Having somehow made it to week 4 of the openSAP course about
ABAP Unit Testing it becomes rather apparent that this is way above my still rather rudimentary grasp of ABAP OO - see
my earlier post about those particular struggles. Heck, I'm still not really clear about what "Interfaces" are needed for, so - first things first - I'll need a much better understanding about all things ABAP OO before trying to tackle Unit Testing. So for now, I'm putting my hopes on
jjamese.mcdonough book "Object-Oriented Design with ABAP" he pointed me to in
a comment recently. As of this writing I haven't yet progressed past page 18 but so far so good - I'm at least not lost yet!
Having said that, it should come as a big surprise if I tell you, that I already skipped most of the exercise in week 3 and haven't even tried to tackle the ones for week 4 as this is getting too abstract for me - and fast. And it's not just the ABAP OO stuff itself. There is also way too much new and - to me - rather randomly chosen terminology to take in. Out of "Stub", "Spy" (why not go for "007"?), "Fake" (which in the age of "Fake news" has quite a negative ring to it!), "Mock", and "Dummy" only the last one really makes sense to me in the given context.
In addition, it just doesn't feel quite right to first having to tweak the product code in order to then be able to test some parts of it via unit testing. Having to do that, basically interferes with what was originally specified the code should do. Not to mention that it adds quite some complexitiy especially if it involves having to create local interfaces. It might be a different kettle of fish if you are creating something completely new from scratch where ABAP Unit Testing is one of the defined requirements. But, frankly, I don't see anybody investing time and money into re-engineering already existing code if it involves efforts like those shown in the lectures.
I did the assignment for week 4 but it already involved quite some guessing. I might still try to complete the course by at least watching the videos for the final two weeks and trying to get some of the answers in the assignments and the final exam right. Not sure, however, if I'll be able to keep up at all as I'll be on vacation in Vienna next week where most of my time will be spent by attending the
European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2018, obviously something as far removed from anything SAP-, ABAP- or OO-related as it can get (but that's quite a different topic and story ?)!
