I had been using XMLSimple to parse a bunch of XML input coming from Flex. The client discovered a sequence of events that would cause XMLSimple to stop parsing the CDATA from any XML until the server was restarted. After trying to debug what on Earth could be causing this issue and getting nowhere, I decided to just rip out XMLSimple and use the more battle hardened REXML for my parsing.

Lucky for me, I’d gone to the trouble to write good tests for these actions. It only took me a few minutes to completely change the way the handler was parsing the XML and, because I have a good test suite, I was able to confidently deploy the new version without introducing any new issues. Needless to say, the client was quite pleased. Thank you unit tests!