Review: DevPartner Fault Simulator
DevPartner Fault Simulator 1.0
$6,000 per concurrent user
Compuware
Detroit, Michigan
(313)227-7300
www.compuware.com
Exceptions are, by definition, exceptional. In .NET applications, exception
handlers provide the code that will respond to unusual events: things like files
not being found, the system running out of memory, or the user lacking the
proper security token. But how do you test this part of your application? It's
relatively easy to try to open a nonexistent file, but testing a handler for
network errors is something else again.
Compuware's new DevPartner Fault Simulator provides an elegant and
comprehensive solution for testing all of the error-handling in a .NET
application. The basic idea is simple: instead of waiting around for something
to go wrong, Fault Simulator lets you deliberately tell your .NET code that
something is wrong, and then watches to see how (or whether) the fault is
handled. All of this is done with Compuware's usual attention to detail.
Fault Simulator runs three different ways. There's a Visual Studio Add-In
that's useful when you're working as a developer and want to test and tune your
code. There's a standalone GUI version that QA folks will appreciate; it can
inject faults into a running program (and it can use sets of faults saved from
the add-in as a starting point). Finally, there's a command-line version suited
for automated batch processes, such as testing nightly builds.
When choosing to inject a new fault, you can choose between .NET and
environmental problems. On the .NET side, Fault Simulator covers the most common
namespaces and classes, including System.Data, System.XML, and System.Net. On
the environmental side, you can simulate problems with COM, disk I/O, memory,
the network, or the Registry. This lets you cover a wide range of faults, both
inside and outside of the .NET Framework, that can affect your code.
After specifying the faults you want, you run the application and Fault
Simulator keeps an eye on things. For each fault, you can see exactly what went
wrong and where it was handled. You can drill into the call stack each time
there is a fault, see which handlers were active, and tell which ones passed on
the fault. You can also browse right into the source code that handled the fault
to confirm what went on.
Overall, Fault Simulator looks to be an extremely useful addition to the
arsenal of .NET testing tools. It shows the promise of testing a lot of code
that normally we just take for granted - and we all know how dangerous it is to
ship untested code. If this sounds interesting, you can request a 14-day
evaluation from the Compuware Web site.