Java Testing and Design: From Unit Testing to Automated Web Tests Review

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(More customer reviews)I recently received a review copy of Java Testing And Design - From Unit Testing To Automated Web Tests by Frank Cohen (Prentice Hall). While there is some good information to be gleaned from the book, there were a few things that got in the way.
The chapter layout: The Forces at Work Affecting Your Web-Enabled Software; When Application Performance Becomes A Problem; Modeling Tests; Java Development and Test Automation Tools; Bridging from Methodology to Design; Design and Test in HTTP/HTML Environments; Tuning SOAP and XML Web Services; State, Design, and Testing; Integrating with .NET Web Services; Building and Testing Intranets and Secure Environments; A Web Application Framework from Construction to Test; Turning Test Agent Results into Actionable Knowledge; Concurrency and Scalability in a High-Volume Datacenter; Making the Right Choices for SOAP Scalability; Multiprotocol Testing in an Email Environment; Index
When I first requested the book, I was thinking it would help me to understand how to adequately test my Java programs using software like JUnit and such. Throw in some methodology and best practices, and I was ready to go. To be fair, the author does cover the topics of testing quite throughly, and especially testing of web-based HTTP applications. If you're not looking for software how-to or detailed discussion of many different products, then you'll benefit from the book.
Where I had problems is that most of the technical parts of the book involve showing the reader how to use an open source package that he wrote called TestMaker by PushToTest. There is, in my view, too much "using the software that we wrote" material. All the code uses JavaDoc comments that show the particular PushToTest developer who wrote the code. Before too long, I felt as if I was in a 500 page infomercial for TestMaker. The software might well be excellent, but I felt somewhat lead astray in that I felt as if I was being pushed towards TestMaker rather than towards a variety of tools that one could use. I would have felt better about the whole thing had the title been "Java Testing And Design Using TestMaker".

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This is a supremely useful book for software developers working on Java and J2EE-based Web-enabled applications, including Web Services. Frank Cohen is the "go-to" guy for enterprises needing to design, build, and test complex information systems. The author helps you go beyond learning the language to understand how design choices impact scalability, functionality, and performance. Your application might run perfectly in the lab, but it crashes in production. Or, you might already know Java, but you don't understand why your application runs so slowly. If that is the case, then this book will help you better understand your application and optimize it for maximum performance.

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