An approach for specification-based test case generation for Web Services

Web Services applications are built by the integration of many loosely coupled and reusable services using open standards. Testing Web Service is important in detecting faults and assessing quality attributes. A difficulty in testing Web Services applications is the unavailability of the source code for both the application builder and the broker. This paper propose a solution to this problem by providing a formal, specification-based approach for automatically generating test cases for Web Services based on the WSDL input messages parts' XML Schema datatypes. Examples of using this approach are then given in order to give evidence of its usefulness. The role of the application builders and the brokers in using this approach to test Web Services is also described.