How to verify lots of events in a reasonable way - testing

Question

I am new to software testing. Currently I need to test a middle-sized web application. We have just refactored our codebase and added many event logging logic to the existing code. The event logging code will write to both Windows Eventlog and a SQL database table as well.
The amount of the events is about 200. What approach should I take to test/verify this code refactoring effectivly and efficiently?
Thanks.

Answer 1

I would be tempted to implement unit tests for each of the events to make sure when an event occurs the correct information is passed into your event logging logic.
This would mean that you can trigger one event on the deployed site and verify the data is written to the database and event log. You can have an acceptable level of confidence that the remaining event will be recorded correctly.
If unit testing isn't an option then you will need to verify each event manually, I would alternate between checking the database and the event log as there should be little risk in this area failing. That would mean you would have 200 tests rather than 400 tests.
You could also partition the application into sensible sections and trigger a few events for each section to give you a reasonable level of confidence in the application.
The approach you take will really be determined by how long you have to test, what the cost of would be if an event didn't get logged, and how well developed the logging logic is.
Hope this helps

Answer 2

I would have added tests before you did the refactoring. you dont know where you have broken it already :).
you are saying that it logs into EventViewer and DB, I hope you have exposed logging feature as an interface so that you can:
Extend it to log to some other device if needed
Also makes mocking bit a lot easier
if you have 200 events to test, that's not going to be easy tbh. I dont think you can escape from creating eq number of tests for your 200 events.
I would do it this way:
i would search for all places where my logging interface is used and note all classes and
start with critical paths/ones first (that way you at least cover critical ones)
or you could start from the end, i.e. note down all possible combinations of logs you are getting, maybe point to stale data so that you know if the input is the same, output should be the same too. And every time, regression test your new binaries agaisnt this data and you should get similar number/level of logs.

Answer 3

This shouldn't be to difficult.
Pick a free automated web test tool like Watir (java) or WatiN (.net), (or VS UI Test if you have it.)
Create tests that cover the areas of the web application you expect/need to fire events. Examine the SQL Db after each test to see what events did fire.
If those event streams are correct for the test add a step into the test to verifiy that exactly that event stream was created in the Db.
This will give you a set of tests that will validate the eventing from any portion of your web site in a repeatable fashion.
The efficent & efective part of this approach is that it allows you to create only as many tests as you need to verify the app. Also you do not need to recreate a unit test approach with one test per event.
Automating the tests will allow you re-execute them without additonal effort, and this will really add up over the long haul.
This approach can also be taken with manual testing, but it will be tricky to get consistent & repeatable results. Also re-testing will take nearly as long as the testing uncovers defects that need to be fixed.
Note: while this will be the most effective & efficent way it will not be exhaustive. There will likely be edge case that get missed, but that can be said of nearly any test approach. Just add test cases until you get the coverage you need.
Hope this helps,
Chris