In the last few days, I had to evaluate the product SOAtest (Parasoft). SOAtest is an Eclipse-based testing tool, which supports most important technologies and vendors to test your Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) technically.

What is SOAtest?

SOAtest is a tool to realize integration tests for your Service-orientied Architecture. It is Eclipse-based, therefore a developer can easily start with the product. You create most tests using the Eclipse-GUI, configure your specific tests (e.g. queue managers or database connections) and define the behaviour of the tests. The tests can also be integrated in your build server or test tools such as HP Quality Center.

Thus, you can realize integration tests using several technologies and databases within one tool and without any Java source code. No matter what technology is used, the realization is always based on the same concepts, e.g. you see a web service response or a Database response as „traffic“, or you create an assertion the same way for all technologies. Of course, you can also integrate your own logic using Java, JavaScript or Jython, if SOAtest functions are not sufficient.

Supported Technologies

Almost all important technologies are supported. There is a very powerful web services support including WS-*  stuff such as WS-Policy. I really appreciate that. Besides, many other technologies such as messaging, database connections or simple csv-files can be used, too.

Supported Vendors

Support for most important vendors is offered. For example, besides basic support for messaging using the JMS api (JEE standard), vendor solutions such as Tibco EMS, Tibco RV or WebSphere MQ are explicitly supported.

Conclusion

I evaluated SOAtest for some days. I had to realize an use case which included WebSphere MQ, Tibco RV and Oracle DB. I got very good real-time support by a developer of Parasoft. Because of many, many features of the product, this support for getting started was really necessary to get quick results.

My conclusion: I really like SOAtest. You can realize integration tests with some clicks. As developer, you feel familiar with the concepts, because it is „just“ an Eclipse plugin. Web service and messaging support is very powerful.

But be aware: SOAtest is proprietary. Thus, you have to invest some thousands of dollars if you want to use it. But in large projects, the license costs will probably pay off soon. If you have to write integration tests using web services or messaging, I recommend you to evaluate SOAtest…

Best regards,

Kai Wähner (Twitter: @KaiWaehner)