Ultimate goal of Cactus

[Vincent Massol]

I will be writing a web page explaining the far goals of Cactus that I'll put on the Cactus web site. I wanted to have your advice and opinions before writing the page and posting it.   The ideas below represent my personal view on the subject of "the Future of unit testing server-side components".   The goal I had (which I still have) when writing J2EEUnit was to try as much as possible to offer a server side unit testing framework for all kind of java components. However, depending on the specifications, it is more or less easy. Sometimes, it is even not feasible. I believe that we will see more and more components in the future. By components I mean pieces of code that executes in a container. The container will provide more and more services for the components (like transactions, security, life cycle, persistence, interfaces - like web services -, logging, ...). Thus, it will become harder and harder to write a generic test framework for these components. The ultimate goal that I would like to have for Cactus is to make specifications writers and more specifically container developers aware of this problem and make them aware that unit tests are indeed necessary. The achievement would be to come up with specifications and impementations that *include* unit testing (and testing in general) as *part* of the container specifications, thus allowing independent (and *standard* in term of interfaces) testing modules to be plugged into the container. IMO, this the only way to go. The Jakarta project is hosting the Tomcat servlet container and a first goal could be to try to design a container specifications extension for Tomcat that would include unit testing. In other words, provide another service for components running inside Tomcat : a unit testing service.   Note: I'm not saying this would be done tomorrow. It is rather a guideline that I'd like to have for future developement for Cactus. The goal being to try to go as far as possible for unit testing components. When the wall is reached (meaning it is not possible to go further using the standard specifications), propose modified specifications or extensions. Gradually try to make these extensions accepted so that they will in turn become a standard.   What do you think ? Do you like that goal ? Do you think it is feasible ? Do you think unit testing awareness (and testing in general) is mature enough ?   Vincent Massol.