With the popularity of Web Services and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), quality assurance of SOA applications, such as testing, has become a research focus. Programs implemented by the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (WS-BPEL), which can be used to compose partner Web Services into composite Web Services, are one popular kind of SOA applications. The unique features of WS-BPEL programs bring new challenges into testing. A test case for testing a WS-BPEL program is a sequence of messages that can be received by the WS-BPEL program under test. Previous research has not studied the challenges of message-sequence generation induced by unique features of WS-BPEL as a new language. In this paper, we present a novel methodology to generate effective message sequences for testing WS-BPEL programs. To capture the order relationship in a message sequence and the constraints on correlated messages imposed by WS-BPEL's routing mechanism, we model the WS-BPEL program under test as a message-sequence graph (MSG), and generate message sequences based on MSG. We performed experiments for our method and two other techniques with six WS-BPEL programs. The results show that the message sequences generated by using our method can effectively expose faults in the WS-BPEL programs.

Selective regression testing involves retesting of software systems with a subset of the test suite to verify that modifications have not adversely impacted existing functions. The J2EE platform has come to dominate the commercial Java application market. Unlike standalone Java applications, J2EE applications also use configuration files to control the presentation, service, data access, and persistence layers. Traditional regression test selection approaches for standalone Java applications generate regression test suites by only deriving test cases that traverse the changed parts of pure Java classes and thus are generally insufficient for the regression testing scenarios of J2EE applications. This paper proposes an end-to-end regression test selection solution for J2EE applications by providing two unique features-hybrid test-case tracing and unified change identification-that are not addressed by existing approaches. An empirical study is presented to show that this approach can ensure change coverage, and reduce regression test cost for J2EE applications efficiently and effectively.

Selective regression testing involves retesting of software systems with a subset of the test suites to verify that modifications have not adversely impacted existing functions. Although this problem has been heavily researched, it has never been discussed in the context of SaaS (Software as a service). This paper presents the specific requirements, challenges and benefits in delivering regression test selection as a service (RTaaS). We will introduce how to design and implement a RTaaS platform. An implementation of RTaaS has been piloted and improved via several real projects in China market. The real customer cases illustrate that RTaaS is a cost-effective and easy way for software project teams to leap over technical barriers and tap into advanced regression testing selection technologies.

The quality of service oriented architecture (SOA) solutions is becoming more and more important along with the increasing adoption of SOA. Continuous integration testing (CIT) is an effective technology to discover bugs as early as possible. However, the diversity of programming models used in an SOA solution and the distribution nature of an SOA solution pose new challenges for CIT. Existing testing frameworks more focus on the integration testing of applications developed by a single programming model. In this paper, a unified test framework is proposed to overcome these limitations and enable the CIT of SOA solutions across the whole development lifecycle. This framework is designed following the model driven architecture (MDA). The information of an executable test case is separated into two layers: the behavior layer and the configuration layer. The behavior layer represents the test logic of a test case and is platform independent. The configuration layer contains the platform specific information and is configurable for different programming models. An extensible and pluggable test execution engine is specially designed to execute the integration test cases. A global test case identifier instrumentation approach is used to merge the distributed test case execution traces captured by ITCAM - an IBM integrated management tool. A verification approach supporting Boolean expression and back-end service interaction verification is proposed to verify the test execution result. Initial experiments have shown the effectiveness of this unified test framework.

Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS) is a kind of concurrent programming languages with several special features that raise special challenges for verification and testing. This paper proposes a graph-search based approach to BPEL test case generation, which effectively deals with BPEL concurrency semantics. This approach defines an extension of CFG (Control Flow Graph) - BPEL Flow Graph (BFG) - to represent a BPEL program in a graphical model. Then concurrent test paths can be generated by traversing the BFG model, and test data for each path can be generated using a constraint solving method. Finally test paths and data are combined into complete test cases.

BPEL is a language that could express complex concurrent behaviors. This paper presents a novel method of BPEL test case generation, which is based on concurrent path analysis. This method first uses an extended control flow graph (XCFG) to represent a BPEL program, and generates all the sequential test paths from XCFG. These sequential test paths are then combined to form concurrent test paths. Finally a constraint solver BoNuS is used to solve the constraints of these test paths and generate feasible test cases. Some techniques are proposed to reduce the number of combined concurrent test paths. Some test criteria derived from traditional sequential program testing are also presented to reduce the number of test cases. This method is modularized so that many test techniques such as various test criteria and complex constraint solvers can be applied. This method is tested sound and efficient in experiments. It is also applicable to the testing of other business process languages with possible extension and adaptation

The business process execution language for Web services (BPEL4WS) offers a new standards-based approach to building flexible business processes by orchestrating multiple Web services. Unit testing is critical to guarantee the creation of correct and reliable BPEL4WS business processes. Yet this is a topic that is still to be explored, both in research and industry. Lack of unit test tooling support has affected BPEL4WS process development in terms of quality and efficiency. This paper proposes a BPEL4WS unit test framework, which includes a BPEL4WS process composition model, a test architecture, a lifecycle management schema and a test design outline. An example implementation of the framework illustrates the whole approach. By adopting this test framework, the experience of developing, testing and debugging a BPEL4WS processes will be greatly improved.