WatIn

I've been fighting with Selenium and automated testing lately, and I just couldn't shake the feeling that it just wasn't the right tool for the job. The IDE is flakey in terms of files you save (making changes to the project often results in JS errors in the tests), the server is a java server which I had to jump through hoops to get running as a Windows service, and the loading of a browser for the tests is hellishly slow.

It really is a great tool, and I love it's ease of use for development (I use it to autocomplete forms instead of typing all that crap in over and over again), but as an automated testing suite on a Windows technology stack, I'm just not a huge fan.

So today, I downloaded WatIn and gave it a run. I had the automated nUnit side up and running in a matter of minutes - the tests ran fast and the API is intuitive and easy to use.

The test recorder is not as good as Selenium's, but it's decent enough, and there is a beta version out that is supposed to be a vast improvement. I did download and try the Beta version, but it wouldn't even run for me, so I guess it's REALLY in Beta. Anyway, I'm more interested in the CruiseControl automated side of testing than visual testing, so it's easy, understandable unit test code that I want to be able to produce - and for this WatIn wins hands down.

Running Selenium RC as a Windows Service

We've recently started using Selenium as a testing tool at work. The IDE is great, particularly for filling in forms during development, but I'm a stickler for automated testing.

Selenium does off Selenium RC, which combined with nUnit allows for this in a variety of programming languages. The problem here, is that the server is a jar file, and I wanted it running as a windows service on our build server.

Anyway, I found a great article on tacktech.com that shows how to run just about anything as a windows service - and I successfully used that article to get Selenium RC running as windows service on our build server. Here are the steps:

1. Install the latest Java runtime if you don't have it installed already
2. Install the Selenium server (e.g. C:\Selenium\selenium-server-1.0.1
3. Download srvany.exe and instsrv.exe (these are part of the Microsoft Windows Resource Kit - you will need to download the correct version for your OS) and copy these files to a location on your server (e.g. C:\reskit)
4. Browse to this folder, and type: instsrv "Selenium RC" "C:\reskit\srvany.exe" - this will create the windows service named "Selenium RC", which will now be installed as a Windows service, although it won't start up yet
5. Open up regedit, and browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Selenium RC
6. Right-click "Selenium RC" in the tree, and click New - Key, and add a key called "Parameters"
7. Open Parameters, and create a new string value called "Application"
8. Add the following to the data value for the new string value: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\java.exe" -jar "C:\Selenium\selenium-server-1.0.1\selenium-server.jar", substituting paths to the java exe and the selenium server jar file where appropriate
9. Load up the windows services console (services.msc) and start the service

SQL Server: Finding tables by column

Assuming you use a decent naming convention in your database, it's sometimes useful to be able to find a list of tables with a common column - for example if you want to write a script to clean out all data related to a specific item, referenced by foreign key columns of the same or a similar name.

 
SELECT distinct
    c.table_name,
    c.table_schema,
    c.column_name
  FROM 
    information_schema.columns c
    INNER JOIN information_schema.tables t 
      ON c.table_name = t.table_name 
  WHERE
    c.column_name LIKE '%my_column_name%'
    AND t.table_type = 'BASE TABLE'
  ORDER BY 
    c.table_name,
    c.column_name