Testing Your Application
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Testing your code is a fundamental part of building a Microsoft® Office XP application. Thorough testing will save you time and effort later on.
In general, you probably find you test code as you go to make sure that each part of the application works as expected before you move onto the next part. In addition, it is a good idea to test the application thoroughly when you are done building it to find things that you missed and to try new or unexpected scenarios. If you have access to other computers, test your application there to make sure it behaves as expected on different system configurations.
When you have tested the application yourself, get someone else to test it as well. Ideally, you would recruit another developer or a professional tester, but if that is not an option, have your customers begin testing the application.
Before you deploy your application to all users, choose a subset of users to act as beta testers. Have them keep track of all the bugs they encounter — how they caused the bug, what they expected the application to do, and what it actually did. You can log run-time errors from within the application, either in a text file on the users' computers or to a centrally located database.
Finally, consider how you will deal with a serious bug should one be discovered after you have deployed your application fully. If your application includes a file that might have to be modified for a bug fix — for example, an .mdb file that is the front end for a database application — you have little choice but to distribute a new version of that file to all users to fix the bug. If your application is Web-based, however, you might be able to fix the bug in the Web page on the Web server; the next time a user accesses that Web page, the user will see the new version containing the bug fix.
See Also
Designing Applications | The Design Process | Which Technologies Should You Use? | Thinking About User Interface Design | Designing Code for Reusability | Security Considerations | Application Deployment