ScalaTest Testing Framework Released

Dr. Dobb's Journal  @ 05:37 EDT | October 12, 2009
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ScalaTest 1.0 is an open-source testing framework

Artima has released ScalaTest 1.0, an open-source testing framework that speed ups the testing process for Java-based applications by reducing the number of lines of code required in testing. Additionally, ScalaTest can run on multiple processor cores for parallel testing.

With ScalaTest, which is released under the Apache 2.0 license, you can test either Scala or Java code. By integrating with tools such as JUnit and TestNG, Ant, and Maven, ScalaTest supposedly makes it easier to take testing to a higher, more productive level in new or existing Scala or Java projects.

ScalaTest is designed to support different kinds of testing, including unit, functional, integration, and acceptance testing, while supporting test-driven, behavior-driven, and other development methodologies.

As its name suggests, ScalaTest is written almost entirely in Scala, a hybrid functional/object programming language. Scala is a multi-paradigm language that integrates essential features of iterative object-oriented programming with the functional programming paradigm. It compiles to JVM bytecodes -- you can use Java libraries in your Scala programs and inherit from Java classes. Scala lets you isolate those parts of your code that truly need the benefits of functional programming and write everything else in Java. While there's also a version for .NET, Scala is really married to Java, having been developed by Martin Obersky, one of the designers of Java generics and the author of the current javac reference compiler.

ScalaTest was written by Bill Venners, George Berger, Josh Cough, and other contributors. ScalaTest, which is almost exclusively written in Scala, follows and improves upon the Java code and design of Artima SuiteRunner, another testing tool written primarily by Bill Venners.

You can get the source code here.

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Real World Parallelism Webinar Series

  • November 17, 2009
    Visual Effects for Animation - presented by DreamWorks Animation
    Speaker: Ron Henderson (Bio)

    Ron Henderson manages the FX Tools group at DreamWorks Animation, where he is responsible for developing physical simulation and procedural modeling tools. These systems have been used for key visual effects in recent films such as Kung Fu Panda and Monsters vs. Aliens (March 2009).

    Prior to joining DreamWorks in 2002 he was a senior scientist at Caltech with a joint appointment to the Applied Math and Aeronautics departments, where he worked on efficient techniques for the direct numerical simulation of fluid turbulence.

    Abstract:
    In this webinar, Ron Henderson will show examples of visual effects, from hair and feathers to smoke and fire, from a variety of DreamWorks Animation feature films. He will discuss in general terms the kinds of techniques used to achieve particular visual effects. Finally, Henderson will show a detailed breakdown of the dam-breaking scene from Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, demonstrating how different elements of key frame animation, simulation, and rendering are combined in a real production shot.

  • December 1, 2009
    A Quick and Easy Way to Parallelize a Legacy Codebase with Intel® Threading Building Blocks (TBBs)
    Speaker: Bernard Laberge, Avid, Senior Principal Engineer (Bio)

    Bernard Laberge is a senior principal engineer in the video editors division at Avid. During his seven years with the company he has been actively involved in the replacement of the legacy video processing engines used by Avid editors with a common hardware-abstracted, component-based video processing engine currently running on the CPU with SIMD optimized code, GPU, and dedicated hardware.

    Abstract:
    Learn how to overcome the limitations of a thread-based scheduler, including dealing with the absence of recursive parallelism support and the inefficient handling of unbalanced processing load. Bernard Laberge addresses how Avid resolved the expensive refactoring of their thread-based scheduler into a task-based solution by choosing Intel® Threading Building Blocks (TBBs). He explores how Avid was able to easily integrate the Intel TBBs into their video editor applications and more than 5 million lines of code.

  • December 15, 2009
    How to Use Intel® Parallel Studio to Streamline Code Development in a Multicore Environment
    Speaker: Matt Dunbar, Director for Performance Technology, SIMULIA (Bio)

    Matt Dunbar is the director for performance technology at SIMULIA. Since joining the company in 1993, he has worked on parallelization of the Abaqus suite of products, initially for shared memory architectures and more recently for distributed memory architectures. Dunbar has also been intimately involved in selecting both the hardware and software tools used in the development of the Abaqus product line.

    Abstract:
    Resolve elusive, costly multithreading errors quickly and efficiently with Intel® Parallel Studio. While many coding problems that lead to bugs in software applications are typically straightforward logic errors, errors in managing memory and in multithreading code can sometimes take weeks to months to diagnose and fix. Matt Dunbar explores how and why taking advantage of multicore processors through multithreaded code is critical for compute-intensive applications. While spotlighting his work on SIMULIA's Abaqus finite element solver, Dunbar addresses the need for multicore execution and shares his experiences using Intel Parallel Studio to streamline code development in a multicore environment.