Forum Discussion

Wamboo's avatar
Wamboo
Community Hero
6 years ago

Project without NameMapping

Hey,   We write a project for an application written in Delphi which is a monolith. The application has been developed for over 20 years and its size is huge. In the project we are using NameMa...
Name Mapping
  • AlexKaras's avatar
    AlexKaras
    6 years ago

    Hi,

     

    To add to what was said by Lino:

     

    > SVN, GIT working in a few people 

    Only script unit files can be merged with the reasonable risk level. Though even this is not recommended. All other project files must not be merged by any means. Thus one of the most important tasks for you will be to split test code between different script units and assign tasks to people in a way that minimizes concurrent changes. Merging is a price that is paid for distributed development and must be avoided as much as possible.

     

    > Why use NameMapping?

    Strictly speaking, you should use not NameMapping, but Aliases. NameMapping is just a translation table between the physical objects layout of your tested application and logical organization of same objects convenient for your test code.

     

    > Example:
    > a) without NameMapping
    > var Edit = Sys.Process("pulse").VCLObject("LogOnForm").VCLObject("GroupBox").VCLObject("UsernameEdit");
    > b) with NameMapping
    > var Edit = Aliases.impuls.wndLogOnForm.Panel.Edit;

     

    More correct example would be:

    For version A of tested application:

    a) without NameMapping
    var Edit = Sys.Process("pulse").VCLObject("LogOnForm").VCLObject("GroupBox").VCLObject("UsernameEdit");
    b) Your test code with Aliases:
    var Edit = Aliases.impuls.wndLogOnForm.UserName; // intermediate panel was excluded as it does not matter for test code

     

    Now for version B of tested application:

    a) without NameMapping
    var Edit = Sys.Process("pulse").VCLObject("LogOnForm").VCLObject("LoginUsingADGroupBox").VCLObject("GroupBox").VCLObject("LoginCredentials").DevExpressObject("UserLogin");
    b) with Aliases:
    var Edit = Aliases.impuls.wndLogOnForm.UserName; // <== Aliased name remained not changed because only NameMapping translation table had to be adjusted for the new objects structure.

     

    From the above example it should be obvious that with Aliases (and proper configurations of NameMapping)test code can remain the same for different versions of tested application.

     

    > If the NameMapping file grows to a large size, is it a performance problem?

    Yes it is. Thus not everything must be mapped. Best practice is to create a 'sceleton' map of your tested application and use created mapped objects as anchors for dynamic objects search via .FindXXX() methods.

     

LinoTadros's avatar
LinoTadros
Community Hero

I recommend you use Name Mapping with Delphi applications.

It is not only shortning the name, that would have been silly, if that was the only benefit.

For the example you gave:

Sys.Process("pulse").VCLObject("LogOnForm").VCLObject("GroupBox").VCLObject("UsernameEdit");

 

What if you have that line 100 times all over your units and then R&D decides to change the UsernameEdit Control in Delphi from being a Textbox to a 3rd party editor of some kind?  Then you will have to go and change that in 100 places in your code to comfirm with the new changes.  With Name Mapping, that change needs to happen in one place only in the Name Mapping window and the actual code is never touched.

 

Also, Name Mapping is NOT the job of all members of the team to maintain, that would be a bad decision.  ONE person on the team needs to be the Name Mapping person for the project and then check in the .tcnm file, into source control, representing Name Mapping so that the other members of the team check it out and use it.  Otherwise, the team will spend so much time merging the file every day and waste a lot of time.

 

Hope that helps

-Lino

Wamboo's avatar
Wamboo
Community Hero
6 years ago

So in the application code I refer to the aliases of my elements from nameMapping and not to the elements of NameMapping itself, yes?

 

Can you show me an example?

 

What about performance if the NameMapping file is very large?