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iTKO LISA for Software AG (webMethods)
Testing Software AG (webMethods)-powered Integration, Business Process and SOA applications
Enterprises adopt the webMethods Suite from Software AG to accelerate the development and alignment of IT around the core processes of the business. But whether you are approaching Software AG (webMethods) solutions as an enterprise integration challenge, or using the company's SOA governance platform, CentraSite, as a way to embark on an SOA strategy, quality is essential from the start. The iTKO LISA for Software AG (webMethods) offers Software AG (webMethods) customers a no-code way to test at every layer and every phase of a Software AG (webMethods)' implementation - at design time, run time and change time - ensuring trust in your critical business applications.
Testing Software AG (webMethods)
The possibilities for deploying Software AG (webMethods) solutions for enterprise application integration (EAI), or as an enabler for SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) initiatives, are as limitless as the ways a company can configure its business processes. But one aspect that all Software AG (webMethods) customers share is a need to integrate heterogeneous technology assets - from legacy apps to newer technologies - to build a larger business context. Conventional testing methodologies can be both costly, and ineffective in these environments.
Why is achieving test automation so critical in Software AG (webMethods) integrations?
- High cost and effort of test creation and maintenance. Conventional UI-oriented and unit test coding approaches take a procedural approach that results in brittle tests that are invalidated by dynamic change in the system.
- Lack of complete test simulation of the business workflow. Many testing tools oversimplify the approach for messaging and workflow testing to only component testing at a single endpoint or messaging technology type.
- Testing must maintain a business context across multiple layers of the application. In order to validate that a business requirement is met, integration testing must not skip validation of any of the layers in the architecture, whether these layers are newly integrated, or under the authority of a third party.
- Inability to test at every stage of the application lifecycle. Testing as an "acceptance" phase or event prior to deployment can no longer provide sufficient coverage for a constantly changing, heterogeneous application structure. Quality must be a continuous part of design, development, build and deployment in order to ensure trust in the application.
Benefits
LISA is the first comprehensive automated testing tool built from the ground up for SOA and composite application integration. If your integration strategy relies on webMethods solutions, LISA's declarative, no-code testing approach offers a compelling solution for maximizing delivered quality and minimizing business risk.
- Native integration with CentraSiteTM for SOA. Out of the box, LISA directly interacts with the CentraSite Governance Edition, providing an immediate reference point for adding Quality to your overall Service Management and Governance efforts. The ability to validate Policies - and SOA endpoints - both at a management and an implementation level with LISA, ensures reliability and Trust that the system will work as defined.
- Built on and for JMS standards. LISA can talk and listen to webMethods Broker messaging layers, as well as most known JMS/MQ frameworks. As many implementations must integrate with - or migrate functionality from - other systems, teams using LISA can get a wealth of reusable test cases and accompanying validation of the asynchronous messaging environment over time.
- Process-aware functional and load testing. Break the code-compile-run-curse cycle. LISA is no-code automated testing that normalizes your integration layers into a common, point-and-click test interface, allowing developers and business stakeholders to define tests in business process terms. These tests are highly reusable as orchestrated test suites. These powerful functional tests can then be run at loads of thousands of users to verify that scalability or latency issues do not appear in production.
- Multiple integrated systems. LISA is pure Java, and natively tests Java objects, EJBs, RMI, JMS queues, JDBC databases, as well as web services (WSDL/SOAP) and file systems. As you should expect, LISA runs on any Java-ready client (Unix/Linux/Solaris, Win, OSX) and can easily test any server that routes JMS. LISA provides live interaction and deep testing of any applications assembled using webMethods Integration Server.
Features of LISA for webMethods
- Make live assertions against available services and implementation layers in webMethods-based integrations, both for business functionality, and as load and performance testing.
- Create and/or assume temporary Broker JMS Queues and Topics to snoop through the entire life cycle of a message as it moves from message handler to message handler. Validate every layer of SOA or composite apps, ensuring web services, HTTP, Broker, and JMS endpoints are receiving/sending the appropriate message payloads at a unit level, or as part of the same test workflow.
- Ensure integrity of migrations by validating file systems and transferred data within any JDBC data source. No need to program test clients and maintain fragile test scripts. Developers and QA teams stay engaged in testing throughout the application lifecycle with a high level of test automation and reuse. Business process owners can utilize LISA's subprocesses to understand the validity of a process - even if they do not know exactly what components are tested.
- Rich test metrics and feedback (SNMP and others) from webMethods Optimize, with monitoring and alerting to report boundary or failure conditions within Integration Server or Broker.
LISA test coverage for webMethods.
LISA provides webMethods teams with a 360-degree view of the quality and reliability of the application, and its underlying implementation layers, throughout its lifecycle at design time, run time, and change time.
Extending quality within your implementation process
The partnership of iTKO and Software AG extends beyond software, because an SOA strategy isn't something you buy, it is something you do. Best practices for Lifecycle Quality using LISA fit within the webMethods GEAR methodologies, and the end result is increased reliability and reduced cost and implementation risk.
In addition, enterprise applications will always contain some legacy or custom functionality that needs to be tested in order to fully validate a business process. LISA Extension Kit's integration abilities let developers âtest enableâ software. With minimal incremental effort, developers can make their code testable with our simple API. The whole team can get rich metrics and debugging information on applications behind the scenes. Then with LISA Enterprise SOA Testing and the LISA Server, your unit, functional, and regression tests can be staged across all technologies as load and performance tests that run over time.