Browsing by Subject "RESTful"

Background: The splitting of functionality into multiple inter-communicating services has created a need for managing the APIs that these services are using to talk to each other. They also present an easy avenue for faults to be introduced into the system as these services are updated over time, especially in the absence of extensive testing, such as in rapid prototyping contexts. Aims: The study aimed to find a light-weight method for detecting API breakages between services, which requires as little manual labor from developers as possible. Method: The method used for the study was design science research focused around the iterative de- velopment and validation of the method through using it in synthetic and practical use-cases. Results: The study identified the possibility of using self-documenting services and machine- readable API documentation as a means to automatically detect API breakages either via naive or more complex approaches, with complex approaches providing more granular fault detec- tion and ability to create dependency graphs between services. Conclusion: Use of more automation seems a viable approach to detecting faults in network-based communication be- tween services. With further study, these approaches could be developed into developer-friendly systems, which allow not only automated fault detection, but also visual impact analysis for complex architectures spanning multiple services.