City Research Online

Abstract

In the scope of the applications developed under the service-based paradigm, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are a standard mechanism used to flexibly specify the Quality of Service (QoS) that must be delivered. These agreements contain the conditions negotiated between the service provider and consumers as well as the potential penalties derived from the violation of such conditions. In this context, it is important to assure that the service based application (SBA) behaves as expected in order to avoid potential consequences like penalties or dissatisfaction between the stakeholders that have negotiated and signed the SLA. In this article we address the testing of SLAs specified using the WS-Agreement standard by means of applying testing techniques such as the Classification Tree Method and Combinatorial Testing to generate test cases. From the content of the individual terms of the SLA, we identify situations that need to be tested. We also obtain a set of constraints based on the SLA specification and the behavior of the SBA in order to guarantee the testability of the test cases. Furthermore, we define three different coverage strategies with the aim at grading the intensity of the tests. Finally, we have developed a tool named SLACT (SLA Combinatorial Testing) in order to automate the process and we have applied the whole approach to an eHealth case study.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Computer Standards & Interfaces. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Computer Standards & Interfaces, Volume 38, February 2015, Pages 84–100, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.csi.2014.10.003.
Publisher Keywords:	Combinatorial testing, Service based applications, Service Level Agreements, Software testing, WS-Agreement
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
Departments:	School of Science & Technology > Computer Science
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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