February 2013
Intermediate to advanced
352 pages
7h 45m
English
An important part of doing test-driven development is defining the right interface. I’ve been drumming for a while now on the fact that a database is really an object and that it has a class. One of the properties of a class is that it tends to have a fairly strong interface.
In compiled languages, the validity of most coupling is enforced at compile-time. In dynamic languages, it’s validated shortly before you access part of an object. In databases, though, coupling isn’t validated until a command is transmitted to a database. This makes testing objects that talk to the database harder because mocking a database robs you of the feedback you get when coupling to it.
A way exists to give clients coupling to a database ...