Addressing Challenges of Testing SOA based Applications
Writing by AppLabs on Tuesday, 24 of February, 2009 at 1:48 pm
SOA in details
SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) is an Architectural style, which is modular, shareable, distributable, and deals with defined interfaces. It is about the design of the business, focus on Business Processes / Business Driven; hence it is more than Web services!
Prior to SOA, a user or Financial Advisor needed to get into the business process of logging in, checking the credit, and getting into the loan quotation service and so on, which in response led to legacy/third party segment, i.e., the communication was possible via mainframe and its network, but now with the advent of SOA and Web Services we have an interface to the outside world.
The business risks involved are, increased costs, early joiner – when there is little knowledge, no business commitment and resource available, no overall picture of business processes and ability to prioritize, quality – single point of failure, the industry decides that the future isn’t SOA after all!
While the benefits are: reuse of code, reduced IT spend, and above all faster time to market.
Main Challenges and tips to face them
SOA fundamentally changes the traditional testing approach, and hence the testers face challenges like, scope and boundaries, changes to composition of test team, increased knowledge required of testers, technical knowledge (WSDL), domain knowledge, use of tools, governance and the need for standards, and increased focus on negative and non-functional testing.
To address the challenges, the Test Design should follow a top down approach, Test Execution should follow a Bottom up Approach starting at the individual service level, and the current testing methodologies should be extended to support the use of services in an SOA solution. Adding to it, the testers need to execute Functional and Regression Testing, Performance Testing, Security Testing, Integration Testing, and Interoperability, by meticulously planning the process.
Conclusion
SOA is here to stay for the foreseeable future and this will mean a different relationship between IT and the business and as a result testing will need to change. Hence, SOA will change the organizational testing methodology, and hence the testers’ skills and the approach will need to change accordingly.
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