Patent ID: 8015039

Claim:
A method for verifying a business object, the method comprising: providing a verification service implemented using a processor-based computing system; receiving at the verification service implemented using the processor-based computing system the business object and a predetermined contract defining the business object from a repository, the contract including information indicating one or more of allowed methods which are invoked at the business object, allowed data types at the business object, the number of nodes of the business object, the position of the nodes in a hierarchy of the business object, and the format of any data at the business object, the business object including one or more of a purchase order, a sales order, a flight reservation, a shipping order, customer information, and employee information; verifying at the verification service implemented using the processor-based computing system the business object based on tests defined by the predetermined contract defining the business object, the verifying comprising: generating mock data based at least in part on the metadata of the business object, performing with the business object, by the processor-based computing system, a pre-determined sequence of the tests representative of one or more transactions, the pre-determined sequence of the tests including one or more tests to cause the business object to receive business-related data for use by the business object and to produce by the business object test results with the business related data including the mock data, performing at least another test with the business object to: determine whether the business object is allowed to access another object and verify that the business object, when instantiated, has a structure as specified in the predetermined contract, determining whether metadata associated with the business object complies with the predetermined contract by determining whether the number of nodes of the business object and the positions of the nodes in the hierarchy of the business object complies with the predetermined contract, and whether one or more of the names of the nodes, and the association of the nodes comply with the predetermined contract; and providing an indication from the verification service implemented using the processor-based computing system to a user interface of whether the business object complies with the predetermined contract based on the result of the verifying step.