This topic applies only to the IBM Business Process Manager Advanced configuration.

Overview of testing with Ant scripts in headless IBM Business Process Manager

If you have created component test projects, test suites, and test cases in IBM® Integration Designer, you can use Ant scripts in conjunction with the serviceDeploy and wsadmin tools to automatically build, deploy, and test your projects in the headless (command line) batch processing environment of IBM Business Process Manager.

Although Ant scripts are not strictly required for running tests in a headless batch processing environment, there are several advantages to using them. For example, Ant scripts enable you to automatically and simultaneously test numerous large applications that are inherently complex or constantly changing. They also allow you to run as many tests as you want or need in the off-hours, which reduces the load on computing systems and enables developers to focus on development activities when they are at work.

However, perhaps the most important reason for using Ant scripts is that you can configure an Ant script to automatically perform multiple tasks that would otherwise need to be performed manually, such as:

Checking component test projects out of a team repository like CVS.
Zipping up the projects into a project interchange file.
Importing the project interchange file into the IBM Integration Designer workspace.
Building the projects using serviceDeploy.
Starting the server.
Deploying the projects to the server using wsadmin.
Running the tests using servlet tasks.
Removing the projects from the server using wsadmin.

In WebSphere Integration Developer version 7.0 or later, component test projects are full-fledged SCA modules. This enables you to test your component test projects in the headless batch processing environment of IBM Business Process Manager and use the capabilities of the serviceDeploy and wsadmin tools. If you have pre-v7.0 component test projects that you want to test in headless IBM Business Process Manager, you can import them into IBM Integration Designer and a migration wizard will be automatically launched to enable you to convert the component test projects to version 7 SCA modules.

Although headless IBM Business Process Manager is the recommended test environment, there are several kinds of artifacts that cannot be successfully tested in this environment and you should use headless IBM Integration Designer instead. These artifacts are described in the "Limitations" topic.