Architecture-based testing of service-oriented applications in distributed systems

详细信息    查看全文

• 作者：Changsup Keum ; ^{cskeum@kaist.ac.kr} ; Sungwon Kang ^{sungwon.kang@kaist.ac.kr} ; Myungchul Kim ^{mck@kaist.ac.kr}
• 关键词：Service-oriented application testing ; Service composition ; Test architecture ; Architecture-based testing
• 刊名：Information and Software Technology
• 出版年：2013
• 出版时间：July, 2013
• 年：2013
• 卷：55
• 期：7
• 页码：1212-1223
• 全文大小：2481 K

文摘

Context

Testing distributed service-oriented applications (SOAs) is more challenging than testing monolithic applications since these applications have complex interactions between participant services. Test engineers can observe test results only through a front service that handles request messages sent by test engineers. Message exchanges between participant services are hidden behind the front service and cannot be easily observed or controlled through the front service. For this reason, testing SOAs suffer from limited observability and controllability problem.

Objective

This paper proposes a new test method that is architecture-based and exploits interaction architecture of a SOA. The proposed test method alleviates the limited observability and controllability problem by employing test architecture, thereby facilitating test execution and analysis through monitoring and controlling message exchanges.

Method

Our proposed method derives an interaction architecture from the specification of a SOA. Test architectures can be designed from the derived interaction architecture by extending it with additional test elements. At the same time, architecture-neutral test scenarios are automatically generated from the test model that is constructed from the specification. Our method combines test architecture information with the test scenarios to obtain architecture-enabled test scenarios under the selected test architectures. Finally, architecture-enabled test execution and analysis are conducted in the real network environment.

Results

The efficacy of the proposed method is demonstrated with an industrial case study, which shows that it is practical and effective for testing SOAs. Even though our method increases an additional test generation effort owing to test architecture, it is counterbalanced by higher fault detection rate and faster fault locating time.

Conclusion

The main benefit of our approach is that using test architecture it enhances testability of SOA by increasing observability and controllability through monitoring and controlling message exchanges. Our architecture-based test method enables test engineers to detect faults efficiently and also reduce fault locating time significantly.