Into / Ant Ireland

[Ant Ireland]

Hi, I'm Antony Ireland, everyone apart from my parents call me Ant.

I've been using Java for 6-7 years now, the usual JEE + frameworks mix
(Struts, Hibernate, JUnit etc.), with a little bit of web services.
I've also completed a Software Engineering masters part-time at the
University of West of England, which introduced me to lots of good
stuff like patterns, agile development etc.

I've spent the last 8 years working for BT, but finally got fed up and
moved to a company called Northgate, based in the soul-destroying
environs of Aztec West. We are currently trailing agile process
(Scrum) for three months and I'm also trying to work out how to best
use the myriad of JEE testing frameworks in a sensible manner.

[Dave Patterson]

Hi Ant,

We have at least one other Northgate minion on the group so you're in
good company.

Re. testing frameworks: In my current project we get on quite well
with Cruise Control for continuous integration driving regular junit
tests. The test coverage varies wildly depending on the nature of the
code (and the diligence of the author) but it does help when
refactoring.

We have started to use Watir, the ruby web testing framework as a
screen driver for dev testing. It's still a manual process at the
moment but we are working towards an automated testpack to plug into
cruise. The integration/UAT test teams are using winrunner (nasty) and
loadrunner (not so nasty).

Let us know how you get on with Scrum. I've dabbled with XP in the
past and found the agile approach much more satisfying than an
exhaustive design process that attempts to solve problems that never
actually manifest.

Cheers.

Dave P.