Speaker Background
Sathyan S
SOA Testing — Validation Methodology and Automation Framework
Sathyan S — Senior Technical Analyst — CSS Corporation

As a Senior Technical Analyst at CSS, Sathyan has been working on various test automation projects, providing tool extensibility solutions and test automation framework design. With more than 6.5+ years of work experience in the IT industry from a developer to architect, he specializes in providing in consultative approach for test automation solutions. His research interests includes SOA testing, device based testing, security testing etc. He is also the author of “10 step test automation framework development” presented in APAC international testing conference ’07, Singapore. He holds a Masters degree in Computer Applications from the University of Madras, also holds a Microsoft Certification in ARADSA .net Architecture.

 

 

1. SOA Testing — 4 Phased Methodology and Test Automation Framework

1. Introduction
2. SOA Paradigm — How we need to address
    a. SOA
    b. Components of SOA
    c. Testing Challenges
    d. New approach to testing
3. Types of services - 4 phased validation methodology
4. Recommended Test Automation Framework
5. Key benefits
6. Going Forward
7. Q & A

Testing Needs

SOA promises benefits to organizations by providing a framework for building applications through re-usable components. This helps organizations evolve their IT solutions over time, as well as avoid costly integration and re-engineering efforts. SOA enables this by using service, rather than technology, as the basis of applications.

However, SOA based application development introduces new challenges in testing of applications built on top of them. By building applications based on loosely coupled services, the various phases of testing are required to address function as well as interaction complexities. Test architects are required to wear additional hats, including the ability to bring in business analyst and system engineering into the testing process.

Solution

SOA testing requires testing of individual components/services and interfaces that might bring together diverse systems across different platforms. This requires that we go beyond web-service testing, by bringing in awareness of interaction complexities, performance balancing and architecture differences into the testing phase. The tester must bring an understanding of those domains to the testing methodology to provide a truly end-to-end test framework. CSS recommends 4 phased “Service-Integration-System-Workflow” based testing methodology that might bring together diverse systems across different platform and validating SOA test considerations.

However, bringing such understanding piecemeal will not solve the problem of reliability in testing SOA applications. What is required is “An automated framework” that enables testers to minimize their think-time about the additional complexities, and provide them with abstractions that help them easily specify and test for the interaction and architecture complexities.

The intent of this paper is to present a 4 phased testing methodology and typical test automation framework to address the current industry challenges for SOA based testing.

Intended Audience and Benefits

Technical users will understand, how services need to categorized; validating services by relevant methodologies; identify and develop typical test automation framework components etc. Business users will understand how to develop inputs for validation and using the framework to drive the business validations. Management users would get good knowledge about what are the factors involved in SOA testing and would help them in deriving different ROI calculations on a long-term.