Challenges in SOA Performance Testing

A system built using a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) consists of many different services that interact with each other to provide the system's functionality. Unlike the traditional stand-alone or client-server architecture, SOA separates functions as distinct services making them reusable and easily accessible over distributed networks. Moreover, SOA aims at a loose coupling of these business-level services. Manikanda Viswanathan explains why the traditional performance testing approach which is more application-centric will no longer yield good results. In traditional testing, each application is tested individually. These applications have few external dependencies and performance bottlenecks can be found, contained, and repaired more easily. In SOA testing, applications are distributed, highly dependent on one another, deployed on heterogeneous platforms, and often have availability challenges. While exploring these challenges, Mani presents a simple approach to test SOA applications at the individual component level, at a service interface level and at the end-user experience level using industry standard SOA testing and load testing tools.