Dynamic service-oriented architectures aim to provide more flexible and robust systems that are able to handle change over time. However, their dynamic nature however provides extra challenges when understanding, developing, testing and debugging such architectures.

This paper identifies and discusses a number of issues and difficulties that are faced in their development. It discusses ways in which the building of such systems can be supported by development tools, focusing particularly on interactive testing and debugging mechanisms.

A prototype tool for monitoring and interactively testing Jini services that has been developed to address, and further investigate these issues, is then described.