Question

I have a couple of windows service applications that working with sql server. I would like to perform black box testing for my application. I don’t want to use unit testing, because I haven’t enough time to write test logic for all my methods. I just want to send requests to my application and check response from system and state of db.

Answer 1

Unit Testing an application is always recommended, but they are no help when it comes to “Black Box” / “End to End” / “Golden” tests.

Having said that, some of the principles of Unit Tests still apply to your task:

1. Automate the process – There should be no human involvement besides hitting “run”.
   Use a dedicated platform for that – Teamcity is one of many.
2. Isolate all the tests – You should run any subset of them in any order, and get the same results.
   If you have a DB, run some script before and after every test, so that each test gets a clean environment (apply to all other statefull modules, like the file system, web cache, etc).
3. You might as well use a test framework (like NUnit), that already has built in Setup, Test and Teardown entry points, and call your setup script, your API, and cleanup script from there.