Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Testing Composite
Applications
In this chapter, we will focus on the tools in JDeveloper and the SOA Suite that will
assist you in testing the components of your SOA application. The basic principles
of testing are the same in SOA as in other software development approaches. You
start by testing the lowest level components and gradually build up to a complete
system test before moving into user acceptance testing. You may also be required to
undertake some form of performance testing.
We will begin our discussion by looking at the manual testing of individual
components and services in the SOA Suite. We will then investigate the importance
of repeatable testing before moving on to discuss automated testing and the testing
framework available in the Oracle SOA Suite. Finally, we will discuss how a system
may be performance tested.
Tests can be run in either of the two fashions. They can be run manually by a
dedicated testing team or there can be automated tests. Manual testing tends to
run only when the software is deemed almost ready for release due to the cost of
hiring people to run the tests. Automated tests are preferred as they potentially
allow the test suites to be run on all the intermediate builds of software, providing
management with a heartbeat of the robustness of the release under development.
We will take a look at the support provided for both models of testing within the
SOA Suite.
SOA Suite testing model
The SOA Suite has two distinct methods of testing SOA artifacts. They may be
tested via a test service client or in a repeatable fashion through the SOA Suite
test framework. In either case, it is necessary, at the very least, to generate the
appropriate input data to the artifact being tested.
