Creating EVT & IVT's using VS 2005 Test Suite

So i am back after a long break. Just to give you a little bit of background i recently shifted from Microsoft PSS (where i used to support ASP.NET and IIS) to Micorosft IT Division as a developer where we create solutions for our valuable Microsoft Partners. So let's get started now:

So you must be thinking what these terms EVT & IVT means. Since i am in application development now i will also be sharing best practices revolving around application developement, deployment etc.. So the very first step before deploying any application is to run EVT (Environment Verification Test) and IVT (Installation Verification Test).

EVT: It will basically consists of tests to verify the environment (both hardware and software) under which your application is subjected to run. For example, knowing hardware requirement, HDD space check, OS check, IIS, SQL Server etc.

IVT: It would consists of tests to verify whether application successfully installed or not. For example, various configurations for proper functioning of the application are correct, required virtual directories exists on website, required DB's exists on SQL server, web services are getting back the results etc..

Advantage is obvious i.e. after running EVT's and IVT's and correcting the faults encountered during the course we are sure application will run fine where it is deployed and no more obvious surprises on production environment. EVT's and IVT's reminds me of TDD (Test Driven Development) and what can be better then creating these set of checks in form of test cases by leveraging VS 2005 Team Suite for Tester. Earlier i used Nunit and can be downloaded from sourceforge.net. Best part is we can still consume the test assembly generated by VS 2005 Test Suite in Nunit if we dont want to install the complete suite on the server where checks will be performed.

Hope that helps ...
--Parag