Mindreef

Released in November 2002, SOAPscope 1.0 focused on SOAP visibility for development organizations “getting their feet wet” with Web services. These early adopters needed a tool to see and understand the content of their SOAP messages. At this point in the maturity of Web services, many organizations are now connecting real-world applications and data. SOAPscope 2.0 focuses on the interfaces between Web services. These interfaces are described in a WSDL (Web Services Description Language) document. Errant WSDL results in Web services that are not interoperable, or do not function properly.

The design of interfaces using WSDL is a complex specialty, but almost every Web service developer, tester or troubleshooter will have to know WSDL as it is the key to Web services interoperability. SOAPscope 2.0 makes WSDL approachable by automating the four steps people use when solving Web services problems: Visualizing, Analyzing, Experimenting, and Comparing. (Read the white paper “Top 4 Ways to Know Your WSDL” at www.mindreef.com/products/whitepapers/ )

“SOAPscope's Analysis engine is particularly relevant with today’s release of the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0, a major milestone toward interoperable Web services. It includes rules that check a user's WSDL against the Basic Profile 1.0,” said Jim Moskun, co-founder of Mindreef. “Analysis tools are often difficult to use, relegating them to specialists. We put great effort into making SOAPscope’s WSDL analysis easy-to-use with descriptive help so developers and testers can find problems as they emerge.”

Finding WSDL related problems early is particularly important for organizations employing WSDL First development. This major shift in Web services development is the practice of writing the interface for Web services (i.e. the WSDL file) before writing the code. (Read the article “WSDL First” at www.mindreef.com/newsletter/ )

“Web services revolve around WSDL. Problems in WSDL definitions can quickly propagate throughout a system, making the source of the problem extremely difficult to identify. The only way to effectively diagnose and troubleshoot such problems is to carefully analyze and understand the WSDL you’re working with, taking into account the WS-I interoperability guidelines. Finally there’s a product that makes it easy for developers to tackle this tough problem: SOAPScope 2.0!” said Aaron Skonnard, Manager of XML/Web Services curriculum at DevelopMentor.

Mindreef SOAPscope 2.0 Features, Pricing and Availability

SOAPscope 2.0 builds upon the SOAP diagnostic capabilities of SOAPscope 1.0. The system introduces a collection of tools that allow a broad audience to better understand and solve WSDL-related problems. With SOAPscope 2.0 Mindreef introduces four ways to “know your WSDL.”

• See It: Quickly view and understand the contents of a WSDL document without wading through the XML. SOAPscope provides pseudocode, tree, syntax-colored XML and raw views of the WSDL document.

• Check It: Automatically checks a WSDL against WS-I Basic Profile 1.0, as well as the WSDL 1.1 specification and Mindreef's own knowledge base of "best practices."

• Try It: Allows users to call and test a Web service with an easy-to-use form. Designed to be a troubleshooting aid that allow users to quickly test many different conditions when determining the cause of problem, it offers the opportunity of “trying out” Web services before writing any code.

• Diff It: Provides a view of what has changed since the last time a WSDL was modified. A small change in a WSDL can create many errors. “DIFFing” a WSDL against a previous version clarifies the change that may have been the root of the errors.

Mindreef SOAPscope 2.0 is priced at $99 and is available immediately for download at www.mindreef.com