In my previous post I have described the conceptual differences between UTPLSQL and ruby-plsql frameworks for unit testing of Oracle database code. I have used a message_api package and unit tests for that API using both frameworks as an example. In this post I will focus on getting the tests to run and the feedback that we can we get from the tests using both frameworks.
Unit Testing is around for quite a while. Since it started to become more and more popular, quite a few tools became available for Oracle database to allow unit testing of the database. There are the UI based tools like Quest Code Tester (now Dell Code Tester for Oracle), Oracle SQL Developer unit testing. There is DBFit by Goyko Adzic for regression and functional testing of databases (including but not limited to Oracle), there are probably many more of that kind, that I'm not aware of. There are also pure programming language based frameworks like UTPLSQL and ruby-plsql. There are probably (and hopefully) many more of that sort that I'm not aware of. Unit tests are meant to be created and maintained by software developers and are to help developers keep their code clean and valid throughout entire project life cycle. UI based frameworks for unit testing are putting a high abstraction and tight facade between the code and the developer. Those frameworks tend to limit the richness and variety of possible implementations for a test case and therefore are not suited for software developers. The time and cost of development and maintenance for UI-based unit tests is usually way beyond the benefits. Variety of program units that are possible to develop is infinite and the only limitations to what the unit can do are the programming language boundaries and developers creativity. For this reason itself, it is best to use a programming language of similar or higher flexibility to describe and test the behaviour for a unit. In this series of article I will focus on two programming language-based unit testing frameworks for Oralce, that I got familiar with and had opportunity to use.
Last week I revealed the numbers standing behind the overhead of calling a Pl/SQL function from within an SQL statement. I've left two questions open: - Is it always a performance issue, when you call a PL/SQL function from a SQL statement? - What can be done to maintain the function encapsulation (have the code DRY) and keep high performance?
When writing a PL/SQL code, I usually use following strategy:
There are however some situations, when I tend to break the rule, and this is due to performance.