Better Faster Lighter Java [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

9.3 Planning for Development

Once the requirements are
clearly understood, the next step is
to plan for development. Java is going to be our implementation
technology because it easily provides both interfaces in our
requirements (console and web service), has robust networking
capabilities, and allows access to a variety of open source tools
that might be useful for our project.

The principles of simplicity and sanity mandate that we provide
thorough unit testing of the entire application. For this, we need
JUnit. Since we are also talking about providing a web service
frontend and making a lot of network calls, it behooves us to get a
hold of HTTPUnit and the Jakarta Cactus tool as well. HTTPUnit is a
tool that allows our unit tests to act like a browser, performing web
requests and examining web responses. They model the end
user's view of a web page or other HTTP endpoint.
Cactus is a little different. It also exercises server code, but
instead of examining it from the client's viewpoint,
it does so from the container's
viewpoint. If we write a servlet, Cactus can operate as the container
for that servlet, and test its interaction with the container
directly.

In addition to the unit-testing apparatus, we need a build tool. Ant
is, of course, the answer. There really is no other choice when it
comes to providing robust build support.