Hello

How to set-up automated test-bench of repeatable tests?
In the tests: process #1 talks to process#2 via TCP/IP ; and we need to
somehow check whether the communication is successful. By "successful" i
mean: process#2 understood correctly (this would mean that, most likely,
code for both sending and receiving is working OK).

Where by "process" i mean operating system's process (task).

------
Longer version of my question ( in case the above version is unclear or
didn't provide enough details ) :

What are the "best practices" and tools when it comes to testing Java
application/library that has to run in multiple processes and communicate
via TCP/IP?

I seek a way for setting it in an automatic (preconfigured) way ( "click",
wait, see results; as it is the case with JUnit ). I suspect, that JUnit
does not support multi-process testing.

The most frequent functionality that i would like to test: process #1
informs process #2 via TCP/IP about something; process #2 receives the
information and stores its interpretation of the (parsed) message; now we
have to check whether "process #2 received and interpreted the message
correctly" i.e the interpretation by process #2 is correct and contents of
sent message are correct (i.e. the protocol is working correctly at both
ends).

Is it possible to setup such an automated "test bench" ( or "test
harness" ? ) in, say, JUnit?
----- ( end of longer version :-) )

So far, after investigating for quite a long time, I've come across a
project named Pisces, which is described here :
http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2005/07/13/pisces.html?page=3
Bu it seems far less popular and maintained and IDE-supported than, say,
JUnit ; so perhaps i am missing something more obvious/popular.
I've also found lots of EJB/HTTP/HTML/Mock testing tools but i doubt these
would be useful for the purpose that i've described.

Maybe some combination of Ant+JUnit+RMI+{maybe some
Eclipse/Netbeans/otherIde plugin} would be suitable?
I would be glad to see a more targeted "inspiration"/tutorial instead of
getting in the risk of "reinventing the wheel" as this testing scenario
seems not much unusual and I hope there are well-known solutions.

TIA

KarolRvn

PS
Is it ok to post the same question to http://forum.java.sun.com/  ?