He reminds anyone who will listen that while service-oriented architecture (SOA) is associated with Web services, the technologies are not interdependent. “Web services are, after all, middleware,” he says, adding, “SOA can be built without Web services.” He points to SOA applications built using CORBA, enterprise service buses and other technologies. As such, SOA quality assurance tools should go beyond testing WSDL, SOAP, XML and the rest of the Web services alphabet soup. Michelsen says with some glee that SOA apps “can be a heterogeneous, complex mess” involving a mix of Web services and other middleware that can stump traditional or Web-services-only testing proc?esses.
LISA, iTKO’s wizard-based testing software, models how an SOA should perform — regardless of how it’s built — and evaluates the effects of the different services within the application. Michelsen says LISA gives QA engineers a single tool to analyze and stress-test an SOA app, no matter what the mix of middleware involved in its construction. Version 4, due this summer, adds test procedures for engineers to ensure that your SOA software meets your internal governance policies. The complete LISA test suite starts at $5,000. A Web-services-only version is free online.
