Some of the very basic best practices for JUnit: 1) never catch an unexpected exception
Yes: public void myTest() throws Exception { doSomething(); validation(); } No: public void myTest() { try { doSomething(); validation(); } catch (Exception e) { fail(e.getMessage()); } } Why: because the 2nd example makes the test harder to read and it also disguises the stack trace if it fails. JUnit framework handles this 100% better than "fail(e.getMessage())". Please don't use this testing antipattern. [1] http://www.exubero.com/junit/antipatterns.html [2] http://junit.org/junit4/faq.html#atests_8 -Kirk