On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 02:02:31PM -0500, Christopher Hicks wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Mar 2003, Zeljko Dimic wrote:
> > I don't think replacing transfer call with our own emulation would be
> > step in the right direction. By using emulation, we could be masking
> > bugs in our code that communicates to the registry, as well as possibly
> > registry problems. Our emulation may not be perfect, and we may mislead
> > you to write the code that would work within Horizon, but not in the
> > Live environment. For these reasons, I'd rather keep horizon as similiar
> > to operations of the Live system as possible.
>
> Providing certain domains which consistantly exhibit a given behaviour
> wouldn't prevent the rest of the domain space from functioning normally.
>
> If this is something that Tucows remains immovably opposed to there still
> seems to be a persuasive enough case to push for the various test
> registries (or at least one) to implement this.
I'm not sure it even needs any other registry to be involved. What I'm
looking for it the ability to test my implemenation of the API between
my systems and OpenSRS' systems - and that's all. I don't want to care
whether or not OpenSRS sends my request off to some other test system
- that's their problem.
As things stand, it's possible to write code that kind of does stuff
with Horizon, and might well work on the Live system - but I don't
really know -- plus, depending on Verisign's system, my test-account
balance, and the phase of the moon, might fail my tests without having
changed[1]. I don't see how an emulation that might get slightly out
of sync with the live system is any worse.
Remember, I'm not trying to write tests that prove that the entire
process works; I'm trying to write *regression* tests - i.e. I want to
know that my code does the same thing it did last time I tested it,
not that it now 'works' with whatever the test system is doing
today. I'm trying to reduce the number of variables in my testing to
one: my code. The test system as it stands doesn't give me that.
Chris.
[1] I discovered that the test system does decrement your balance by
spending a fruitless hour trying to debug fully-working code which
failed its tests!
