- What would you like to see by way of improving the testing of StreamBase applications? Can you describe a workflow of unit testing that you expected to find?

I think you guys did a good job in building an interactive test environment. I especially like the feed simulator and the record and playback capabilities. However, it would be nice if one could also author automated unit tests. Basically one would define a test as a set of input tuples to one or more input streams or ports and a set of assertions about expected values at other output streams or ports. There should be a way to “hit a button” to run these tests at any time.

- Following up on your original post regarding the use of the text editor vs the graphical language; which one did you write this application in, after all? Did you try both, or even a mix using modules?

For now I stuck to the graphical approach exclusively. However, I just used the conversion tool to convert my sbapp to ssql so I could begin to gain some insight into the text language. In the process I noticed an error: “– WARN: Infinite windows are not supported in StreamSQL”. I also remember from the class that there are other cases where the graphical language is more powerful than the textual one. This strikes me as odd since they are basically just different syntaxes (XML vs. Enhanced SQL). It would seem that they should be equivalent in power in all respects since the backend must support the ultimate feature set.

My name is Eddie Galvez, co-founder engineer at StreamBase Systems, and lead for UI development. I found your blog and am delighted to be able to read another fresh and spontaneous public trial of our software, especially in light of the very real application you set as your goal.

I read your prose with an open mind, and your input is invaluable to myself personally, as well as more formally for product management. We take our design methodologies very seriously and an unassisted user experience like yours speaks volumes. I take pride in our software’s power, ease of use and usability and strive to maintain that edge over all other products like ours. Many of the issues you’ve seen, such as determining the end of a set of tuples, are inherent to complex event processing, and are areas of interest to us as we look to improve our product.

Now, I have my selfish motives for posting: I would love it if you could continue thinking out loud on some of the things you encountered while developing and testing your application, namely:

– What would you like to see by way of improving the testing of StreamBase applications? Can you describe a workflow of unit testing that you expected to find?

– Following up on your original post regarding the use of the text editor vs the graphical language; which one did you write this application in, after all? Did you try both, or even a mix using modules?

Finally, I have shared your blog with other architects here at StreamBase for both your positives and negatives, and language improvements on the roadmap are likely to make things better for you and everyone else, and I can only recommend you stay tuned to our future.

Best successes with the new world of streaming applications!

/ Eddie