Message exchange pattern

An operation is defined by a message exchange pattern (MEP) that describes the message pattern (publish or request and reply) required by the operations transport to establish communications. MEP can be the approach if recording is unavailable to create initial tests and stubs.

In many cases, services contain enumerations. Enumerations are valid inputs for fields within message schemas. For example, the schema can prescribe that a certain field can contain only male or female. It is likely that you need to create many tests that are based on the list of items in the enumerations. For example, if field A is of type enumeration and the service has 20 items, you need to create 20 tests, even though this takes time and is tedious. Rational® Integration Tester can automatically create multiple tests form enumerations. Using the MEP wizard takes you through this process.
Note: Click Minimum number of combinations in the MEP wizard to prevent the generation of an unmanageable number of tests.

During the entire testing lifecycle, you can create similar tests, which require more effort. Using the Test Template feature, you can reuse the same template to create different tests. The template acts as a base test from which many tests can be derived.

While you are performing integration, system, or system integration tests you might need to call more than one test to create a business process. In such cases, if you pass tag values from one test to the next, make sure to correctly designate the tags for input and output in individual tests. Correct designation will lead to values being passed appropriately. The output values of one test can be the input value of another test.