What is SOA Testing?
SOA stands for Service Oriented Architecture. Before we discuss SOA Testing?, let us first understand what Service Oriented Architecture is, it is a way or style of software design. In this pattern of application design, we provide services to other components (separate) using any kind of communication network. The underlying principle that regulates this design and development architecture is the independence of Vendors, Products, and Technologies. In an SOA environment, the developers develop a product that is known as ‘SERVICES” in SOA architecture. In general, SOA is basically using third party resources for the fulfillment of one’s business.
It has four pillars aka architecture:
- People: People are the prime, as they are behind the right decision for the benefit of the organizations.
- Process: SOA saves time and money by aligning it with concerned IT processes and related business.
- Practice: Once the process is OK and implementation takes place, the rest covers the best practices.
- Platform: A best-fit platform is selected to suit all the requirements or a wide range of requirements to increase operational efficiency.
What is SOA Testing Used For?
Let us take an example to clear any doubt (if any) regarding its usability.
You have heard of “Payment Gateways’ which are mandatory for any kind of online business. To buy and sell things online this functionality must be built or at least available in your application. So to avoid coding works separately for the payment gateways what the companies do is to take vendor ship from any of the available payment gateways like PayPal, DirectPay, EBS, ICICI Payseal, etc. and integrate them in their application.
How does SOA Testing Work?
- As we are familiar with the word ‘testing’ so in this case, we must perform the testing i.e. kind of validating the architecture associated with servicing. It is the actual testing for the Service Oriented Architecture keeping the architecture in mind. Here the application is designed to communicate as services using a communication protocol using any kind of network. The main purpose of this Testing is to assure that we have achieved a targeted level of maturity with the intention of a quality product.
- Like any traditional testing, we have to create test cases, test designs, etc. These deliverables re mandatory to perform under any of the test phases.
Criteria to be Focused on:
- Service layer – The Service Layer mainly deals with the services it has to offer with details of the product. It displays the business function in a true sense. Let us take an example of a better illustration. E.g. Fashion website (like Myntra) has different products for sale, so here product details, their availability and other relevant details. Service layers hold the services which are going to receive the required data from the library databases.
- Process Layer – These hold the processes which are services as part of single functionality combined. The process can be either of these and several others like part of the user interface, ETL tools, functionality, and others. When we are talking about the Process layer, we are mainly talking about user interface and associated processes. Just like the examples mentioned in the above section, regarding the process, we can say – the search form, add new book forms, allocation form, and login services will come under the process layer.
- Consumer Layer – This layer consists of user interfaces. How a user is going to interact with the application or the process. A successful data fetch or information retrieval is necessary for the consumer layer to pass the testing criteria. E.g. online library web services.
Advantages of SOA Testing
Below are mentioned the advantages:
- Reusability – The best part of this testing is it’s being a reusable phenomenon. Once the functionality is used gets stopped automatically for other users. Let us take an example of a stock application that has a currency converter (one crucial functionality). This functionality can be considered as one of the appropriate functionalities to discuss in the reusability section. Once we need currency conversion functionality the application takes the help of some third party, does the work for us and later can be used by other users for the same task.
- Easy Maintainability – To Avoid complexity is another and prominent feature of SOA testing. A user will not find any issues or complexity for updating, upgrading and maintaining the applications. The reason is that the program is complete and self-contained.
- Reliable – Since the SOA services are simple with being self-contained. These features make it easy to test, easy to update, easy to debug the errors and maintenance and finally something that users can rely upon.
- Scalability – Every business differs from others in “N’ number of ways. SOA can scale itself to fit into your business needs.
- No Platform Dependency – Being one of the core advantages of SOA and that any user can avail them in need, these are platform independent which runs on the systems.
How this Technology will Help You in Career Growth?
As we have listed above that SOA deals mainly with the 3rd party services than a company needs for proper business activities to occur. These services are very crucial and at the same time very costly to design. Also, there are multiple tools available in the market for testing, this is also one of the crucial reasons for its demand in the market.
Let us see some salary stats that are currently offered in the market worldwide –
- Technical Architect: INR 1,817, 822
- Solution Architect: INR 1, 937, 546
So, we believe if these crucial factors are there for technology then it is going to stay longer – let us revise once.
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- An Important factor is, it Holds.
- Plenty of Tools Available.
- Alarmingly High Salary Stats.
Conclusion
Testing is equally old as the Development is, services are also a part of testing as they hold vital importance. Not all services deal in financial transactions but some also deal with crucial details or information which if misinterpreted can cost the organization a lot. Testing or rather we say SOA testing makes these services secure.
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