The agitation option runs many more tests in the background. The additional tests are created on the fly, often throwing random values at variables and functions. It is a purely quality-oriented activity. When a test fails, AgitarOne reports the sequence of functions and the values passed to them so that the developer can trace through the code to see why the failing value was not handled as expected.

The Bottom Line AgitarOne 4.1.1 Agitar Software, agitar.com Very Good  8.1 criteria score weight Capability 9 30% Ease-of-use 8 20% Performance 8 15% Scalability 8 15% Documentation 6 10% Value 8 10% Cost: Subscription pricing depends on project size and number of developers; starts at $37,500 per year for 8 to 10 developers Platforms: Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Linux (kernel 2.4.22 or later); requires developers to use Eclipse Bottom Line: AgitarOne is a capable, useful, and well-integrated tool that generates unit tests automatically, runs additional tests in the background, enforces code rules, and reports the results in an elegant dashboard format. However, this first release (despite the version number) is fragile in several ways, and it relies on documentation of insufficient quality. About our Reviews and Scoring Methodology

Click for larger view.

The code-rules module is a stripped-down, static code analyzer that looks for violations of coding standards and a few suspect constructions. It relies largely on the open source Checkstyle tool to do most of the verifying, although Agitar has added some suggested rules of its own. The results of the scan (and those of agitation and testing) are reported in Eclipse and also on the dashboard hosted on the AgitarOne server.

One step forward and back
AgitarOne is a unique product; however, it needs to mature some more before it can be freely recommended. Installing the product created curious difficulties that were tough even for Agitar engineers to diagnose. In addition, running AgitarOne and exploiting its features was made unnecessarily hard by poor (but copious) documentantion marred by invalid URLs, mistaken names for files, procedures with missing steps, and other gaps. Given the unique nature of the product, this carelessness can become a showstopper, because there is no "common knowledge" users can rely on to find their way.

In addition, the product had a surprising brittleness to it, given that Agitar has been selling its core technology for years. The server unaccountably would become unavailable or lose HTML pages. When files or configurations were not as expected, the software would exhibit unusual symptoms that were at times far afield from the originating cause, making correction unnecessarily difficult. An upcoming release is expected to address many of these issues.

Finally, there are a few limitations that users should recognize: to use AgitarOne you must use Eclipse, an unattractive option to some developers. In addition, the product generates unit tests only for JUnit 3.8.1. JUnit 4 and other unit-testing frameworks are not supported, nor are languages other than Java.

These caveats aside, AgitarOne is an easy-to-use workgroup product that greatly facilitates the use of unit tests and helps sites get as much benefit as possible from this activity. The result is shorter QA and debugging cycles and much better predictability of the software process. For many sites with large, important Java projects, this solution is attractive and compelling. All such sites are likely to derive value that far exceeds the cost.

Existing Agitar customers will eventually be forced to migrate, as the company is phasing out its Agitator product. Those customers will like what they find, especially the unit-test generation and the dashboard, but they should allow the product to mature some before beginning the transition.