How can I improve my junit tests

Question

Right my junit tests look like a long story:

• I create 4 users
• I delete 1 user
• I try to login with the deleted user and make sure it fails

Answer 1

unit tests should - ideally - be independent, and able to run in any order. So, I would suggest that you:

• break up your tests to be independent
• consider using an in-memory database as the backend for your tests
• consider wrapping each test or suite in a transaction that is rolled back at the end
• profile the unit tests to see where the time is going, and concentrate on that

if it takes 8 minutes to create a few users and send a few messages, the performance problem may not be in the tests, rather this may be a symptom of performance problems with the system itself - only your profiler knows for sure!

[caveat: i do NOT consider these kinds of tests to be 'integration tests', though i may be in the minority; i consider these kinds of tests to be unit tests of features, a la TDD]