The Benefits Of IBM I Series Unit Testing As Efficient

By Daniel Stone


There is no such thing as a perfect code. When it comes to software programming bugs are bound to be plenty during the development stage. Leave the clean up to quality assurance before alpha and beta release. With no proper work flow and organization during development stage, the process of development is going to take longer.

IBM is a widely known company that works with operating systems such us MS 2000 and Linux, among many of the other OS that use it. The I series compiles languages such as Pascal, c, assembly and more. IBM I series unit testing is basically used for I series apps. The testing method can vary depending on the developers working on the software.

Unit testing is a method where a code is written to test the functionality of every working module in the overall software. Every time a module is released in the repository, test is also released and the fragment is assured to work. The unit tests also area part of version control so the other programmers and tester to test the features by themselves and more importantly, documentation.

This method ensures that flaws are discovered on the code early. This is at a stage before the module is even pushed into the repository and before it reaches the final testers and the client. This is essentially test driven development. As the number of working fragments are added to the whole software, this way of exercising the code ensures that continuous integrity of the system.

This is a precaution to future add on features to the application. Looking at the bigger picture, it saves developers more time and money from debugging and revising the source code in case of post beta test errors. Putting these additional features will not have a domino effect of logical errors on the already existing functions.

This method protects the program time wise. Once a unit test is written, and tested on the said code, it is guaranteed that the fragment works, even in the future. It also protects the gradual integration of the system since when a test is written, it can be guaranteed that an error in one module is not caused by a different module with a separate feature.

In software development, the more code is added to the repository, the more difficult it is to find the faulty piece of programming if something crashes. This is not the case with unit testing. This results to other developers being reluctant to add in the program already written in fear that if they added to the repository it might destroy everything.

There are cases when clients ask for quick fixes. With the fear of adding more modules, or removing them from the whole, it becomes easier for developers to deploy the fixes. There are no side effects that can cause the program to crash because the results are already tested without the need of predicting the logical errors that may occur.

Many programmers will argue that while there are many benefits to this method, it is too time consuming to be worth it. It makes sense that precautionary measures are already established. The client is more likely to ask for additional functions and edits and this makes unit testing an indispensable process.




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