Prescription-level based test assertion model for SOA

This paper presents a design method for business-centric SOA test framework. The reference architecture of SOA system is usually layered: business process layer, service layer, and computing resource layer. In the architecture, there are so many subsystems affecting the system's performance, which relates with each other. As a result, in respect of overall performance, it is meaningless to measure each subsystem's performance separately. In SOA system, the performance of the business process layer with which users keep in contact usually depends on the summation of the performance of the other lower layers. Therefore, for testing SOA system, test cases describing business process activities should be prepared. We devised a business-centric SOA test assertion model which enables to semi-automatic transform test assertions into test cases by the concept of prescription level and normalized prerequisite definition. The model also minimizes the semantic distortion in the transformation process.