Glossary Item Box

Government Gateway 2.2.0 (MR-01) ISV Developer Help (Doc Version 06/03/08) | Send comments on this topic.

# ISV Test Service

The Gateway provides a test service which allows Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to test their applications. Support is provided for:

- DSP protocol – so applications can submit business transaction (business forms)
- WS SOAP Public interface – so applications can, for example, get user details or retrieve service enrolment information.

The test service gives developers the opportunity to test the mechanisms used for communicating with the Gateway before working with the live system. It also allows developers to test that their applications conform to the rules governing the format of messages that can be accepted by the Gateway.

The test service provides sufficient functionality to enable developers to submit documents and receive reports on their progress through the system in the same way as in the live version of the system. The test service is located at https://secure.dev.gateway.gov.uk/submission.

The Test Service imposes a number of constraints on the client document submissions. In some cases these are not consistent with the live Gateway service:

- Test Service is not intended to handle large documents. Document submissions to the Test Service that are over one megabyte in size will be rejected with an appropriate error message. This is not the case for the live system.
- Every effort will be made to keep the behaviour of the live Gateway and the Test Service consistent. From time to time minor discrepancies may occur as the result of ongoing maintenance.
- Submissions to the Test Service that include the optional GatewayTest element must have its value set to "1".

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