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Introduction

Hamaxagoga was written as a tool to produce huge, random test XML files based on XML Schemas. Other requirements were:

• Resulting XML files are valid
• Multiple files can be generated
• The user can indicate the size of the XML file

Take me to the docs !

The ant task is documented here, the javadocs you can download via sourceforge or generate it from the code.

Status and warning

Hamaxagoga was written over a period of 2-3 years, in which every now and then some code was added. It was for the author also a test vehicle to try out certain Jakarta libraries.

So, Hamaxagoga is neither complete nor state-of-the-art. In fact, if there are other applications with similar objectives, let me know, and I will publish their project homes here.

Fuzzy Testing

Hamaxagoga is a test data generation tool that can be used for socalled fuzzy testing. This works as follows:

• Create some crap
• Feed it to the program
• Watch what happens.

In Hamaxagoga, the crap is XML, based on certain XML Schemas.

Some pointers to fuzzy testing:

• Ballista, which is used a.o. to test Win32 api and command line utilities
• Fuzz Testing of Application Reliability

Sample

The next piece of XML is generated by Hamaxagoga from the CAP standard from OASIS:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <ns1:valueName xmlns:ns1="urn:oasis:names:tc:emergency:cap:1.1">sL2J1KtXvPSocyVF6</ns1:valueName>

Hamaxagoga takes a random root element (the default option; Hamaxagoga does have the option to provide the root element which must be used) and creates a piece of XML from it. In this case valueName, which is just a simple element and which datatype is an XML string. Hamaxagoga subsequently generates a random string as content.

Plans

Amongst Others:

• Fix all missing parts
• More documentation, e.g. on the ant task
• Add XML Catalogs to ant task

Use with Ant

The easiest way is to download the ant distribution. Extract all jar files in the lib directory of Ant. Then in your build.xml, add something like:

<taskdef name="xmlGen" classname="org.taHjaj.wo.hamaxagoga.GeneratorTask" />

In a target you can then use:

<xmlGen xsd="${xsd}" destDir="tmp2" count="100"/>

Use from another tools and applications

TBD.