It's no exaggeration to say that Web services are revolutionizing application-to-application communication. Web services are already being used extensively in corporate intranet environments and are making their way into commercial use, too. But because Web services are relatively new, techniques to test Web services programmatically are not widely known. In this column I'll show you a technique to quickly write test automation that verifies Web service functionality.
In the following sections I'll show you the ASP.NET Web service that I'll be testing, briefly examine the ASP.NET Web application that uses the service, and describe in detail the test automation that tests the service. I'll conclude by discussing how you can adapt and extend the code presented here to meet your own needs in a production environment. I think you'll find the ability to write test automation quickly for Web services interesting and a valuable addition to your skill set.
