Nice article, by the way.

This is a fantastic posting! I wish and hope that more and more Oracle technologists will bring attention to bear on the issue of testing in the world of PL/SQL.

I certainly have become obsessed by it. Thanks for telling people about Qute. I thought you’d want to get an update.

Qute is now Quest Code Tester for Oracle, and we just released it as a commercial product (version 1.5.1) last week. For more info:

http://www.quest.com/code-tester-for-oracle

It has come a VERY VERY long way since the days of Qute (I really liked that name!) and I encourage you to at least download and install the trial version and check it out.

Note: there is a freeware version of Quest Code Tester available at ToadWorld.com; it is still stuck in the 1.2.5.5 release, but we will be updating it soon to 1.5.1.

Now, in terms of your concerns, you wrote:

Ozgur: It needs a schema to keep its own tables, etc. This is an obligation, though.

Steven replies: Well, yes, this product has an Oracle backend with some 38 tables and 146 packages. So it needs *some* schema or other, but you can usually install it into the standard HR or SCOTT schema, as long as you have CREATE TYPE privilege (I think that is the only “unusual” privilege) defined on it. Also, in the commercial version (including trial), we will check the privs on your schema to make sure the install will work. For most shops installing Code Tester for “real” use, they would install it into its own separate schema, with public synonyms, so that it can be used from any schema on the instance.

Ozgur: It needs several privilages to be given to that user to run test cases againist objects on other schemas.

Steven replies: Code Tester relies on the Oracle privileges architecture to determine what you can run (and test). Suppose I install Code Tester in schema QCTO, with public synonyms. My application code is in schema CODE. I then connect to CODE, and can build tests for my application right there. No special privs are needed in the QCTO schema to do this. If you do not install with public synonyms, then you will need to connect to the QCTO schema to run Code Tester and you will only be able to see/test programs on which the QCTO schema has execute authority. There is nothing unusual to Code Tester about this; it is the way Oracle works.

I hope this clarifies your concerns. Thank you again for your posting on unit testing. I look forward both to the discussion it generates and to any and all feedback PL/SQL developers have on Quest Code Tester!

Warm regards,
Steven Feuerstein
PL/SQL Evangelist
Quest Software

I must first say that my article was not about what a bad language C is - I am just againist programming language fanaticism.
My article does not tell anything about how readible object-oriented languages (or Python) is, I am talking about C and how difficult to read (and write) C code is. You are forced to write (and read) a very big amount of irrelevant code while coding in C language. Thus, C is not proper for implementing high-level and non-performance-seeking problems.
I cannot understand what you say about orthogonality. What I must see from an orthogonal programming language is that it must take care of whether my variable is an array or an integer - I don’t want to deal with how it is located in the memory. Just remember I assumed that I am writing a high-level program that is not related directly (for example a device driver) or indirectly (any performance-critical application) with computer hardware.
The right thing to say about C’s safety issues is (or in general about C), I think, it is related with problem you have to solve. Do you need good performance? Do you need a bug-free software? Don’t you want to take care of all machine-related things? Don’t you want your code include ifs here and ifs there to catch any error that may occur?
Your way about exception handling is nice - it is really. But you know -like I know- that exception handling is something very different. I don’t expect from C to have an exception handling mechanism as a low-level language, I am just trying to say it is not a handy language for high-level programming. No need to say you can do nearly everything in C by yourself. You are familiar with do it yourself approach as I know :)
So my conclusion is, again, use C where you really need it, but no more than this.