Testing of Dynamically Composed Applications

Testing of dynamically composed applications poses additional complexity over the testing of monolithic and even composed applications. Monolithic applications have fixed features, the dependencies between objects are filled during compilation, and the tests can be written against the implementation. Objects in composed applications depend on interfaces, the runtime dependencies are determined at startup time, e.g. by a dependency injection framework like Spring. Composed applications can be tested after they are composed. Dynamically composed applications get composed and recomposed during their entire runtime. There is an arbitrary amount of compositions, and a dynamically composed application can grow and shrink during runtime. Especially shrinking of an application is error-prone; as it means that parts of the application are removed, and must not be used any longer.

Testing of dynamically composed applications must check the conditions:

1. Host components must work isolated, without contributors
2. Contributor components must fulfill their contract
3. Only currently composed components interact

We use Plux.NET as platform for dynamically composed applications.

Contact: Markus Loeberbauer