SOA Testing Challenges and Proven Practices

The best thing about Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is its flexibility-a heterogeneous computing environment in which different services and service providers can use different technologies; loose coupling of components to allow any application to make use of service capabilities; and ad-hoc integration of applications within and across organizations. However, from a tester's perspective, these very advantages make the testing of Web services and SOA-based applications highly complex. Testing Web services through the front-end of applications is usually ineffective. Tracking defects to their source is difficult because of the layered application designs. Instead, you must design and execute mostly non-functional tests for compliance to standards, interoperability, security, reliability, and performance. Join Guruprasad Gopalakrishnan to find out about the challenges inherent in SOA testing, discover the tools available to help you in your quest, and go home with a "tested" approach you can use to optimally confirm SOA operations.