Authors:
Luigi Lo Iacono
and
Hoai Viet Nguyen
Affiliation:
Cologne University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Keyword(s):
REST, HTTP, URI, Conformance Testing, Web Services, SOA, Cloud.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Internet Technology
;
Restful Web Services
;
Web Information Systems and Technologies
;
Web Interfaces and Applications
;
Web Services and Web Engineering
Abstract:
Despite the lack of standardisation for building REST-ful HTTP applications, the deployment of REST-based
Web Services has attracted an increased interest. This gap causes, however, an ambiguous interpretation of
REST and induces the design and implementation of REST-based systems following proprietary approaches
instead of clear and agreed upon definitions. Issues arising from these shortcomings have an influence on
service properties such as the loose coupling of REST-based services via a unitary service contract and the
automatic generation of code. To overcome such limitations, at least two prerequisites are required: the availability
of specifications for implementing REST-based services and auxiliaries for auditing the compliance of
those services with such specifications.
This paper introduces an approach for conformance testing of REST-based Web Services. This appears conflicting
at the first glance, since there are no specifications available for implementing REST by, e.g.,
the
prevalent technology set HTTP/URI to test against. Still, by providing a conformance test tool and leaning
it on the current practice, the exploration of service properties is enabled. Moreover, the real demand for
standardisation gets explorable by such an approach. First investigations conducted with the developed conformance
test system targeting major Cloud-based storage services expose inconsistencies in many respects
which emphasizes the necessity for further research and standardisation.
(More)