Differences Between SOAPscope 5.3 and SOAPscope Developer 6.2 PDF Print E-mail

What you should know before you upgrade!

Over the course of this year, relying on input from many of our customers, we have looked for ways that we could provide the right capabilities for developers, testers, architects and teams.  This has resulted in the addition of the SOAPscope Architect and SOAPscope Tester products to the SOAPscope Server product family. 

It has also resulted in the replacement of SOAPscope with SOAPscope Developer.  There are important differences between SOAPscope 5.X and SOAPscope Developer 6.2, and you should be aware of them before deciding to upgrade. 

We’ve added new capabilities but also removed others, or placed them into other products in our family.  Because these changes were driven by customer feedback, we don’t expect them to impact you, but we want to make sure that you are aware of the changes in advance.

1. What’s New in SOAPscope Developer 6.2

  • Improve automation of functional and performance testing by using complex assertions during Scenario Testing <-- NEW in 6.2

  • Obtain valuable PDF reports from policy checking that let you review policy violations or prove policy compliance <-- NEW in 6.2

  • The ability to verify adherence to the WS-Security standard
  • Named endpoints for invoke and resend 
  • The SOAPscope repository can now be stored in your choice of third-party databases, including Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle 11g, and MySQL
  • There is now a Contract Upload Application, a standalone utility to load WSDLs from a file
  • You can install and run the Collector for message capture only when you need it
  • Support for running on Microsoft Vista
  • Bug fixes have been carried forward from SOAPscope Server

2. Database and Workspace forward/backward compatibility

  • IMPORTANT: SOAPscope Developer 6.2 has a new database format which is not compatible with SOAPscope 5.3.  SOAPscope Developer 6.2 gives you the option to connect to and upgrade the format of your 5.3 database.  During your evaluation of SOAPscope Developer 6.2, we recommend that you use a test database rather than your existing SOAPscope 5.3 database.  If you choose to use your existing SOAPscope 5.3 database, you must backup your database first because you will not be able to roll it back.  
  • SOAPscope Developer 6.2 workspaces are NOT backwards compatible to SOAPscope 5.3. SOAPscope 5.3 will report "Bad MRP file format" on upload.       
  • SOAPscope 5.3 workspaces are forward compatible with SOAPscope Developer
  • NOTE: This is also true for SOAPscope Server - 6.2 workspaces from any product won't load into any 5.3 product, including SOAPscope Server.

3. Mindreef Collector changes

  • The Mindreef Collector is no longer installed automatically in SOAPscope Developer.  It must be started and stopped separately.   
  • You can now install and run the Collector for message capture only when you need it.
  • The default Collector port has changed to 6049 (from 5049).   If you have client programs that proxy through the Collector, you can change the port at install time or you can change your client programs.  After install time you can also change the port in the Collector configuration.
  • The Collector now uses WinPcap 4.0.2 instead of WinPcap 3.1.
  • The Collector is in a separate icon

4. SOAPscope Viewer

  • If you have saved a link to the SOAPscope Viewer in your browser, you may need to change it. You can change your links or change the port that SOAPscope Developer is on; 8103 is the default port for the SOAPscope Developer Web application.  If you wish to change the port to 7103, it is best done at install time.  To launch the SOAPscope Developer web application, browse to http://localhost:8103

5. IDE integration

  • There is no longer an add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 or 2005
  • There is no longer an add-in for Eclipse 3.0

6. Tray icon

  • The icon has changed – it’s no longer the green SOAPscope icon
  • The viewer is not launched automatically. Instead, add short cut to Favorites (or to your links toolbar)
  • The Collector is in a separate icon
  • There is no Open Services functions.  Instead, you may use Windows Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Services.

7. Welcome Tab

  • Support for RSS feeds (Subscriptions area) is no longer provided.
  • Feeds from 'News & Notices' and 'Mindreef SOAPscope Blog' are no longer provided.
  • The Mindreef Profile section has been discontinued.

8. Scenario Test / Playback

9. Policy Setup

  • Policy Set functions are now provided by Policy Rules Manager which is included in SOAPscope Architect and SOAPscope Server.  In SOAPscope Developer 6.2, there is no Policy tab or ability to:

      •   Create new profiles based on existing rules.
      •   Disable rules you don't adhere to.
      •   See which rules are contained in each profile
      •   See how rules are defined (read-only), and read the help for each rule.
 
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