As most of my long time readers know, I'm a die hard TestDriven.Net guy. I've known Jamie since meeting him back at PDC 2003, and have been promoting his Visual Studio integrated testing tool since it came out. So, to get me to blog about another Visual Studio testing tool is quite an achievement, and they didn't even ping me to try the tool. I found out about it thanks to a GoogleAd that was on my site (yes I actually read the Ads on my page). Over the weekend I noticed the ad, and opened a new browser, typed in the url, downloaded and then installed the tool.
TestMatrix is by Exact Magic, which is the rebranded Mailframe and their Testrunner tool. I really like the new tool windows that they have created. You get a nice Test Explorer, Coverage Profiler, Performance Profiler, and Memory Profiler, along with an integrated spellchecker for your Code Window, and a tear off window (which is great for multi monitor setups). The spell check while coding is cool, but I'm not a fan of squiggly lines under my acronyms all the time. It takes a bit to get use to the squiggly lines that are not compile errors. FxCop has building spell checking, but having it in the IDE is pretty cool. The Test Explorer is a great addition, and I like it better than the VSTS Test Manager. Integrated Code Coverage is also nice to have within Visual Studio, and besides seeing all the statistics in the Coverage Explorer, it will also add hot spot indicators to your code window (which is a nice touch). I do find the amount of color in the hot spot area of the code window to be a little overwhelming, but I think with some feedback from the community, that can be cleaned up. The Perf and Memory Explorers are nice, and can give some hints to the developer on potential perf and memory issues. But, I'm not 100% sold on its value with unit testing. Sometimes the only way to test that stuff is with stress testing, which is a little different than unit testing. But, it is nice to have it around, so you can refer to it early in the development process.
So, I definitely like the tool. At $129, it is a little more expensive than the professional license for TestDriven.Net (currently at $95), but TestDriven.Net has a free version for personal use. I think that in the end, developers are in a win-win situation here, since TestMatrix has definitely added a bit of competition to the test driven framework toolset, and in the end we will wind up with better tools thru that competitive environment (plus push the Visual Studio Team System guys too). As I have said in my previous post for my Visual Studio Extensibility webcast, I see this space as a ripe one for micro ISVs to jump in, extend Visual Studio, and make a little money.