<this is cross-posted intentionaly to firebird-devel and IB-Java>

Hi all,

here's a (very) brief description about my experiences with Sun's JDBC test suite that Mark has copied to ftp://firebird.sourceforge.net/pub/firebird/test/ :

Pros:
- setup was no big deal - works ok with InterClient/InterBase
- it's possible to add new, specialized test cases without to much effort
- SQL statements for the test cases can be put into resource files. This holds true for the provided "standard" test cases as well. Statements that fail due to e.g. unsupported data types can be changed to some degree
- since it is pure Java it can be used on every Java-supported platform

Cons:
- not open-source, worst yet the sources are not even available
- no documentation available
- harness can not be easily extended (e.g. multi-threaded testing, performance tests ...)
- debugging with provided "standard" test cases not possible (no source)
- harness does not store connection values (userid, password, url) and does not accept them as start parameter - you have to type them in from scratch anytime you start the harness.

Conclusion:
- should get us started but questionable as a permanent solution
- we could contact Sun and ask for the sources although I don't have real hopes here ;-)
- we should consider JUnit (www.junit.org)and write our own test cases (or better yet get them from Inprise)

Regards,
Torsten

P.S. I'm off for holidays (10 days) in about 5 hours.