Substituiertesten

Substituiertesten, a German term roughly translating to "substituted testing," refers to a methodology in software development where real-world data or components are replaced with simulated or artificial equivalents during the testing phase. This approach is commonly employed to isolate specific parts of a system for testing, to overcome limitations of accessing live environments, or to test scenarios that are difficult or expensive to reproduce in a live setting.

The primary goal of substituiertesten is to enable focused and efficient testing. By substituting dependencies, developers can ensure that the unit or module under test behaves as expected without being influenced by the behavior or availability of external systems, databases, or services. This allows for faster test execution and more reliable identification of defects within the component being tested.

Common substitution techniques include the use of mock objects, stubs, and fakes. Mock objects are designed to verify interactions between objects, ensuring that a particular method is called with the expected arguments. Stubs provide predefined responses to method calls, enabling the test to proceed even if the real component is not available or produces an error. Fakes are simplified implementations of components that mimic their behavior but are not intended for production use.

Substituiertesten is a crucial practice in modern software engineering, particularly in agile methodologies and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. It contributes to building more robust and reliable software by facilitating thorough and isolated testing of individual components before they are integrated into larger systems.