Re: Unit testing question and stored procedures

[Greg Keogh]

I'm one of those ummm ... purists who reckons you shouldn't put anything
(like business logic) in procs that needs unit testing -- *GK*

On 26 April 2017 at 15:36, Greg Low (罗格雷格博士)  wrote:

> Yep, that’s how we do it. Some people use transactions to do a similar
> thing but you can’t test transactional code by doing that.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> Greg
>
>
>
> Dr Greg Low
>
>
>
> 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913
> fax
>
> SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com |http://greglow.me
>
>
>
> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-bounces@
> ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Tony Wright
> *Sent:* Wednesday, 26 April 2017 3:08 PM
> *To:* ozDotNet 
> *Subject:* Re: Unit testing question and stored procedures
>
>
>
> So let me understand this. I believe what you are doing is having a
> database snapshot (or testing database) that you can continuously revert to
> its initial state, then you run the stored proc via nunit, then in the init
> for the next test, revert back to the initial state and run that test,
> etc.  I would have thought that it would take a lot of extra processing
> time to run tests that way, especially if a restore is needed?
>
>
>
> I've used in memory databases (via the database first philosophy of EF
> entity creation) but they don't handle stored procs.
>
>
>
> TSQLUnit looks...interesting. Must investigate.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 12:48 PM, Greg Low (罗格雷格博士) 
> wrote:
>
> I should have added that the dac framework stuff had testing but has now
> removed it.
>
>
>
> Some use TSQLUnit but I’ve not found it any more useful and NUnit fits
> well with other testing.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> Greg
>
>
>
> Dr Greg Low
>
>
>
> 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 <+61%20419%20201%20410>
> mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913 <+61%203%208676%204913> fax
>
> SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com |http://greglow.me
>
>
>
> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-bounces@
> ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Tony Wright
> *Sent:* Wednesday, 26 April 2017 11:53 AM
> *To:* ozDotNet 
> *Subject:* Unit testing question and stored procedures
>
>
>
> Hi all,
>
>
>
> A while ago, we were discussing avoiding using LINQ to query sql server.
> The preferred method of querying discussed was either to use direct SQL
> calls or stored procs to perform data manipulation.
>
>
>
> This was because the overhead of starting up Entity Framework is
> significant and the underlying queries produced by LINQ can be quite
> convoluted and inefficient. Lazy loading is also something to be avoided
> (at the very least you should be using Eager loading – which forced you to
> be explicit about what related data is being included/loaded. As an aside,
> I’ve also seen a massive performance drop when using mappers to covert
> database objects in EF to POCO objects using tools such as AutoMapper.)
>
>
>
> Add to this, that putting some business logic in stored procs is about the
> most efficient way to perform data manipulation in a SQL Server database.
> It is unbelievably fast and efficient compared to passing all the data over
> the wire to your middle tier to perform any updates and then passing it
> back to commit the data to the database.
>
>
>
> In fact, I would argue that the very fact that current “best practice” is
> to inefficiently pass all your data to the middle-tier to be modified, only
> to be returned to the database for the update, is a failure in modern
> development, but of course, there is not really an alternative if your
> intent is to performing proper unit testing. It is a very sad thing that
> modern enterprise development has not worked out how to utilise the full
> power of SQL Server other than to say "only use stored procs in special
> cases."
>
>
>
> So the question I have is, if it was decided to put business logic in
> stored procedures (and some of you have, I know, even though a few of you
> with the purist hat would deny it!), how do people currently unit test
> their stored procs?
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Tony
>
>
>

RE: Unit testing question and stored procedures

[罗格雷格博士]

Yep, that’s how we do it. Some people use transactions to do a similar thing 
but you can’t test transactional code by doing that.

Regards,

Greg

Dr Greg Low

1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913 fax
SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com 
|http://greglow.me

From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On 
Behalf Of Tony Wright
Sent: Wednesday, 26 April 2017 3:08 PM
To: ozDotNet 
Subject: Re: Unit testing question and stored procedures

So let me understand this. I believe what you are doing is having a database 
snapshot (or testing database) that you can continuously revert to its initial 
state, then you run the stored proc via nunit, then in the init for the next 
test, revert back to the initial state and run that test, etc.  I would have 
thought that it would take a lot of extra processing time to run tests that 
way, especially if a restore is needed?

I've used in memory databases (via the database first philosophy of EF entity 
creation) but they don't handle stored procs.

TSQLUnit looks...interesting. Must investigate.

On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 12:48 PM, Greg Low (罗格雷格博士) 
> wrote:
I should have added that the dac framework stuff had testing but has now 
removed it.

Some use TSQLUnit but I’ve not found it any more useful and NUnit fits well 
with other testing.

Regards,

Greg

Dr Greg Low

1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 
mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913 fax
SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com 
|http://greglow.me

From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com 
[mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On 
Behalf Of Tony Wright
Sent: Wednesday, 26 April 2017 11:53 AM
To: ozDotNet >
Subject: Unit testing question and stored procedures

Hi all,

A while ago, we were discussing avoiding using LINQ to query sql server. The 
preferred method of querying discussed was either to use direct SQL calls or 
stored procs to perform data manipulation.

This was because the overhead of starting up Entity Framework is significant 
and the underlying queries produced by LINQ can be quite convoluted and 
inefficient. Lazy loading is also something to be avoided (at the very least 
you should be using Eager loading – which forced you to be explicit about what 
related data is being included/loaded. As an aside, I’ve also seen a massive 
performance drop when using mappers to covert database objects in EF to POCO 
objects using tools such as AutoMapper.)

Add to this, that putting some business logic in stored procs is about the most 
efficient way to perform data manipulation in a SQL Server database. It is 
unbelievably fast and efficient compared to passing all the data over the wire 
to your middle tier to perform any updates and then passing it back to commit 
the data to the database.

In fact, I would argue that the very fact that current “best practice” is to 
inefficiently pass all your data to the middle-tier to be modified, only to be 
returned to the database for the update, is a failure in modern development, 
but of course, there is not really an alternative if your intent is to 
performing proper unit testing. It is a very sad thing that modern enterprise 
development has not worked out how to utilise the full power of SQL Server 
other than to say "only use stored procs in special cases."

So the question I have is, if it was decided to put business logic in stored 
procedures (and some of you have, I know, even though a few of you with the 
purist hat would deny it!), how do people currently unit test their stored 
procs?

Kind regards,
Tony

Re: Unit testing question and stored procedures

[Tony Wright]

So let me understand this. I believe what you are doing is having a
database snapshot (or testing database) that you can continuously revert to
its initial state, then you run the stored proc via nunit, then in the init
for the next test, revert back to the initial state and run that test,
etc.  I would have thought that it would take a lot of extra processing
time to run tests that way, especially if a restore is needed?

I've used in memory databases (via the database first philosophy of EF
entity creation) but they don't handle stored procs.

TSQLUnit looks...interesting. Must investigate.

On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 12:48 PM, Greg Low (罗格雷格博士) 
wrote:

> I should have added that the dac framework stuff had testing but has now
> removed it.
>
>
>
> Some use TSQLUnit but I’ve not found it any more useful and NUnit fits
> well with other testing.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> Greg
>
>
>
> Dr Greg Low
>
>
>
> 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 <+61%20419%20201%20410>
> mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913 <+61%203%208676%204913> fax
>
> SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com |http://greglow.me
>
>
>
> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-bounces@
> ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Tony Wright
> *Sent:* Wednesday, 26 April 2017 11:53 AM
> *To:* ozDotNet 
> *Subject:* Unit testing question and stored procedures
>
>
>
> Hi all,
>
>
>
> A while ago, we were discussing avoiding using LINQ to query sql server.
> The preferred method of querying discussed was either to use direct SQL
> calls or stored procs to perform data manipulation.
>
>
>
> This was because the overhead of starting up Entity Framework is
> significant and the underlying queries produced by LINQ can be quite
> convoluted and inefficient. Lazy loading is also something to be avoided
> (at the very least you should be using Eager loading – which forced you to
> be explicit about what related data is being included/loaded. As an aside,
> I’ve also seen a massive performance drop when using mappers to covert
> database objects in EF to POCO objects using tools such as AutoMapper.)
>
>
>
> Add to this, that putting some business logic in stored procs is about the
> most efficient way to perform data manipulation in a SQL Server database.
> It is unbelievably fast and efficient compared to passing all the data over
> the wire to your middle tier to perform any updates and then passing it
> back to commit the data to the database.
>
>
>
> In fact, I would argue that the very fact that current “best practice” is
> to inefficiently pass all your data to the middle-tier to be modified, only
> to be returned to the database for the update, is a failure in modern
> development, but of course, there is not really an alternative if your
> intent is to performing proper unit testing. It is a very sad thing that
> modern enterprise development has not worked out how to utilise the full
> power of SQL Server other than to say "only use stored procs in special
> cases."
>
>
>
> So the question I have is, if it was decided to put business logic in
> stored procedures (and some of you have, I know, even though a few of you
> with the purist hat would deny it!), how do people currently unit test
> their stored procs?
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Tony
>

RE: Unit testing question and stored procedures

[罗格雷格博士]

I should have added that the dac framework stuff had testing but has now 
removed it.

Some use TSQLUnit but I’ve not found it any more useful and NUnit fits well 
with other testing.

Regards,

Greg

Dr Greg Low

1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913 fax
SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com 
|http://greglow.me

From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On 
Behalf Of Tony Wright
Sent: Wednesday, 26 April 2017 11:53 AM
To: ozDotNet 
Subject: Unit testing question and stored procedures

Hi all,

A while ago, we were discussing avoiding using LINQ to query sql server. The 
preferred method of querying discussed was either to use direct SQL calls or 
stored procs to perform data manipulation.

This was because the overhead of starting up Entity Framework is significant 
and the underlying queries produced by LINQ can be quite convoluted and 
inefficient. Lazy loading is also something to be avoided (at the very least 
you should be using Eager loading – which forced you to be explicit about what 
related data is being included/loaded. As an aside, I’ve also seen a massive 
performance drop when using mappers to covert database objects in EF to POCO 
objects using tools such as AutoMapper.)

Add to this, that putting some business logic in stored procs is about the most 
efficient way to perform data manipulation in a SQL Server database. It is 
unbelievably fast and efficient compared to passing all the data over the wire 
to your middle tier to perform any updates and then passing it back to commit 
the data to the database.

In fact, I would argue that the very fact that current “best practice” is to 
inefficiently pass all your data to the middle-tier to be modified, only to be 
returned to the database for the update, is a failure in modern development, 
but of course, there is not really an alternative if your intent is to 
performing proper unit testing. It is a very sad thing that modern enterprise 
development has not worked out how to utilise the full power of SQL Server 
other than to say "only use stored procs in special cases."

So the question I have is, if it was decided to put business logic in stored 
procedures (and some of you have, I know, even though a few of you with the 
purist hat would deny it!), how do people currently unit test their stored 
procs?

Kind regards,
Tony

RE: Unit testing question and stored procedures

[罗格雷格博士]

Hi Tony,

I’d still just use something like NUnit, along with all the other tests in your 
.NET code. Just put a wrapper calling them. Makes it easy to integrate with 
other tests.

One thing that I often do as well, is to have a wrapper that uses database 
snapshots, to get the test DB back into exactly the right state before each 
test. (the one exception is when testing performance)

Regards,

Greg

Dr Greg Low

1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913 fax
SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com 
|http://greglow.me

From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On 
Behalf Of Tony Wright
Sent: Wednesday, 26 April 2017 11:53 AM
To: ozDotNet 
Subject: Unit testing question and stored procedures

Hi all,

A while ago, we were discussing avoiding using LINQ to query sql server. The 
preferred method of querying discussed was either to use direct SQL calls or 
stored procs to perform data manipulation.

This was because the overhead of starting up Entity Framework is significant 
and the underlying queries produced by LINQ can be quite convoluted and 
inefficient. Lazy loading is also something to be avoided (at the very least 
you should be using Eager loading – which forced you to be explicit about what 
related data is being included/loaded. As an aside, I’ve also seen a massive 
performance drop when using mappers to covert database objects in EF to POCO 
objects using tools such as AutoMapper.)

Add to this, that putting some business logic in stored procs is about the most 
efficient way to perform data manipulation in a SQL Server database. It is 
unbelievably fast and efficient compared to passing all the data over the wire 
to your middle tier to perform any updates and then passing it back to commit 
the data to the database.

In fact, I would argue that the very fact that current “best practice” is to 
inefficiently pass all your data to the middle-tier to be modified, only to be 
returned to the database for the update, is a failure in modern development, 
but of course, there is not really an alternative if your intent is to 
performing proper unit testing. It is a very sad thing that modern enterprise 
development has not worked out how to utilise the full power of SQL Server 
other than to say "only use stored procs in special cases."

So the question I have is, if it was decided to put business logic in stored 
procedures (and some of you have, I know, even though a few of you with the 
purist hat would deny it!), how do people currently unit test their stored 
procs?

Kind regards,
Tony

Unit testing question and stored procedures

[Tony Wright]

Hi all,


A while ago, we were discussing avoiding using LINQ to query sql server.
The preferred method of querying discussed was either to use direct SQL
calls or stored procs to perform data manipulation.


This was because the overhead of starting up Entity Framework is
significant and the underlying queries produced by LINQ can be quite
convoluted and inefficient. Lazy loading is also something to be avoided
(at the very least you should be using Eager loading – which forced you to
be explicit about what related data is being included/loaded. As an aside,
I’ve also seen a massive performance drop when using mappers to covert
database objects in EF to POCO objects using tools such as AutoMapper.)


Add to this, that putting some business logic in stored procs is about the
most efficient way to perform data manipulation in a SQL Server database.
It is unbelievably fast and efficient compared to passing all the data over
the wire to your middle tier to perform any updates and then passing it
back to commit the data to the database.


In fact, I would argue that the very fact that current “best practice” is
to inefficiently pass all your data to the middle-tier to be modified, only
to be returned to the database for the update, is a failure in modern
development, but of course, there is not really an alternative if your
intent is to performing proper unit testing. It is a very sad thing that
modern enterprise development has not worked out how to utilise the full
power of SQL Server other than to say "only use stored procs in special
cases."


So the question I have is, if it was decided to put business logic in
stored procedures (and some of you have, I know, even though a few of you
with the purist hat would deny it!), how do people currently unit test
their stored procs?


Kind regards,

Tony