EuroSTAR Software Testing Conference 2008 presentation on SOA - Agile or Fragile? by Colin Robb. See more at conferences.eurostarsoftwaretesting.com/past-presentations/
10. Business Drivers
Financial
Government
Technology
Multiple pricing
quotation engines
Grew through M&A
12 different
agencies provide
similar services
Integrate customer
experience across all
delivery channels
Merge agencies for better
service and lower
administrative costs
Need to redesign
business process to
remove inefficiencies
18
11. Applications in a Typical Organisation
CIO
Mainframe, Client/Server, Web
CRM Operations e-Commerce Finance
Business
Logic
Business
Logic
Business
Logic
Business
Logic
Business
Process
17
17. Service Orientation
A business
service is a
logical unit of
workdefined
in business
terms
Business
Logic
LEGACY ERP CRM FINANCE
Business
Logic
Business
Logic
Business
Logic
Open Account
Change
Address
View Charges
Execute
Trade
Etc., etc.
13
18. Service Oriented Architecture
CIO
Mainframe, Client/Server, Web
CRM Operations e-Commerce Finance
Business
Logic
Business
Logic
Business
Logic
Business
Logic
New Business Processes
Business Services
12
22. Standard Format
HiddenComplexity
How SOA Works
Service
Service
Operations
External
Data Objects
Public Interface
Internal
Functionality
Internal
Data
Private
Implementation
9
27. ?
Who will
test our
services?
Who will
test our
services?
What is the
weakest link?
What is the
weakest link?
What if a
dependent
service is
unavailable
?
What if a
dependent
service is
unavailable
?
How do we
avoid being
the
bottleneck?
How do we
avoid being
the
bottleneck?
How do I
know what
has
changed?
How do I
know what
has
changed?
Who is
responsible
for the
service?
Who is
responsible
for the
service?
7
30. Challenges Across the Lifecycle
Multiple Stakeholders
Providers
Consumers
CTO Office
Initiate
Will others see value
in my services?
Can I find and trust
services?
Does the enterprise
work on the right
services?
Build
Can other groups
develop against my
services?
How do I develop
and test against
services out of my
control?
Can I establish a
consistent and
repeatable imple-
mentation process?
Operate
How do I manage
changes without
disrupting my
consumers?
Do I get the
expected quality of
service?
Can I control
what goes into
production?
4
Key Messages:
Expect the hands in each poll to become less and less, although I expect more to be left at the end each time I do this as SOA becomes more of a reality (especially in EMEA)
Key Messages:
Expect the hands in each poll to become less and less, although I expect more to be left at the end each time I do this as SOA becomes more of a reality (especially in EMEA)
Key Messages:
Expect the hands in each poll to become less and less, although I expect more to be left at the end each time I do this as SOA becomes more of a reality (especially in EMEA)
Key Messages:
Expect the hands in each poll to become less and less, although I expect more to be left at the end each time I do this as SOA becomes more of a reality (especially in EMEA)
Key Messages:
Expect the hands in each poll to become less and less, although I expect more to be left at the end each time I do this as SOA becomes more of a reality (especially in EMEA)
Key Messages:
Expect the hands in each poll to become less and less, although I expect more to be left at the end each time I do this as SOA becomes more of a reality (especially in EMEA)
Agenda only
Key Messages:
Technology change doesnât happen without reason
Different business challenges often point to the same IT challenges â integration, flexibility, agility
Key Messages:
Business Processes are not siloâd any more. A typical enterprise business process spans many areas and many apps
Key Messages:
IT serves the business, not the other way around, although ITâs function is to enable the business.
Here is what modern business is looking for, and therefore what business is looking for from IT
Key Messages:
But IT is currently not well aligned to deliver what the business wants, because it is still structured around old, inflexible technologies
Key Message:
The industry has reached a turning point, where everyone agrees that we canât carry on as we are, yet no-one has a perfect solution
Key Message:
The theory of service orientation is not new, but the way it is being talked about is more engaging â it is more business focused so is catching the attention of the right people. It is also âabstractedâ rather than proprietary, so there is general buy-in rather than rejection from any ânot-invented-hereâ domains
Key Messages:
Although the functionality may still be siloâd (encapsulated in a business service), this is transparent to the business process
Key Messages:
We have been here before
SOA does not remove complexity, it hides it
It is the current âhot topicâ which means that everybody wants to jump on the bandwagon. There is scant regard for the potential pitfalls
Key Messages:
Recognise this?
SOA does not make this magically go away
The complexity is still there, but as it is hidden, it is even harder to understand the impact and implications of problems â therefore testing is fundamental and critical to SOA
Key Message:
SOA is succeeding where others failed not because it is new, but because it is based on standards. Services from distinct vendors will work together regardless of the technology used to build them (or thatâs the theory anyway â testing must validate this)
The implementation may be simple or complex. We may not know (a service may be third-party and only exposed as a black box to us)
Key Message:
Quick reality check if there are any attendees feeling that SOA doesnât apply to them
Anyone in the room work for companies with SAP or Oracle implementations?
If so, the news is that you are getting SOA whether you like it or not, as both SAP and Oracleâs latest releases are SOA-based (although maybe by some other name)
Key Message:
Example of SAP slide talking about custom business processes
Key Messages:
Testing of SOA is not the same as testing traditional in-house or COTS apps (it needs to do everything that traditional testing does, but more on top)
Traditional tasks become harder and there are new tasks to consider
Remembering the key business drivers which have led to IT adopting SOA - the expectation is that our work needs to be done much faster (time to market) and more effectively (increased quality), yet there is more for us to do, and itâs potentially harder to do it
Note: Real-world customer examples to be used throughout the remaining sections
Key Messages:
Weâve seen how SOA is a potential solution to the problem, and why it is seen as the latest panacea - weâve also seen that it is inevitable
But this means new challenges for testers
New things to think about (as well as the old stuff)
Key Messages:
There are new types of test we need to run
The key tenet of SOA is re-use (without it, SOA is irrelevant). Even if a service is not yet reused, it must be validated as âreusableâ
Huge security risk with any new technology â must think about validating this
Key Messages:
Even though the SOA model is nice and neat, with encapsulated services, the testing of individual services is complex and time-consuming, even before they are consumed by an application
This looks like traditional unit testing, but it must be more than that â this is too important to be left to the developers who wrote the code â there must be separation of duties
Key Messages:
It is no longer just the application development team and the testing team (which as we know is hard enough to manage)
Now there are the service developers and the app developers, consumers and providers (who can also be consumers themselves)
Services are not necessarily developed or even owned in-house, so how do we validate the quality?
Key Messages:
Must look at SOA in a different way. We must understand what constitutes our âSOAâ to be able to test it effectively â we have to have some kind of governance â how do I know what the latest version of a service is, which version I have, who developed it, what its service levels are supposed to be
Testing is more important than ever â more interfaces means more points of failure
Must not see deployment as the end of the process, must be able to understand the impact of ongoing changes so that they can be tested properly prior to deployment etc. SOA makes this more of a challenge
Key Messages:
#1 message is we need to collaborate. We cannot be successful in SOA working as siloâd organisations
Key Messages:
In summary, we have to consider new things and be prepared to work in different ways to test SOA services and applications properly
Testing is absolutely critical in SOA projects as there is such a high expectation of success (via the hype), yet so many potential pitfalls
We have to be involved earlier in the process to ensure that testing is not the bottleneck at the end
We must be prepared for testing before testing begins â consider how we will test third-party services, services with a per-usage cost associated with them, services which are not complete or are unavailable etc.