context of development and the right tools for quick benefits. However, heavy usages of these tools lead to misleading data and metrics too. So think twice on what is required for the project and which tools might provide the required data / services.

Services Offered

The following services / features are offered from most of the open source tools

• Continuous Integration for the builds
• Unit Testing
• Code Coverage
• Source Code Metrics (like size, Complexity, design, dependency)
• Static Analysis for various bug patterns
• Test Automation
• Performance Testing

List of Open Source Tools

• Functional Testing
• Unit Testing
• Performance Testing
• Test Management
• Security testing
• Bug databases
• Link Checkers
• Open Source Testing Tools from Java Source
• Web Testing Tools

Quick Benefits from Static Analysis

It’s very easy to integrate static analysis tool(s) with builds and there quick benefits. The following issues can be uncovered

• Null Pointer Exceptions
• Other un handled exceptions
• Infinite Loops
• Dead code
• Compliance with Java Coding standards
• Code Coverage data
• Trends  / history on the above checks against previous builds
• Validations against Java coding guidelines from Sun

The following Metrics can be captured

• Source Code Metrics
• Coverage Metrics
• Dependencies with the Design
• Code complexity metrics

The Resources listed below helps in implementing the same.

• Series of articles listed under In Pursuit of Code Quality from IBM Developer works
• Discussion Forum on Improve Your Java Code Quality from IBM Developer works

I have been talking about Code Quality through Static Analysis for a while here, here & here. The quality for any application development must begin from it’s gross roots and the Application Code is one of it’s starting point to begin with.Static Analysis techniques help us to identify some metrics over the application code base

• Cyclomatic Complexity
• Application Design & Dependency Metrics
• Exception Handling
• Infinite Loops
• Dead Code
• Performance Issues
• Programming Language guidelines & best practices in their context

The above information will be useful and it’s easy to get the same via Test Framework with a single click.

Code Coverage along with a bunch of unit tests is one widely used technique to help regression testing for the dev & test teams.

Now it’s good to see that Agitar combines Code Coverage & Cyclomatic Complexity to derive risk metrics for Java Code Base. They call it as a code Change Risk Analyzer and Predictor (i.e. CRAP) for Java.

Though it’s a prototype and see how the industry receives the same, i see it as a good initiative on the code quality front and might be a metric going forward for white box testing.

Some useful links for CRAP4J

• Introducing CRAP4J
  
• The Code C.R.A.P. Metric Hits the Fan – Introducing the crap4j Plug-in
• Junit Factory’s Code C.R.A.P metric

Update on Oct 23rd

Now we have a dedicated site for CRAP4J. This contains latest news, forum discussions and many more. I would say that this a good resource for Code Quality lovers & the good news is that they are designed to be open source tools.

Crap4j is a Java implementation of the CRAP (Change Risk Analysis and Predictions) software metric – a mildly offensive metric name to help protect you from truly offensive code.

The CRAP metric combines cyclomatic complexity and code coverage from automated tests (e.g. JUnit tests) to help you identify code that might be particularly difficult to understand, test, or maintain – the kind of code that makes developers say: “This is crap!” or, if they are stuck maintaining it, “Oh, crap!”.

The best way to learn more about CRAP and Crap4j is to check the various articles, newsgroups and blogs about them.

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