Overspecification

Definition:

• Tests increasingly serve multiple roles in today’s projects. They help us design APIs through test-driven development. They provide confidence that new changes aren’t breaking existing functionality. They offer an executable specification of the application. But can we ever get to a point where we have too much testing?

Code Example:

require File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/../test_helper'

class ProductsControllerTest < ActionController::TestCase
  def test_something
    product = Product.create(:name => "Frisbee", :price => 5.00)
    get :show, :id => product.id
    assert_response :success
    product = assigns(:product)
    assert_not_nil product
    assert product.valid?
    assert product.name == "Frisbee"
    assert product.price == 5.00
  end
end

References:

Quality attributes

• - Code Example

• - Cause and Effect

• - Frequency

• - Refactoring

• Testing anti-patterns: How to fail with 100% test coverage