When/How to Unit Test CRUD applications?

Question

I've been hearing alot about unit testing lately.

What I'm trying to understand is how would one / should one go about unit testing a cruddy business app? (basically an app that writes data in / reads data out of a database).

Is unit testing even worth it in that scenerio or do you usually unit test more complicated things?

Thanks

Answer 1

Unit testing is about testing discrete units of code - a single method, no more.

The moment you go into CRUD, you are talking about testing network, IO, database and other things - this is beyond what unit testing is about. In this case, this is called integration testing (you are testing how your code integrates with other code/systems).

There is place for both types of testing (and other types - regression, performance etc...) in any software project, CRUD application or not.

Answer 2

If all your application does is CRUD, then there is no point in unit testing it. Now, if there is any kind of business logic manipulating the values as they come out of the db or validating them before them going in, yes, it is a good idea to build unit tests. Testing the CRUD part does not belong in unit testing IMO.