Architecting Modern Java EE Applications

Managing test scenarios

System test scenarios can easily get quite complex, involving several concerns and obfuscating the actual use case that is to be tested.

In order to manage the complexity of scenarios it makes sense to first craft the procedure of the test case without writing actual code. Defining the required steps in comments, or even on paper first, provides a good overview of what the test scenario is about. Implementing the actual test case afterwards with regard to reasonable abstraction layers will result in more maintainable test cases, with potentially reusable functionality. We will cover this approach in an example later in this sub-chapter.

It's important to take test data into consideration. The more responsibilities ...