Bitslapping contest : LX vs Compile on Test integration in VS2005, part 2 response

Dennis van der Stelt — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 04:49:59 GMT

Well, it seems Alex took things seriously and is slapping his bit-stick around. Thinks he can just slap me around and walk away with a smile, huh? Well, I'm not done with round 1 Alex.

Round 1

Reflector integration
Thank you for the point, Alex.
+1 Dennis
Code coverage
Alex should've checked out the tools I'm using before he wants to slap me around. When you just take a look at this animated gif, I don't need to explain myself any further. However, I will, just because I know Alex likes that slap in the face. Not sure if he likes 10 slaps though
1. Instrument any assembly? Of course NCover does that!
2. Watch code with color highlighting? NCoverExplorer does that as well!
3. Code coverage results? Ha! Alex, where are your status-bars? I can only see numbers. How about that quick-scan through hundreds of methods?
4. Oh, don't forget the code coverage reports based on number of visits? And coverage based on sequence points? And the satisfactory threshold you can set!
5. Alex, can you generate MSBuild and Nant scripts with the click of a button, so we can include these in our daily build scripts and create separate reports for those?
6. A feature I also love is that I can look at my code coverage in NCoverExplorer, while continue to develop in my favorite; not having to rerun my code coverage every time just saves me so much time.
7. Options are there to exclude assemblies, namespaces or classes from the report.
8. For all you complete junkies out there, NCoverExplorer supports regular expressions to create complex queries in the coverage exclusions dialog.
9. NCoverExplorer also supports saving in both XML and HTML, where the native html can be directly attached to e-mails to send to your colleagues, who just like to look at your great coverage report. Have I mentioned status-bars yet?
10. And last but not least, can I get VS2005 code coverage with Visual Studio Express?
  
  Oooh, I so love my NCover and NCoverExplorer.
  This cannot be anything else than a point for me.
  +1 Dennis
Repeat Test Run
Alex has got me there with his arbitrary set of tests.
+1 Alex
Test with .NET 1.1 from within Visual Studio 2005
+1 Dennis. No comments.
Pluggable unit testing frameworks
Irrelevant I think not. Mike Glaser did indeed mention Data Driven unit tests in Visual Studio 2005, and that's where MBUnit comes in, specialized in data driven unit tests. However, I'll accept no points as we both support data driven unit tests. I'll have to come up with a winner to get a point.
No points
TypeMock.NET integration
Irrelevant? Again I think not! How could you use unit testing without a mocking framework? This is part of my testing framework. Alex decided to not make it count, because Visual Studio 2005 doesn't support this or any other mocking framework. But because VS2005 doesn't support it, doesn't make it irrelevant.
But again, I'm not the worst guy in the world
No points

So the score isn't a tie now, it's 3 for me and 1 for Alex. However...

...Alex comes back with a part 2.

Round 2

Three frameworks for testing? If I can't bring along my mocking framework, you can't bring along your load testing. :-)
However, I can't beat his web testing framework. I could bring in NUnitAsp but that can't be compared with VS2005 web testing
+1 Alex
Attribute goodness
That's a matter of opinion on what attributes you like best. Of course I can guess why they brought in the timeout attribute; VS2005 unit testing is so slow, you don't want it to run forever. NUnit doesn't need a timeout attribute! :-) NUnit has Platform, Category, Explicit and other attributes I like far better than the VS2005 attributes Alex mentions.
No points
Integration with Team Foundation Server
Again the rule applies that this is about unit testing frameworks. You can't bend the rules that way Alex, we're not inside The Matrix.
No points

Still no tie. Alex (LX) has 2 points, I have 3. And the score would be even uglier if I wasn't that friendly the first round with bullets 5 and 6. Only because I was friendly. Again I say "However..."

Round 3

...I'll come back with a response. To be continued... :-)

Technorati tags: NUNit, NCover, NCoverExplorer, Visual studio 2005, unit testing

LLBLGen Pro 2 article

Dennis van der Stelt — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 00:26:00 GMT

Although I've written articles for magazines before, it had never crossed my mind to create an article about a technological subject. Because of the RAD Race held this year, the general editor of Software Release Magazine knew we had used LLBLGen Pro to help in our solution. So when version 2.0 was released of LLBLGen Pro, they asked us at Class-A to write an article about it. As I had just performed a review of several O/RM tools for a customer, it was most logical for me to write the article.

It turns out to be pretty hard writing an objective article about a tool. Because I didn't want to compare it to other mappers, I decided to write about how LLBLGen Pro works and about some of its coolest features. For example the designer that I haven't been able to discover in any other mapper. Besides the tool itself, I think support however is one of the most important aspects in choosing a tool like an O/R Mapper. And compared to others, it's my opinion LLBLGen Pro has the best support available. Other (not to be named) popular mappers have support, but you'll either have to pay big money for it (without knowing how good the support will be), or depend on one person to answer all your questions on the tool's forum. LLBLGen Pro on the other hand has a very active forum with a support-team and other users that answer questions pretty quick. And knowing Frans (founder of the tool) personally has helped me out on occasion as well. ;-)

Unfortunately the article isn't available online and in Dutch. For our Dutch reviewers, we hope to put the article online at some time on our company's website. When that'll happen, I'll inform you via my weblog. Here's a snippet from the magazine, as I suspect it won't stay online for more than a month.

Object-Relational Mapping in de .NET-wereld
Dennis van der Stelt
Een keuze maken tussen de vele O/R Mappers beschikbaar in de .NET wereld is niet eenvoudig. Als kennisprovider heeft Class-A daarom onlangs een onderzoek gedaan naar verschillende O/R Mappers. Hoewel niet voor elke project dezelfde keuze gemaakt kan worden, sprong één O/R Mapper tussen de andere uit: LLBLGen Pro 2.

Dennis van der Stelt : Development, Utilities, Personal

Bitslapping contest : LX vs Compile on Test integration in VS2005, part 2 response

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

LLBLGen Pro 2 article