System Integration Testing Part III

In this blog we will discuss testing types in details. How we can test web services.
How to test Web Services
There is not interface available to test web services. In some case you have the interface but in normal cases you don’t have any interface. Following are few testing techniques that can be used for web services testing.
Testing Techniques

• Functional testing
• Regression testing
• Security Testing
• Load/stress testing
• Monitoring

Tools than can be used for Web Services Testing

• SOAPUI
• LOADUI

Functional Testing

• To ensure that the functionality of the web service is as expected
• Does your web service support all the communications protocols it is meant to
• Does your web service implement security/authentication as it is meant to Because your web service can be accessed by clients that you can’t control, what happens if they make requests you aren’t expecting
• Since no interface is available to test web services so to test web services an open source tool SOAPUI is available for Functional Testing
• Analyses the service logs to find the issues

Example:
If you have a web service that take two inputs(a, b) and divides two numbers, you will verify

• Does it give the expected result?
• If you pass in a 0 as the denominator, does it handle this correctly

Regression testing

• A regression test is normally a cut-down version of a functional test
• Its aim is to ensure that the web service is still working between builds or releases

Example:
If your development team has changed the method that divides two numbers, does that method still work? Does the method that multiplies two numbers still work? Is the performance still affordable?
Load/stress testing

• The aim of load/stress testing is to find how your web service scales as the number of clients accessing it increases
• LOADUI(an open source tool)  or Load Runner can be used for performance testing.

Monitoring
Once your web service is live and being used by real clients, you will need to keep an eye on it

• Is it still working?
• Are response times adequate?
• At what times of day is it busiest?
• See the service logs regularly

In next part we will explore the tool(SOAPUI/LOADUI) that is used to test web services.