Document: Prowess Technical Primer

Date: Nov 01, 2010

Contact: prowess@paninisoftware.com

Copyright © 2010 Panini Software, India. All Rights Reserved.

 Table of Contents

1. Introduction: ................................................................................................................................... 3
2. Web Services in Enterprise Environment:......................................................................................... 3
3. Web Services Testing: ...................................................................................................................... 3
4. Traditional Web Service testing approaches:.................................................................................... 3
4.1. Using Testing tools: .................................................................................................................. 3
4.2. Building Test Clients: ................................................................................................................ 4
4.3. Bottom Line: ............................................................................................................................ 4
5. Simplifying Web Services Testing with Prowess:............................................................................... 4
6. Prowess Features:............................................................................................................................ 5
7. Infrastructure Requirements:........................................................................................................... 6

Copyright © 2010 Panini Software, India. All Rights Reserved.

1. Introduction:
This paper introduces PROWESS, an Enterprise Web Services Testing Platform. Fundamental
understanding of Web Services Architecture (http://www.w3.org/TR/ws-arch/) will help the reader
to understand the complete offerings of this platform.

2. Web Services in Enterprise Environment:

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is not just an IT buzzword any more. In fact it is becoming a de
facto Enterprise Architectural pattern. The economical changes are driving more acquisitions and
mergers which are leading to more Enterprise Application Integrations and B2B integrations, this is
further driving SOA from luxury to necessity.

Web Services are the fundamental building blocks of the SOA implementations. Few reasons why IT
industry is experiencing exponential growth in web service implementations,

 Ease of Reuse
 Interoperable and Secure
 XML Message format
 Easy Development and Deployment model
 Supported by virtually all platforms (Java, .Net, LAMP, etc)

3. Web Services Testing:

Web service technology provide extensive platform to build interoperable and reusable services,
however web service testing still remains an issue that is solved by each enterprise in its own way.
So what is Web Service testing?

 Testing individual Operations provided by the Web Service

 Compose XML Request Message
 Invoke Operation
 Verify XML Response Message

4. Traditional Web Service testing approaches:

4.1. Using Testing tools:

There are some great open source tools available that make web service testing easy by
providing an interface to submit a XML Request to a web service operation and verify XML
Response. These tools work great but face following challenges:

 Require Installation
 De-centralized Configuration
 Developer Centric
 Manual XML Request Composition
 Lack of Access Control

Copyright © 2010 Panini Software, India. All Rights Reserved.

  Enterprise Security Risk
To test the Web Services in Secure Environment one needs to install a SSL certificates.
This can be an Enterprise Security Risk, especially with geographically distributed teams.

4.2. Building Test Clients:

QA Professionals often back away from Web Service Testing because there is no Graphical User
Interface to test the functionality. To Test web service with existing tools, a tester needs to have
in depth knowledge of XML, XSD (XML Schema Definition) and WSDL (Web Service Definition
Language) technologies. Hence most of the times, developers end up testing the Web Services,
which adds up to the overall development cost and calendar time. To counter this problem
enterprises develop test clients for testers. A HTML form is created for each web service
operation which maps to the input elements of the Operation. This makes testers life easier, but
faces following challenges,

 Increased Development Cost

 Test Clients Maintenance Cost
 Manual TestCase/TestSuite Management
 Lack of Access Control

4.3. Bottom Line:

Web Service Testing,

 Is Developer Centric
 Adds on to Development Cost
 Increases Calendar Time to Market the Service
 Complex for Change Management
 Most importantly, Decentralized across the Enterprise

5. Simplifying Web Services Testing with Prowess:

PROWESS simplifies the Enterprise Web Services testing process by providing a web based,
Centralized Platform to test the Web Services across the Enterprise. Following diagram shows
PROWESS in Enterprise Environment.

Copyright © 2010 Panini Software, India. All Rights Reserved.

6. Prowess Features:

 Centralized Service Organization and Configuration:

Prowess acts as a Single window to explore and test all the web services across the Enterprise. An
administrator, can dynamically configure a web service by providing WSDL Path or uploading a
WSDL. The services can be organized as logical groups, which can be later used to define access
control. This eliminates need for distributed web service configuration.

 Tester Centric:
Prowess changes the Web Service testing landscape bringing Testers to the Web Service
Development and Testing Life Cycle, by providing intuitive testing interface.

 Test Driven Web Service Development:

Test driven development along with agile methodologies is proving itself to be one of the best
approaches to develop software systems. Prowess enables the testers to compose test cases
even before the development is started, bringing TDD to the Web Service Development World.

 HTML Form based Request Composition:

Prowess addresses the major issue behind web service testing discussed earlier. Instead of
testers interacting with complex XML document, prowess generates an HTML form for the web
service operation dynamically. This makes web service testing as easy as a web application
testing.

Copyright © 2010 Panini Software, India. All Rights Reserved.

  Input Validation:
Web Service Operation inputs are driven by XML Schema types/constraints. Prowess translates
these constraints into input validations. For example, if a string input field has min length defined
in XML Schema, prowess will restrict the user from entering an invalid input.

 Functional Testing with Test Case/Test Suite Management:

Prowess enables the testers to save individual request and response as a testcase. This testcase
can be managed and executed independently or clubbed together as a testsuite. A testsuite can
be executed on demand or in a continuous integration manner.

 Automated Change Management

Change in Web Service interface definition will no longer require additional development efforts
for testing the web services. Prowess provides ability to update the definition which will
regenerate the HTML form interfaces for all operations dynamically.

 Continuous Integration Support

The testsuites built using prowess can be used by Continuous Integration platforms to test the
services at a predefined frequency.

 Enterprise Security:
Prowess provides in built user management features to limit the access to only authenticated
and authorized users. The administrators can create users with tester role and allow access only
to the relevant services. Digital Certificates can be installed centrally eliminating the need to
distribute them to individual tester and a major Enterprise Security Risk.

7. Infrastructure Requirements:
The platform is build upon Java EE 5 Architecture and can be installed on any light weight open
source Web Container such as Tomcat 6.0 (or higher version) along with JRE 1.5 (or higher version).
Prowess can be accessed over standard web browsers such as FireFox and Internet Explorer.

Copyright © 2010 Panini Software, India. All Rights Reserved.