Web Services Regression Testing

Abstract

Summary. Service Oriented Architectures introduce a major shift of perspective in software engineering: in contrast to components, services are used instead of being physically integrated. This leaves the user with no control over changes that can happen in the service itself. When the service evolves, the user may not be aware of changes, and this can entail unexpected system failures.When a system integrator discovers a service and starts to use it, s/he may need to periodically re-test it to build confidence that i) the service delivers over the time the desired functionality and ii) at the same time it is able to meet Quality of Service requirements. Test cases can be used as a form of contract between a provider and the system integrators: this chapter describes an approach and a tool to allow users to run a test suite against a service to discover if functional and non-functional expectations are maintained over time. IntroductionA challenging issue for the verification and validation of service-oriented systems is the lack of control a system integrator has over the services s/he is using. System integrators select services to be integrated in their systems based on a mixture of functional and non-functional requirements. An underlying assumption is that the service will maintain its functional and non-functional characteristics while being used. However, behind any service there is a software system that undergoes maintenance and evolution activities. These can be due to the addition of new features, the evolution of the existing ones, or to corrective maintenance to cope with problems arisen during the service usage.Whilst the service evolution strategy is out of the system integrators control, any changes to a service may impact on all the systems using it. This is a relevant difference with respect to component-based development: when a component evolves, this does not affect systems that use previous versions of the component itself. Component-based systems physically integrate a copy of the component and, despite the improvements or bug fixing performed in the new component release, systems can continue to use an old version.

XML-manipulating test case prioritization for XML-manipulating services

“…Bai et al (2007) and Bai and Kenett (2009) further propose a framework to support this group testing proposal by enforcing check-in and check-out features of web service registries, and study how to prioritize risky (also known as harmful) test cases to be executed earlier. Dai et al (2007) and Di Penta et al (2007) propose to add contracts to service descriptions to serve as a kind of correctness criterion (or test oracle) to check test results. Chan et al (2005Chan et al ( , 2007 use metamorphic relations of applications to test stateless scientific web services.…”

Test Cases Reduction and Selection Optimization in Testing Web Services

“…In Penta et al 2007 [3] book chapter, and Bruno et al 2005 [6] paper, authors discussed issues and challenges related to regression testing in web services. They also proposed a test regression strategy for testing evolved web services based on Quality of Service (Qos) or Service Level Agreement (SLA) constraints.…”

A Safe Regression Testing Technique for Web Services Based on WSDL Specification

“…A change may occur in web service functionality or behavior with no interface change, specification will not change. But if a change occurs in interface, specification will also be changed [6]. Our focus is interface change.…”