It's All Data

Brett Schuchert — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:37:00 +0000

“So, you managed to pick stories that only involved changing data…”

“Yep.”

Great, there’s no need to test it, right?

Therefore, testing Java classes is unnecessary.

The JVM simply reads files in a particular format (the Java Class format)
The JVM processes those files
Java class files are just data to the JVM
Java source files are just data to the Java Compiler to generate data used by the JVM
We do not need to test data changes
Therefore we do not need to test Java classes.

q.e.d.

Then Norbert asked “Oh, by the way, did you version your data changes?”

</sarcasm>

"It's All Data" by George Dinwiddie

Tue, 20 May 2008 20:37:47 +0000

I ran across this years ago on a project that put business rules in the database so they could be easily changed. Without testing. Without versioning. “But it’s just data!”

Anything that changes the behavior of the system needs testing and versioning.

Object Mentor Blog: It's All Data

It's All Data

"It's All Data" by George Dinwiddie