Building base in WebServices – Questions and Answers

In last few articles, we discussed about the challenges inIntegration testing and have briefed the concept of web services.

In this article, we will explain how web services are used for integration testing. I will break this article in short questions and answers to easily understand the concepts:

• What is Integration testing? – Validating Integration or connection between multiple components, modules or systems

• What are the different architecture options available for Integration? – The common architecture options are using SOA, ESB or EAI architecture.

• What are web services?  - A Web service is a URL-addressable resource returning information in response to client requests. Web services allow data exchange between applications in a platform independent manner. SOA are developed on web services using standard description (WSDL), discovery (UDDI) and messaging (SOAP).

• How are Web Services useful for Integration testing? - Web Services are services used to have seamless and smooth integration of one software with software over intranet or intranet. Web Services uses SOAP Protocol to communicate between the software which is XML over http protocol.

• What is WSDL? – Operations in a web services are described in XML format with the Web Service Description Language (WSDL). The WSDL consists of the URL for the web service, the methods in the web services, input parameter types and the return types of the web service methods.

• What is UDDI?  - Web services can be published and located using the Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) based registry of services.

• What is SOAP? – SOAP stands for Standard Object Access Protocol. SOAP is used as messaging standard for communicating with the web service. Wrapped in a SOAP Envelope, Message can be delivered across network using different protocols.

• What are top Challenges in testing web services?  - The major challenges in testing web services are:

o   Absence of a user Interface – Testing web services manually is a difficult task due to absence of user interface. To work with and testing web service, tester needs to have knowledge of specific tool .e.g.: Soap UI or jmeter and coding knowledge , e.g.: Groovy script

o   Actual Size of end User(s) for Internet Web Services – Performance testing should be done as early to validate proper response on soap request is received with varying load on web services. This again requires technical as well as tool knowledge and also identifying the expected load on web services is challenging.

o   Another challenge is maintaining different versions of Web Services as the old version of API are consumed. 

• What are the different testing tools to test web services? Some of the  testing tools to test web services are :

o   Jmeter

o   SOAP UI

o   Examine

Six challenges in Software Integration testing:

Integration testing has been changing over the time with the development of web services and change from integrating large application to smaller sets of application. In this article, we will focus on the major challenges in the system integration testing.

1.     Perception for Integration testing

The perception that Integration testing is testing the integration points between two units or system and verifying if the systems are working properly. This can actually cause issues when the actual user s) uses the application. Integration between different systems should not be oversimplified and should follow by an exhaustive testing considering collection of Systems integrated together as an environment focusing on different sets of inputs and corresponding outputs from other system.

2.     Our Individual systems are perfect, but together teamwork is missing.

Let us consider a banking system. There are multiple layers  Individual systems) for Front Office, middle Office and back office. While delivering the system, there may be possibility for systems developed by different parties. The integration testing should be done in a manner that the integration testing suite should be minimal impacted by change in other third party systems. While Creating individual systems, we should keep in mind, possible integrations with other software systems with which the software will interact, so as to minimize efforts and seamless integration of software with other soft wares

3.     Are we following the standards

 Consider transfer of banking instruction across the globe in the form of Swift messages? Suppose different banks have different messaging format, it would have been very difficult to integrate between different bank and virtually impossible to create an interconnected network between systems. Similar to this, we can follow standards of messages in the form of web services with predefined set of request and response messages. Use of Web Services also helps in integrating systems developed by different teams

4.  Complexity in managing Systems Integration

Test includes factor like Application, Platforms, Environments, data and resource availability for different application.

5.  Most of the legacy systems were isolated system with lot of functionality

Integration of new systems with the legacy system or between two different legacy systems requires a lot of changes in both the systems.

6.   In earlier systems, there was relatively small number of large application as compared to new system which focuses on large number of small applications. 

This results in changing approach for Integration testing with time.

Understanding the SOAP Part of SOAPUI

 In this series of article, we will discuss on frequently asked question in Soap UI, we may know how to test using SOAP UI, but at times, we do not have answers when explaining what the terms in SOAP means.  In the first article in the series of  learning SOAPUI through Question/Answers, we will discuss on the SOA, What a WSDL is , what a SOAP is and how service provider , service User and UDDI are related for a SOAP Web Service

SOAP UI is used to test Web Services and SOA architecture, but many of us do not have words to explain what a web service is or what SOA architecture is. So the first question is what are SOA Architecture and Web Service.

Answer:  SOA stands for Service Oriented Architecture. Application components provide services and interact with applications and other services through asynchronous message-based communication model in this architecture.

A service is a unit of work done by a service provider to achieve desired end results for a service consumer. SOAs are comprised of highly interoperable services. Web Service is a service that supports web standards. Web Services exposes the functionality and methods in WSDL format file. WSDL stands for Web Services description language.

Once a web services is created, it is published in the Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) registry repository.

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is an XML-based protocol to exchange messages between a requester and a provider of a Web Service. This protocol specifies conventions for packaging a message and its processing rules.

SOAPUI uses the SOAP Protocol to access response for a request for a SOAP Web services request. To understand how SOAPUI works. There are WSDL available for web services on UDDI; SOAP protocol specifies conventions for packaging a message and its processing rules. For e.g.: there are Web Services available on the UDDI with exposed functionalities and methods in WSDL files for the end users of the web services. Using SOAP UI, we request for the methods. On executing the request, we get a response based on input in the request.