Challenges in testing distributed applications

Distributed systems are observed to behave more dynamically compared to the single server systems, and they behave differently at different times. The systems involved in distributed computing can give the results to the tests performed individually.

However, when these small systems are integrated to form a large distributed system, the processing ability and the order of starting these individual processes and responding or returning values change the behavior of the distributed application rapidly. Such varying behavior of a distributed system complicates the testing of such systems.

Moreover, with the multiple different types of systems involved in the distributed system processing, the systems availability, topology, and the execution status highly affect the results of the same tests run at different times, which makes testing and considering such results as the baseline decided by the system behavior.

Maintaining interoperability among different...