Selected for materials at GTAC (Google Test Automation Conference) 2013 — Google, New York City.
Our article on integration test code coverage was selected to be included in the GTAC 2013 conference materials. GTAC was an invitation-only event with a highly selective audience — the event photos give a sense of how intimate the crowd was. We were one of a small number of companies invited to attend alongside the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Expedia, and Mozilla. We weren’t presenting on stage, but having our work recognised and included in Google’s flagship test automation conference was a milestone.
Overview
Code coverage for unit tests is straightforward — your test runner instruments the code and reports what was executed. But integration tests? At the time, there was no way to get code coverage from integration tests. You could tell which endpoints were called, but not which lines of code inside those APIs were actually exercised during the test run.
We solved that. Using code injection, we instrumented the application so that when our automated integration tests ran against the live APIs, we captured real code coverage data — not just endpoint hits, but actual line and branch coverage inside the API code. For the first time, we could see exactly which code paths our integration tests exercised and, more importantly, which ones they missed entirely. We could also use this data to prioritise test investment where it actually mattered — not guessing which paths were covered, but knowing.
This was novel at the time. The existing tooling simply didn’t support it. Coverage tools were designed for in-process unit tests. Our solution bridged the gap — running tests externally against real APIs while capturing the same granular coverage data you’d expect from a unit test runner.
Event Details
Conference: GTAC — Google Test Automation Conference 2013
Location: Google, New York City
Date: April 23–24, 2013
Format: Two-day, invitation-only conference
Involvement: Article selected for conference materials; invitation-only attendee
Notable companies present: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Expedia, Mozilla, Sauce Labs