Automated testing is one of the most important practices in Agile Development. I like to have a hierarchy of automated tests that cover the whole system as deployed and all of its component parts, right down to unit tests that tell me whether each class is fulfilling its contract.
Starting with end-to-end tests
There's a lot published about unit testing and acceptance tests, but much less about end-to-end testing. That's disappointing, given that end-to-end tests are arguably the first thing you should work on when developing a new application.
The need for a clean deployment environment
End-to-end testing gives you a chance to check out your deployment process and verify that the deployed application works in the target environment. Sometimes, though, a badly planned testing process can lull you into a false sense of security; most of us have encountered applications that work well in their test environment but fail when deployed to a clean machine.
It usually takes too much time and effort to create a fresh testing environment from scratch every time you want to do an end-to-end test. There is a simple fast alternative using VMWare Server.
VMware server to the rescue
VMware server is a free (as in beer) version of VMware's virtualisation software. I run it on an Ubuntu server, and use it to create a clean environment for applications that I'm developing. It has a snapshot capability that allows me to capture a clean "before deployment" image, and restore that in a few seconds prior to running a test. Best of all, there's an external scripting interface which allows you to automate the process.
You can download VMware Server for free (after registration). I also use their commercial VMware workstation product; the two play well together, as you'd expect, but you can do everything you need for end-to-end testing with the free product.
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