Customer Reviews
A fairly poor introduction to unit testing and TDD - By: M. Barker, 20 Jun 2008 
This book gives only a very basic introduction to the concepts of unit testing & test-driven development (TDD).
Much of the volume of the book is taken up with examples & "test cases" which are listed explicitly & in full detail. A better approach may have been: to explain the concepts of "test cases"; cover only one or two "test cases" in detail; leave the fully worked example as a code listing (where the user can read the tests & understand what each is meant to achieve).
Where it most noticably fallls down is in dealing with difficult test scenarios (such as code dependant on Singletons), & how to write code in order for it to be testable. A section on maintaining legacy code would also be a welcome addition, which is sadly amiss. Concepts of abstraction layers, mocking & extension classes (alll vital in effective unit testing) are not mentioned at alll.
On a personal note, as a purist I would also question the use of some of the unit tests, as they seem rather to be functional tests. Dependence on config settings, pre-configured databases & XML files break away from the concepts of unit testing.
I would not recommend this book, except possibly to developers new to the field of unit testing & TDD, & even then I would be hesitant.
