Re: [xml-dev] Testing XML don't use xUnit

[Ihe Onwuka <ihe.onwuka@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 5:30 PM, Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm completely bemused.
>
> So am I :)
>
>> I thought Schematron assertions, like XMLUnit assertions, were both XPath. Why is one better than the other?
>>
>> Unit testing has always been exposed to the problem that when things change, tests break. My response to that has always been to have very little internal testing - the vast majority of tests are "black box" tests working against stable product interfaces rather than against internal components, because internal components change much more than external product interfaces. But XPath has proved a very good language for writing the assertions, and I've always thought that is why both Schematron and XMLUnit use it - as do the latest generation of W3C test suites, with considerable success.
>>
>> Michael Kay
>> Saxonica
>
> Yes, the primary purpose of unit tests is to be able to fail. An unit
> test that always passes is useless.
>

No. If a test fails but that test does not lead to a fix being applied
- because there was no bug, that test is bad.