SOA introduces new technical complexities and challenges and makes testing a critical component of the development lifecycle. Teams need to think about:
- How do you know if the solution is ready?
- How do you know that it will scale to accommodate future needs?
- How do you know that you can actually get the business flexibility that SOA promises?
These are all questions testing should answer, but many test teams aren't experienced yet in testing service-oriented solutions.This article contains a set of recommendations, with a rationale, that will help you to mitigate the issues that arise in testing an SOA solution. The recommendations are based on experience gained over the last three years through involvement in a number of SOA projects.
The recommendations form the main part of the article, but first we'll provide an overview of what SOA is and what challenges the test team must consider.
