Testing and Visualizing a Message Queuing Infrastructure

Integration on process level has emerged as a promising paradigm for managing Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) strategies. However, there is a missing link between established messaging infrastructures, utilizing the transport of messages and a processcoupled view on it. Testing and analyzing the results are two tightly coupled and normally inseparable mechanisms. This paper describes an end-to-end test of a messaging system for several business processes achieved through a logical orchestration of the components involved. The messaging model used, including several message types, as well as basic Gestalt principles of perceptual grouping, will be introduced. For visualizing the test results, we present an approach that incorporates principles derived from Gestalt theory. Just as important, enterprise integration patterns and testing issues such as the test model will be explained, too. The idea of splitting a messaging infrastructure into different layers (business, logical, physical), in order to gain test results for the different business processes, is a novel approach. Likewise, injecting test messages on application level during productive operation is a challenge. Visualizing the test results using Gestalt principles, aids in reducing the cognitive effort. To sum it up, this paper discusses messaging, testing, patterns as well as semantic issues and shows how to visualize a messaging infrastructure for different business processes in a coherent way.