A Unified test framework for continuous integration testing of SOA solutions

Abstract

The quality of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions is becoming more and more important along with the increasing adoption of SOA. Continuous Integration Testing (CIT) is an effective technology to discover bugs as early as possible. However, the diversity of programming models used in an SOA solution and the distribution nature of an SOA solution pose new challenges for CIT. Existing testing frameworks more focus on the integration testing of applications developed by a single programming model. In this paper, a unified test framework is proposed to overcome these limitations and enable the CIT of SOA solutions across the whole development lifecycle. This framework is designed following the Model Driven Architecture (MDA). The information of an executable test case is separated into two layers: the behavior layer and the configuration layer. The behavior layer represents the test logic of a test case and is platform independent. The configuration layer contains the platform specific information and is configurable for different programming models. An extensible and pluggable test execution engine is specially designed to execute the integration test cases. A global test case identifier instrumentation approach is used to merge the distributed test case execution traces captured by ITCAM - an IBM integrated management tool. A verification approach supporting Boolean expression and back-end service interaction verification is proposed to verify the test execution result. Initial experiments have shown the effectiveness of this unified test framework. © 2009 IEEE.