This paper describes techniques that can be used to reduce the execution time and maintenance cost of the automated regression test suites that are used to drive development in eXtreme programming (XP). Developers are likely to write and run tests, thus getting valuable feedback, if testing is as painless as possible. Test execution time can be reduced by using an in-memory database to eliminate the latency introduced by accessing a disk-based database and/or file system. This paper also describes how the effort of test development can be reduced through the use of a framework that simplifies setup and teardown of text fixtures.

Authors: Shaun Smith and Gerard Meszaros (ClearStream Consulting Inc.)
Presented: XP 2001