Should I practice acceptance testing for my SOA part?

Question

Suppose an SOA layer with a web app at a boundary.

If I want to create some acceptance tests in order to practice Behaviour-Driven Development, does it make sense to have distinct ones at both parts: SOA part and Web app part?

Acceptance testing for the webapp would involve Selenium for instance, as acceptance testing really promotes an end-to-end test based on a useful and real application usage.

But what about a service?

In short, does SOA part need some written stories as client application do in order to really study behavior and features of the services?

Or are integration tests quite sufficient?

Answer 1

If the system is simple probably not.

In principle the services are independent deployment units that can be used in contexts different from the immediate or initial client (the web app in your case). For instance you can expose that service directly to a supplier or customer to integrate with etc.