Ontology-Based Test Modeling and Partition Testing of Web Services

Testing is useful to establish trust between service providers and clients. To test the service-oriented applications, automated and specification-based test generation and test collaboration are necessary. The paper proposes an ontology-based approach for Web services (WS) testing. A test ontology model (TOM) is defined to specify the test concepts, relationships, and semantics from two aspects: test design (such as test data, test behavior, and test cases) and test execution (such as test plan, schedule and configuration). The TOM specification using OWL (Web ontology language) can serve as test contracts among test components. Based on the WS semantic specification in OWL-S, the paper discusses the techniques to generate the sub-domains for input partition testing. Data pools are established for each parameter of the specified service. Data partitions are derived by class property and relationship analysis. Completeness and consistency (C&C) checking can be performed on the data partitions and data values, both within the TOM and against the OWL-S, by ontology class computation and reasoning. A prototype tool is implemented to support OWL-S analysis, test ontology generation and C&C checking.