accessUnitFork - Unit Test Framework/Utility for Access-VBA

For now this page is mainly a landing page for attendees of my presentations on Software Quality and Automatic Testing. More content will be added in the future.

Access DevCon 2019 - Modern Software Quality

On April 29th 2019 I spoke about Software Quality at Access DevCon 2019

Synopsis

Access/VBA applications have a tainted reputation in the general developer community: poorly designed, badly structured, hard to maintain, suffering from low code quality. Sure, VBA and the VBE have hardly been updated for 20 years and Access limits application design options.
But what about us, the Access developers? Do we use the shortcomings of our tools as an excuse to be lazy and stick to practices from the Elder Days without questioning their value in today’s software world? Let’s talk about quality standards and methods like…

• Coding standards
• Naming conventions
• Clean Code
• Automated code quality checks
• Automated testing
• Source Code Control
• Continuous Integration/Delivery
• Quality and maintenance measures

What should Access/VBA developers know and adopt despite or because of their outdated toolset to build quality software?

Slides and Video

The slides of the presentation are available for download as PDF and as Power Point Slideshow.

I also recorded my presentation on video. The recording is available on my YouTube-Channel: Modern Software Quality with VBA and Access.

NADD 2019 - A pragmatic approach to automatic testing in Access and VBA

On September 14th 2019 at the Netherlands Access Developer Day 2019 (NADD) I did a presentation titled "A pragmatic approach to automatic testing in Access and VBA". There I covered the following:

Synopsis

Most developers will already know about Unit Testing, Test Driven Development (TDD), and Integration Testing. While these techniques have become very common in all sorts of software development projects, they are still hardly used by Access developers.

Automatic testing is an invaluable skill for every developer, even in Microsoft Access!

I will tell you why and how to learn it. This will include…

• Why I test automatically
• A short introduction to the terminology and techniques
• The raw essence of automatic testing
• What to test and what not to test
• The most basic way of automatic testing in Access/VBA (no tools)
• Tools/Frameworks and why to use them

Slides and Video

The slides of the presentation are available for download as PDF and as Power Point Slideshow.

A live recording of this presentation is available on YouTube: Automatic Testing in VBA and Access - NADD 2019

Unit Testing and Test Driven Developement with VBA and Access

A good introduction in German into Test Driven Development (TDD) and the accessUnit-Framework is the article Testgetriebene Entwicklung mit Access also by André Minhorst.

For beginners in TDD, I recommend Kent Beck´s Test Driven Development: By Example (affiliate link).

Another recommendation for getting started with Test Driven Development and Extreme Programming is Extreme Programming in Practice (affiliate link) by James W. Newkirk and Robert C. Martin (aka: "Uncle Bob").

accessUnit(Fork)

At Access DevCon 2019 I mentioned and briefly demoed my adaption of the accessUnit-Framework by André Minhorst for Unit Testing and Test Driven Deveopment (TDD) in Access/VBA.

My own adaption of the accessUnit-Framework should not be considered complete nor would I claim it to be ready for production use, yet. However, if you still want to try it and play around with it, it is available for Download:   accessUnitFork - 20190424

The newer and slightly enhanced/advanced version shown at NADD2019 is not available for download, yet. - I'll put it here ASAP.

Additional references from the slide decks of both of the presentations

Here is the reading list and the list of reference links from my presentation.

Reading List - Books

• Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship - Robert C. Martin

• Working Effectively with Legacy Code - Michael Feathers

• Test Driven Development: By Example – Kent Beck

• The Art of Readable Code – Dustin Boswell / Trevor Foucher

(Links in this list are Amazon Affiliate Links)

References & Links

• MZ-Tools – Excellent multi purpose developer tool for VBA

• AccUnit – Unit Testing framework for Access/VBA

• RubberduckVBA – Code Inspections, Unit Tests and much more

• accessUnit (original) – Unit Test framework for (and written in!) Access/VBA

• accessUnit(Fork) – My adaption of accessUnit also usable as Add-In

Updates?

I plan to update this page as soons as I get to it. I will certainly mention any updates in my newsletter.

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