How to make maintenance easier

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/how_to_make_maintenance_easier.htm]

Almost everyone would rather create something new than fix something broken (especially someone else's broken code). However, it's inevitable that some maintenance will always be required. Here are some ideas to make maintenance easier:

• Reduce the amount of work that must be maintained by refactoring your code.
• Add Unit Tests for easier regression testing, and to make sure that your maintenance doesn't break something else.
• Document your work so that it's easier to understand, perhaps with inline comments (maybe using NDoc), wikis, or more traditional word documents for feature designs.
• Design you code to be maintainable - perhaps use simpler algorithms (if all else is equal), loosely couple components so that it's easier to understand, make flexible code, etc...
  

Creating Database Unit Tests - new install UI

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/creating_database_unit_tests__new_install_ui.htm]

The MassDataHandler is a framework to assist with Database Unit Testing. The framework makes it very easy to insert test data into a database, which in turn makes it very easy to write database unit tests. The user merely needs to specify their relevant data in a simple XML fragment, and then the framework uses knowledge of the database schema to do all the grunt work and convert that XML data into SQL, from which it populates the database.

It is an open-source .Net app available here.

We recently improved the install process for the app by having a GUI form collect environmental info for SQL 2005, MSTest, and MSBuild. The install script uses the concept of Having an MSBuild script collect userinput.

If you're looking to test your data layer, check out this free tool. It's now easier to install.