I've been studying the source code of the DSpace Lightweight Network Interface (LNI) for a few days. The example client code is referred to as a Smoke Test , which sounds suspicious to me. I googled today and here's my findings: MSDN: Guidelines for Smoke Testing : In software, the term smoke testing describes the process of validating code changes before the changes are checked into the product’s source tree . After code reviews, smoke testing is the most cost effective method for identifying and fixing defects in software. Smoke tests are designed to confirm that changes in the code function as expected and do not destabilize an entire build. NoteNote The term smoke testing originated in the hardware industry. The term derived from this practice: After a piece of hardware or a hardware component was changed or repaired, the equipment was simply powered up. If there was no smoke, the component passed the test. Keywords: languages , programming , deployment