Dynamic mock-generation system for integration testing

Abstract

Today, software systems are a composition of internal and external systems, which brings up dependencies issues. Sometimes these dependencies are uncontrollable and unmanageable. From the point of view of testing, this situation is challenging; especially in the area of integration testing. It might be difficult to test integration between your system and an external system which you do not have any control of. This thesis analyses this problem and outlines its main objectives to which a solution can be implemented. The principal achievement in this thesis is to have a framework where components on which a software test engineer does not have control of, can be replaced with controllable components which make it possible to perform the desired integration test cases. The concept of the described framework is to dynamically generate mocks of the depended-on components. Apart from the main advantage of carrying out previous difficult integration tests, this solution gives the power of starting testing earlier. This applies even if the component on which the system being tested depends on is not implemented yet, since it can be mocked up if at least one knows its interface. The mocking framework targets software testers carrying integration testing who can plug it into their automated tests. As a proof of concept, the framework caters for uncontrollable components which are implemented in two different technologies; web services and messaging services. Through a fluent API which contains a mockery for each technology, a tester can deploy, run and control mock-ups. The system under test will not be aware of the switch, from the real component to the mocked version, and hence this makes the mock generation framework practical for integration testing.