SpecFlow is a .Net library that allows us to describe user expectations in a consistent Domain-Specific Language that can be wired for automatic execution. By writing executable tests in a human readable manner, our tests can serve as a bridge between the users expectations and the code we produce to meet them.

This post will walk through the benefits and high level details of these methods before diving into a practical example of implementing several tests against the MVC Music Store site from my

Denis started us off earlier with his Meme Monday post, "Meme Monday: what is the first blogpost you wrote and when did you write it?".

This is a tricky question for me, mostly because my memory is poor and I'm having difficulty bending google's time search to my will.

Several weeks ago I was refreshing my memory on some nvarchar/varchar tradeoffs when I ran into a post by Michael J Swart (blog|twitter) where he shared the results of investigating a performance problem in one of his live environments. After changing many...

Automating the deployment of software to the various test, QA, and Production environments streamlines the software delivery process, provides a well-practiced routine prior to the production deployment, and removes a lot of the risks that come with depending on people's memories and checklists in order to get a working production push. Automating the deployment also makes the process more repeatable and less prone to error, simplifying the creation or recreation of an environment not just for the current release, but for past releases as well.

This is the final post in a multi-pa...

Human beings are good at creative tasks. Put an end user in front of an interface and ask them to find an error and good luck stuffing that particular cat back into the bag. Where we don't perform as well is performing those tasks repetitively. After several cycles we begin to lose focus, start listening more to our expectations than what we are actually seeing in front of us, gradually forget steps, or worse lose track and have to restart from the beginning. By automating the redundant tasks, we play to the strengths of the computer and free the human to return to creative duties.