Exploring the Test Driven Development of an Information Retrieval System

Abstract

Today's society is heavily driven by data intensive systems, whose application promises immense benefits. However, this only applies when they are utilized correctly. Yet these types of applications are highly susceptible to errors. Consequently, it is necessary to test them comprehensively and rigorously. One method that has an especially high focus on test coverage is the test driven development (TDD) approach. While it generally has a rather long history, its application in the context of data intensive systems is still somewhat novel. Though, rather recently, a microservice-based test driven development concept has been proposed for the big data domain. The publication at hand explores its feasibility regarding the application in an actual project. For this purpose, a prototypical, microservice based information retrieval system is implemented in a test driven way with particular consideration for scalability.