Mindreef SOAPscope ServerSOAPscope Server, like QEngine, is a thin-client-based tool. Behind SOAPscope's browser UI is a Tomcat server, girded by an RDBMS (relational database management system) that can be MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, or the embedded Apache Derby database. (Derby is supplied with SOAPscope but not recommended for even moderately large installations.)
SOAPscope Server's service spaces are the overarching containers of testing assets. An administrator will use service spaces to organize users into groups. Within a service space, member users can create one or more workspaces in which to store their, well, work.
Inside a workspace you'll find WSDL contracts, tests, notes, and other ancillary material needed to support actual testing. Typically, a workspace corresponds to a WSDL: When you create a new workspace, the first prompt you encounter is for a WSDL URL. You can, however, add more WSDL contracts to the workspace once it is created. Once you've imported a WSDL into a workspace, you can begin adding messages to that workspace. A message is really a SOAP request/response pair, created when you invoke a Web method on a WSDL. The invocation also optionally creates an "action" within the workspace.
The distinction between "message" and "action" gets a bit tricky. Messages are a kind of journal of your interactions with the Web service; each message is a request/response pair stored in a list each time you invoke a Web method. Actions are also messages, but they are kept in a separate area in the GUI. More importantly, actions can be arranged in an arbitrary sequence and replayed in that sequence. Such a replayed sequence is a test script. SOAPscope lets you fortify scripts with realistic behavior; for example, you can pass values among actions in a script so that a subsequent request is altered based on a preceding response.
Messages become actions when you enable a Recording flag (from a menu selection), so you tweak a message until you arrive at a request/response pair that you've determined will make an acceptable test instance. Then you turn on Recording and invoke the message; the associated action is created in the actions section, where it can be incorporated into a script.
Invoking a Web method to generate messages and actions is fall-off-a-log easy. SOAPscope is a very visual environment; similar to LISA, there is little or no programming involved. Request inputs can be either fixed values (entered manually), global values, or fed in from a data grid (such as a small spreadsheet built into SOAPscope). Also, SOAPscope can perform load testing, but you must first purchase the Mindreef Load Check module. The workloads employed by a load test are scripts imported from workspaces, and they're configured to expose the target Web service to different quantities of virtual clients executing those scripts.
SOAPscope can test the client side of Web services via the SOAPscope Server. You create a set of requests and responses – a request/response pair in this context is called a reaction – and store these pairs with the SOAPscope Server. Point the client to be tested at the server and submit requests. The server will search through the reactions; when it locates one with a stored request that matches the incoming request, it sends back the associated response. The upshot is a mock Web service – not particularly elaborate, but effective.
SOAPscope's documentation is first-rate, particularly helpful to anyone new to SOAP and Web services. And noncoding QA engineers will welcome the tool's code-free environment.
