These tools also employ advanced test-design techniques that allow message schemas to be automatically merged with sets of test case data in order to yield comprehensive functional coverage. By abstracting the data from the schema, testers can focus on exercising business functionality as expressed in data values without being distracted by the technical implementation. Tests can further be organized into complete workflows that emulate complete end-to-end business processes, and provide traceability from high-level business requirements to the low-level implementation.

With the exception of the initial setup and configuration of the transport protocols and providing the schemas, the fact that there is no effort required by the development team to create or maintain custom test harnesses, drivers, and stubs offers a tremendous advantage to the IT organization, and keeps development resources focused on assuring timely delivery of a reliable test, while allowing business experts to assure the quality and accuracy of the final result.

The strategic benefit of these tools from both an IT and a business standpoint is the ability for the tests to be reused, extended, and repeated automatically over time, and from release to release. This provides comprehensive test coverage for regression and new functionality to assure that there is no unintended impact. Only through extensive, automated test execution can companies truly keep pace with market demands, regulatory requirements, and competitive imperatives.

End-to-End Testing
While Web services are rapidly being adopted for internal integration when and where appropriate, and they are certainly the preferred - if not eventually required - method of integrating with external enterprises, it is a fact that most insurance enterprises have hundreds of applications in their portfolios that are still integrated through proprietary, custom interfaces and data stores. It may take years if not decades before the complete, end-to-end execution of business processes is supported by an SOA - if ever.

This reality means that test solutions cannot be SOA-centric. Instead, they must support a holistic approach that encompasses end-to-end testing throughout the enterprise. Orchestrating an integrated test environment can be a monumental challenge because incoming claims will cascade through perhaps dozens of interrelated applications, each of which has its own business requirements and release timetable.

This need also underscores the importance of a test automation solution that can encompass, but that is not limited to, Web services and SOA. Ideally, testing should be supported at all levels - from the application user interface all the way through the message layer - so that end-to-end verification of a complete business process can be executed seamlessly.

For example, a claim that is submitted from an external source will pass through adjudication, remittance, and other applications internally, and these may share data through a common data store, or through the exchange of transactions or files in any one of many formats and methods. Thus, proper end-to-end testing of claims processing must take into account each of the affected applications. While using the message layer may be necessary for verification of the claims as received, it may be easier to employ the user interface of internal applications to check on a claims status, rather than write custom harnesses for multiple data sources or file formats.

Test automation tools that leverage the user interface have been available for 15 or 20 years, typically as record/replay products. These tools have allowed manual test processes to be captured into scripts, and then enhanced using programmatic commands to account for data variability and to handle exceptions, as well as manage other execution issues such as timing.

What sets the new class of test automation tools apart from their predecessors is their ability to not only eliminate the need for testers to learn and use script-programming commands, but to allow tests to be executed against message layers with no user interface and applications with a user interface. This means that analysts can test business processes end-to-end across the span of lower message layers and higher application user interface layers - seamlessly, within a single execution session.

The significance of enabling this capability is the shift of business process verification to the earlier stages of Web services implementation, which assures that defects are identified as quickly as possible when they are easier to isolate, diagnose, and correct.

Summary
For the insurance industry, where technology is a competitive weapon, capitalizing on the promise of Web services with speed and accuracy is an essential component of an aggressive, successful IT strategy. Assuring quality throughout the implementation cycle and across all layers of the architecture is a key component of a timely delivery that does not compromise business operations.

Emerging test automation solutions that can span both the development process and the business process free up development resources from coding specialized test interfaces and involve business experts as a core component of a successful Web services strategy.