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Wash Away Those Web Service Testing Blues with Parasoft's SOAPtest: Page 2 of 5

In my first set of tests, I used SOAPtest as a client, evaluating several publicly available Web services as well as services I've developed for testing this type of products. A test wizard is available for SOAP service testing. It is surprisingly simple, requiring only that you enter the location of the WSDL (Web Services Description Language) file of the service you want to test. SOAPtest retrieves the WSDL file, parses it and builds a test from the file. If you don't use the wizard, you'll need to fill in the appropriate information--RPC router, operation and the like--and add each method you want to test.

Good News
  • Can test both servers and clients.
  • Extensive output options.
  • Java-based, runs on Windows and Linux.
  • Can test a wide variety of Web services implementations, including .Net, Apache/ SOAP, CapeConnect and Borland Inprise.
    Bad News
  • Reporting of performance results not granular enough.
  • Interface not intuitive enough.
  • At this point you can customize the data being sent by designating parameters. You can let SOAPtest generate data automatically based on the data type of each parameter--the product supports a wide variety of primitives and complex data types. Or you can customize the test data manually or through the use of a function, which can be written in JavaScript, Python or Java.

    Here's where the product really gets fun. You can specify many types of output to validate the Web service you are testing (see screen at left). I added an output type for HTTP traffic that would display the entire transaction--request and response --down to the HTTP protocol level.