Monthly Archives: March 2011

Lightweight application development – the server side java symposium

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This session is a live demo of developing an app quickly. Kind of like the Ruby on Rails “see i can develop an app in 15 minutes so long as it fits my extremely fitting scenario”. It was an informative and humorous/domain specific (casino) example. And I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t trivialize the amount of work required. It was obviously a hello world type example and not intended you have a complete application in an hour. And the humor made it a great way to end the day.

The demo uses NetBeans because the speaker doesn’t want to install plugins, jab at Eclipse.

Since this was largely demo, comments are light, but here are some points:

  • Recommends using CDI instead of managed beans
  • Noted larger projects take a few seconds to rebuild/redeploy via maven
  • The interceptors and beans look so much like Spring and just as easy. I[ don’t see why you would switch back to ejb and know oracle plans to stay behind the curve]
  • Have a bean.xml even if empty so server doesn’t need to scan the whole project, just the cdi jars
  • I like that he included a custom annotation
  • In jee, an ejb can be a restful service

    • Avoids interfaces, only uses when really variation [what about testing?]

The speaker feels you should use Spring with an older JEE technology, but not JEE 6 because redundant. [you would still be deploying to jee 6 even if you aren’t using it though]

Live from TSSJS – Testing in the Cloud with Andrew

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This afternoon I’m live blogging from TheServerSide Symposium, attending “Breaking all the Rules:  The Myth of Testing and Deployment in the Cloud” presented by fellow CodeRanch Andrew Monkhouse.

1.  CodeRanch History
Andrew opens his talk with a discussion of CodeRanch performance, traffic, and memory usage.  He mentions there have been serious issues in the past that haven’t temporarily brought the performance of the website down to a crawl.  CodeRanch uses a fork of JForum (2008) and staffs around 20 developers among 150 moderators, all volunteer participants, to build a custom community-based forum.

CodeRanch developers use a number of test strategies including smoke tests, load tests, and stress test.

2. Redeploying in the Cloud
The focus of Andrew’s presentation will be to demonstrate how CodeRanch would function in the cloud.  He has allocated a “small EC2 instance” (1.7GB memory, 1 compute unit, moderate I/O performance) within Amazon’s cloud that is useful for quick set up, but extremely small for practical use and reliable testing.

3. Benefits of the Cloud
The cloud provides a relatively clean environment in which it is ‘cheap’ to add extra servers, at least compared to running a local test server which may be allocated for additional processes.  Also, tests can run by anyone, anywhere, which is great for a distributed developer team, since Amazon allows you to assign rights to additional users.

You can easily create, set up, and desotry Amazon Machine Images (AMI), so you do not need to get it right the first time.  Lots of backup storage options, depending on your needs.

4.  Dangers of the Cloud
Testing in the Cloud can be difficult.  First off, it is hard to get absolute numbers because of the nature of the underlying change in hardware happening within the cloud.  Second, calibrating results is difficult.  Also, developers have to remember to shut down servers after they are down with them else other developers will run out of resources.  Finally, network traffic does cost money so testing can be expensive, although hardware is cheaper in cloud.

5.  Test Setup
The performance tests were set up into 3 servers, in part because it turned out to be cost effective to set it up this way based on the individual server options.

  • Application Server running CodeRanch
  • Database Server
  • JMeter Test Server

JMeter was used at the testing suite software given its large variety of features, options, and plugins.

6.  Test Analysis
Andrew discussed some items to keep in mind when testing the server and understanding the results:

  • It is quite possible for the Test Server to have greater load than the Application server, so be sure to monitor all your servers!
  • Try different graphs, they may tell you different things
  • JMeter plugins are your friend, they will help you identify problems with your application server and/or test set up.
  • Don’t forget about ramp up times

7.  Where do we go from here?
Automated weekly performance tests using the latest code base.  Add more stress tests.  Andrew comments there are no plans to move the CodeRanch to the cloud at this time given that we require full-time administrators since we don’t have a dedicated, paid team of administrators.

Conclusion
Andrew presents a compelling argument why you should be testing your applications within the cloud.  It provides a sanitary environment in which to perform a large variety of tests across multiuple servers.  I’ve heard arguments of moving application servers to the cloud, but this is the first time I’ve heard it suggested to migrate all automated testing to the cloud.

Testing java ee applications – the server side java symposium

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This session was also fast moving and information filled, but it didn’t feel as overwhelming as the Spring session. The presenter included demos of some of the technologies.  He did use the term “unit test” for things that test through the web and database. I would rather these be called integration/functional tests. I wish the testing industry would use one set of definitions. I subscribe to the one where a unit test doesn’t involve the database or the server

Servlet layer

  • Junit – need to build on
  • httpunit – higher level api on http level – the demo shows creating requests and responses using the java api. This technology is preferred over htmlunit because you are usually not generating raw html if you are using a servlet.  [you should be using MVC]
  • htmlunit – higher level api on html level
  • Cactus – in container tests, good for functional testing
  • Selenium – can be used for acceptance testing by users, no coding required
  • Servletunit gives you a simulated container or can mock the request/response objects for simple cases

JSF

  • Jsf 2 project stages help for debugging and testing. This helps because you can easily specify different web.xml settings.
  • Selenium – for simple cases
  • jsfunit – uses cactus, junit, httpnit and htmlunit behind the scenes

Tip: define ids in your jsf tags so not randomly generated. That way you can refer to them

CDI/EJB 3.1

  • Arquillian – lets you say you do not want your whole aoo to be deployed. You use @RunAs(Arquillian.class). Then you can createDeployment() with the classes you want deployed. the ShrinkWrap API lets you add specific classes which lets you test one EJB or injected element.  The demo used embedded glassfish as specified by a Maven profile.  Also lets you inject into the unit test
  • Apace myfaces codi testing is a competing choice
  • For simple cases mock objects are sufficient, not testing production environment [that is why you test logic in unit tests and environment in integration tests which are in container]
  • @RunWith(ResinBeanContainerRunner) starts a very light container. Only supports CDI and EJB 3.1 lite

JPA

  • Embedded database – derby, hsql, java db
  • Embedded container like arquillian
  • Dbunit – helps with data consistency [and setup]
  • ejb3junit, mocks or pure junit again works for simple cases

Web Services

  • Soapui – good for complex cases with either SOAP or REST. Same level as Selenium
  • Can use junit and arquillian if want test to be self contained
  • Can use jersey test framework