Automated Testing of XML/SOAP based Web Services

Web services provide seamless connections from one software application to another over private intranets and the Internet. The major communication protocol used is SOAP being mainly XML over HTTP. The exchanged data follow precise format rules in the form of XML Document Type Definitions or more recently the proposed XML Schemas. Web service testing considers functionality and load aspects to check how a Web service performs for single clients and scales as the number of clients accessing it increases. This paper discusses the automated testing of Web services by use of the Testing and Test Control Notation TTCN-3. A mapping between XML data descriptions to TTCN-3 data is presented to enable the automated derivation of test data. This is the basis for functional and load tests of XML interfaces in TTCN-3. The paper describes the mapping rules and prototypical tools for the development and execution of TTCN-3 tests for XML/SOAP based Web services.