Testing the Service

That actually completes the building of our hotel reservation Web service. The only thing left to do now is to test both services. In Chapter 6, we discussed two different types of tests that should be run on your Web services: accuracy and performance. While both still apply for Web services workflows, the accuracy tests should have additional emphasis placed on the error handling of the service. There will be times that your Web services have problems processing a request, and you will need to ensure you are handling them as gracefully as possible to accommodate the user and your consumer. The most helpful tests in this area are use cases that generate error scenarios to make sure the various failure point possibilities are accounted for. Your tests should include at least the following scenarios:

• Provide invalid service variables

• Provide invalid payloads (empty and invalid elements and structures)

• Act as a consumer accessing the session of another consumer

• Change the location of your schemas and XML documents

The idea isn't that all of these situations will work (because not all of them could), but that you handle the errors gracefully. Remember that you are working with your consumers to provide the user experience, and you need to do as much as possible to provide good feedback when something goes awry.