Concurrency in a decentralized automatic regression test selection framework for web services
Michael E. Ruth · 2008
Business processes can be realized by utilizing many different Web services directly or indirectly in workflows which may be internal or external to the enterprise. Since service-oriented architecture allows service providers to modify the underlying implementation of a service at any time, a new set of challenges arise in software testing, especially regression testing. In this work, a framework which automates a key tenet of regression testing, safe regression test selection, for Web services in a decentralized, end-to-end manner using service monitoring will be presented. Any such system must be capable of handling multiple concurrent modifications and the main contribution of this work is defining and resolving those challenges related to concurrency in a framework for automating a decentralized, end-to-end, safe regression testing technique being applied to Web services. The challenges which will be discussed include coverage conflict, fault locatability, test inconsistency, and communication errors. A solution in the form of software agents following a predetermined distributed algorithm will also be presented.