The highly dynamic characteristics of service-oriented applications means their validation is a continuous process that often runs in parallel with execution. It is not possible to clearly distinguish between the predeployment validation of a system and its use, nor is it possible to guarantee that the checks passed at a certain time will be passed at a later time and in the actual execution environment as well.

Baresi and Di Nitto have put together the first reference on all aspects of testing and validating service-oriented architectures, taking into account these inherent intricacies. The contributions by leading academic and industrial research groups are structured into four parts on: static analysis to acquire insight into how the system is supposed to work; testing techniques to sample its actual behavior; monitoring to probe its operational performance; and nonfunctional requirements like reliability and trust.

This monograph is an initial source of knowledge for researchers in both academia and industry in the field of service-oriented architecture validation and verification approaches. They will find a comprehensive survey of state-of-the-art approaches as well as techniques and tools to improve the quality of service-oriented applications.

Luciano Baresi is associate professor at Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione at Politecnico di Milano. Luciano has published and presented some 50 papers on the most important national and international journals and conferences. His research interests are on dynamic software architectures, with special emphasis service-oriented applications.

Elisabetta Di Nitto is associate professor at Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione at Politecnico di Milano. Her current research interests are mainly on software engineering, and in particular, on process support systems, service-centric applications and dynamic software architectures.