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Tips on Using Assertions

A key component of the B-unit testing framework is the ability to perform assertions. An assertion
describes the expected correctness of the state of a unit of code when it runs. Assertions include:

Input data for invoke activities

Replies from synchronous messages sent into the engine via the B-unit Send Message command

Values for alarm deadlines and durations

Assertions contain expected data and run against data from the process execution. The expected data for the assertion can be a text node, an element, or an imported element. The assertion can run against the entire message data or can use an XPath query to select a portion of the message data.

The B-unit engine validates messages for receives/replies/invokes. As such, it is unnecessary to do assertions on a full message. Instead, you can write assertions that focus on the portion of a message that tests logic within your process. This type of focused assertion makes your unit tests more readable and reduces the amount of work necessary if the message definitions ever change. For example, if you want to assert that the value of

rm:ProductGroupId

100

, the following query provides you with the most flexibility:

<abu:assertEquals part="p" 
    query="//rm:ProductGroupId/text()">100</abu:assertEquals>

In this example, note the use of the descendant axis in the query. This selects the

ProductGroupId

element anywhere in the message. While this lack of specificity is not always a good idea, keep in mind that the B-unit engine is already validating the structure of a message so if the element were misplaced, this is reported in schema validation.

Here are some good uses of assertions:

Asserting the input for an invoke when that input was produced by one or more complex data mappings within the process

Assertion proves that a specific path was taken within the process in the case where there is conditional logic in the process in the form of transition conditions or if/else activities

It is probably not worth doing an assertion on something you would get with schema validation or with a large literal assertion when there's only a small part of the message that is worth asserting.

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