LISA Features: Web Services/SOAP

Automated Functional, Regression and Load Testing Capabilities for Web Services

LISA's testing is a fully functional, no-code web services test authoring and execution automation solution that both developers and QA/Business teams can use. The solution offers the functionality you expect from the leading Web Services testing tool on the market today - and supports all of the current protocols, unit/functional/regression tests, and concurrency and load tests you need to ensure quality in your WSDL and SOAP objects.

The Challenges of Testing Web Services

For many companies, the first strides toward SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) strategies often involve enabling some Web Services on top of a few new or existing technologies. Web services allow companies to expose business logic and legacy systems as "services" that can be leveraged by multiple applications or interfaces.

While web services offer extensive flexibility and cost advantages, this ease of integration can come with a price. With each new web service connection you add to the mix, you create another point of failure in a business workflow. Many of the web services you leverage may be developed by other groups, or even other companies, so all of the moving parts may not be under your control.

Further, web services are used to build dynamic applications that do not come with a set user interface. You can build one or more web interfaces that talk to a web service, but to directly validate SOAP objects in development, your teams must typically code a "test client" and maintain fragile testing scripts.

There are many tools that cover one point of failure in your web services applications - for example, unit testing of calls, examining your SOAP code, or measuring response times for requests. Most tools require some heavy development, and even have their own custom scripting language. When you try to cobble these tools together into a solution, you may find yourself building and supporting your very own testing framework.

When it comes to creating a repeatable, thorough testing strategy, you need a solution that won't fail - until you need it to. LISA offers true no-code test automation to Web Services development and QA teams.

Features

LISA's testing edition supports deep testing of WSDL (Web Services Directory Language) libraries, and the SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) objects that they generate. LISA allows you to test these "headless" components as if accessing them from multiple web interfaces or through other web services. And further, LISA lets you directly map to your services without ever developing a test client or maintaining scripts.

• No-code SOAP/XML recording/testing and WSDL exploration and test maintenance. All you need to know is the URL to capture and invoke any type of test against a web service!
• Server Simulation of a running web service instance within a running LISA test case, meaning you can test web services conditions non-destructively before or after deployment.
• Use the same tests throughout design, development, deployment and performance/service maintenance processes of Java or .NET-based web services.
• Multiple roles. LISA is no-code automated testing, meaning developers no longer have to script tests, and non-programming team members in QA and business requirements teams can also get involved in functional testing.
• Multiple systems. One LISA test case can follow a complex workflow and validate multiple web sessions, web services, and servers. LISA supports active sessions, WS-Security protocols, authentication and magic strings, so it lets you test systems just as your end users will.

How LISA's testing Works

ITKO's LISA supports both the creation and staging of Web Services tests. Developers and QA teams use a point-and-click interface to record current states and make logical "assertions" against WSDL and SOAP objects, and LISA automates many of the compliance checks and staging documents and delivers the results in an easy-to-use format. All of these steps occur in near real-time, as you are never "writing" test code to directly interact with Web Services with LISA.

Benefits

LISA's testing offers a low-impact way to extend Web Services tests, as well as turn these unit and functional tests into multiple user concurrency tests and load tests that can be shared with other LISA Edition users.

• No-code testing means less time coding tests and test clients, and more time testing.
• Developers and non-developers can rapidly learn and use LISA.
• "Live Interaction" lets you author and adjust the test as you observe live behavior from the web service, and you can continue to execute your tests without recompiling test code.
• Use LISA's easy point-and-click testing interface, then launch LISA tests from a command line.
• LISA runs on any client and supports Java and .NET and any other SOAP-compliant web services.
• Since LISA test cases and test runs are saved as XML files, you can incorporate them easily into your process as attachments to groupware, SCM (Source Code Management) issue tracking and requirements management tools.

Step up to an enterprise-wide SOA testing solution

Web services testing with LISA is great, but if you are testing SOA, you are just getting started. ITKO's LISA suite of products expands to meet your needs, so if the testing scope increases, you don't need to lose a minute of the progress you've made with LISA for Web Services. Need to load test your web apps? Get LISA UI Testing Edition with LISA Server. Need a comprehensive testing solution? With an upgrade to LISA Enterprise SOA Testing Platform, you can use the same no-code tool to test any component - even all types of websites, databases, messaging layers (JMS/ESB), EJBs, RMI, POJOs, file systems and more.

To learn more about how LISA incorporates the 4 C's and can address critical development constraints and software reliability challenges in your organization, please contact us, or read more about LISA Virtualize, LISA Validate, LISA Test, and LISA Pathfinder.