Building Microservices

Chapter 7. Testing

The world of automated testing has advanced significantly since I first started writing code, and every month there seems to be some new tool or technique to make it even better. But challenges remain as how to effectively and efficiently test our functionality when it spans a distributed system. This chapter breaks down the problems associated with testing finer-grained systems and presents some solutions to help you make sure you can release your new functionality with confidence.

Testing covers a lot of ground. Even when we are just talking about automated tests, there are a large number to consider. With microservices, we have added another level of complexity. Understanding what different types of tests we can run is important to help us balance the sometimes-opposing forces of getting our software into production as quickly as possible versus making sure our software is of sufficient quality.

Types of Tests

As a consultant, I like pulling out the odd quadrant as a way of categorizing the world, and I was starting to worry this book wouldn’t have one. Luckily, Brian Marick came up with a fantastic categorization system for tests that fits right in. Figure 7-1 shows a variation of Marick’s quadrant from Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory’s book Agile Testing (Addison-Wesley) that helps categorize the different types of tests.

Figure 7-1. Brian Marick’s testing ...