Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality

Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality
Developer(s) Rational Software
Stable release
8.1 / Summer 2009
Development status Active
Operating system Microsoft Windows Linux
Type test automation tools
License Proprietary
Website www.ibm.com/software/products/en/servicetest

Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality is a tool for automated functional testing of web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA) software components from the Rational Software division of IBM. It is primarily used by Software Quality Assurance teams to perform automated regression testing of web services.

Overview

IBM Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality is a tool for ensuring the quality of service-oriented architecture (SOA) based applications. Using Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality, users can interact with one or several services under test via a graphical user interface and create a sequence of service operation calls to define a test scenario. IBM Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality is an Eclipse based test tool.

Web Service Testing Process

The following is an overview of the process of web service validation with IBM Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality

Test Creation

Tests are created using the IBM Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality recording mechanism, the Generic Service Client. The Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality recorder captures all transactions between web services client application or the generic service client and an application server. The resulting test is displayed as a tree view, where each branch of the tree represents a client service operation call and response.

Generic Service Client

The Generic Service Client is a component of Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality which enable users to interact with web services and other service-oriented architecture (SOA) software components under test. Users point the Generic Service Client to the service interface definition, such as a Web Services Description Language (WSDL) file. The Generic Service Client then automatically and dynamically creates a graphical user interface that exposes the operations of that service. The Generic Service Client can also retrieve service interface definition from an Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI) server.

Test Editing

Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality tests are not represented as code. Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality tests are represented as a tree view, where each branch of the tree represents a client service operation call and response. To edit the test, the user selects menu options which allow for insertion of loops, "if-then" type decision structures, and response verification. Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality offers many options for validating web service responses, from static baselines to the use of regular expression patterns for validating dynamic data. These methods automatically parse Web service responses to ensure proper SOA functionality. Should a custom coding solution be required, users can insert Java code modules to perform complex computations.

Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality performs automatic test editing for data pooling and data correlation. With datapooling, Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality automatically edits tests to separate test data from the test actions. Test data, such as a user login id and password values that were typed in by the user during the test, are stored in a spreadsheet like datapool. This enables to reuse the same test scenario with several sets of data values, to perform data-driven testing .

Data correlation is the process by which Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality ensures continuity between test actions. Often in a test a value is created at one step of a test and subsequently used during a later step. Whenever such a value is created, Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality stores that value in a variable, and uses that variable later on the test when the data is accessed. This prevents hard coding of values, and ensures that tests will play back correctly in dynamic data environments.

Service Stubbing

Service Stubbing with Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality enables the testing of your SOA application prior to the creation of all services. Test stubs are automatically generated from WSDL files and will be automatically deployed before test execution. After the generation of service stubs, users can modify stub behavior to meet specific testing scenarios. For example, simulation of error conditions such as an external service being unavailable or answering with a fault message are typical uses.

Test Reporting

Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality offers a customizable functional test report which provides a global test verdict, and shows all the executed test steps, service operation calls and answers, as well as the detailed results of each verification points.

Release history

The following is a release history of IBM Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality.

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