ABSTRACT

WS-BPEL applications are a kind of service-oriented application. They use XPath extensively to integrate loosely-coupled workflow steps. However, XPath may extract wrong data from the XML messages received, resulting in erroneous results in the integrated process. Surprisingly, although XPath plays a key role in workflow integration, inadequate researches have been conducted to address the important issues in software testing. This paper tackles the problem. It also demonstrates a novel transformation strategy to construct artifacts. We use the mathematical definitions of XPath constructs as rewiring rules, and propose a data structure called XPath Rewriting Graph (XRG), which not only models how an XPath is conceptually rewritten but also tracks individual rewritings progressively. We treat the mathematical variables in the applied rewriting rules as if they were program variables, and use them to analyze how information may be rewritten in an XPath conceptually. We thus develop an algorithm to construct XRGs and a novel family of data flow testing criteria to test WS-BPEL applications. Experiment results show that our testing approach is promising. Keywords: WS-BPEL, XPath, service-orientation, workflow testing, testing, rewriting rules, SOA, XML, XML document model

1. This research is supported in part by grants of the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (project nos. 111107, 716507, 717506). 2. The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong. 3. City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Hong Kong. 4. (Corresponding author.) The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong. Email:

EVERY VISITOR COUNTS: