Mindreef

What’s New?

* The Mindreef SOAPscope Server product family is growing!  New products are now available to meet the individual needs of architects, developers and testers driving SOA quality, compliance and performance on their projects.  Click to learn more about SOAPscope Architect, SOAPscope Developer and SOAPscope Tester.

* We’ve released SOAPscope Server Version 6.1, now including Mindreef Policy Rules Manager for SOA governance and policy enforcement and Load Check for driving SOA performance and scalability.

* SOAPscope 5.3 has been replaced by SOAPscope Developer 6.1.  To learn how you can upgrade at no cost, click here. 

* We now support WS-Security.  All Mindreef Version 6.1 products now support WS-Security to help increase message integrity and secure distributed transactions. Read all about WS-Security in this newsletter and on our website.

TrendWatch! 

Security, Quality and Testing Move into the SOA Era

SD Times Magazine’s Dave Worthington examines the market changes in SOA security and testing in 2007, with "increased emphasis by vendors on SOA quality testing tools. … Testing a SOA application presents challenges that stem from the integration of services and the dynamic nature of SOA applications…." [READ more from "Security, SOA Are the Watchwords for 2007"]

Top SOA Headlines of the Year

Michael Meehan, Editor of SearchSOA.com, offers a two-part overview of the top SOA stories from the past year. "In 2007, SOA began to have grownup problems. The space moved well past constant talk about Web services standards and basic integration concerns. Instead, scalability and profit began to ascend the ladder of concerns…." [READ more from "The Top SOA Stories of 2007"]

Just For Laughs: The "Future of Computing" as Envisioned in the 1960s

We just couldn’t resist sharing this 1960’s video depicting the future of e-commerce, as spotlighted by Joe McKendrick in his SOA blog at ZDNet.com. "In the 1960s, the future had a Jetsons-type look and feel. Things haven’t quite turned out so Jetsonian yet, of course — as they say, "the future ain’t what it used to be…." [WATCH for yourself "An Uncanny 1960’s View of the Future World Wide Web"]

Welcome from Mindreef President and CTO

Frank Grossman

Welcome to Mindreef Matters, where we'll provide updates and information about tools and techniques that can help you with your Web services and SOA quality.

When it comes to software quality, Web services and SOA have changed the rules forever.  The old mode, building software in development and tossing it over the wall to QA, isn’t effective anymore.  Software applications are now being built in an always-on environment with some pieces already in production while other pieces are still in design.  In order to keep a consistent level of high quality throughout the entire architecture, more people have to be involved and must collaborate.  The earlier in the process that services can be tested, performance can be scaled, and governance can be enforced the better.

With each issue of Mindreef Matters, we’ll provide information on our latest releases as well as practical suggestions and industry trends for achieving quality in your development and deployment of services and SOAs.  This month we’ll introduce you to our new packages that target different people in the process -- Architects, Testers, and Developers -- to help them work together in order to drive that level of quality.  And we’ll focus on WS-Security -- what it is, why it’s important, and how you can achieve WSS compliance.  We hope that you can put our recommendations to work for you!

Until next issue,

Ensuring Security in your Services

The SOAPscope Server family of products now supports the OASIS WS-Security standard - the most advanced method for secure distributed transactions. More than simple SSL connectivity, WS-Security provides a standard way to uniquely identify each client, defend against message reply attacks, guard against message modification, and encrypt sensitive message data.

WS-Security is a standard for SOAP based message security created by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). OASIS is a not-for-profit consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society. The consortium produces more Web services standards than any other organization and has over 5,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Mindreef supports both version 1.0 and 1.1 of the standard. More information about the standards can be found here.

As more and more companies have adopted Web services and SOAs, it’s become clear that security is an important quality attribute that must be addressed.  WS-Security provides a means for ensuring secure services, but it’s difficult to validate and test that the services that you produce and consume are complying with the WS-Security standard.  

Let your experts understand WS-Security, so you can get your testing and development done. SOAPscope Server has configurable "Security Profiles" that can be setup once and be used by everyone. Profiles can be easily copied and "tweaked" by individuals to make them match their specific testing or development needs.

Manage client identities easily using Mindreef Security Profiles. Each profile can be configured with one or more standard identity tokens, including UsernameTokens and/or an x509 Digital Certificates. Certificates are managed separately and can be updated at anytime without having to modify every test and profile. Additionally, Security Profiles can have user specific certificates – giving you the ability to uniquely identify each client user during development and testing.

Testing message signing and encryption has never been easier. Mindreef Security Profiles let you specify the WS-Security configuration you need and make changes to your configuration across all your tests. Need to test a specific configuration quickly? You can quickly make small adjustments to an existing Security Profile while you are ad-hoc testing using Invoke and Resend. Once you’ve found the exact configuration you need, edit the configured Security Profile to update all your tests.

Visit our website for more information about the new support for WS-Security.

Improve your SOA Testing

When it comes to Web services and SOA testing, creating a plan is important to ensure success, trust and reuse for new services. If you’re willing to take the risk, the return on your SOA investment is huge… that is, if it is a well-tested SOA. Untested SOA could cost you millions.

Mindreef worked with industry analyst and blogger David Linthicum to create a comprehensive guide to SOA Testing.  Our complimentary 40-page handbook, Key Strategies for SOA Testing, provides a step-by-step guide for defining your on testing domain, understanding your unique needs, and testing all components to help ensure your SOA will be productive and useful from the first day of operation.

By creating an effective SOA testing plan and selecting the right Web services testing and quality tools, you can get every member of your project team -- architects, developers, testers, and support -- working together to improve service compliance, quality, performance and time to market.
 
Click here to register and download this book, and gain valuable insight into the steps you can take today to create and execute a SOA testing plan -- and drive SOA success.