What is SoapUI and How Does It Help in Web Services Testing?

Nowadays testers plug in a variety of web services into a web application to boost its functionality and performance without writing any additional code. Web services make the web application communicate with third-party services smoothly regardless of the technology and system architecture. But testers often find it a daunting challenge to assess the functionality and performance of individual web services in an exact and accurate way. As an open source application, SoapUI helps programmers to test web services accurately without putting any extra time and efforts. There are also a number of reasons why a large percentage of web testers use SoapUI for web service testing.

Why SoapUI is used widely by Testers for Testing Web Services?

Supports Many Protocols

SoapUI makes it easier for QA professionals to test a wide variety of web services by supporting major protocols. In addition to SOAP, WSDL and HTTP, the application also supports REST, AMF, JDBC and JMS. So testers can use a single tool to test applications and services written in different programming languages. Also, they can assess all aspects of the web services accurately regardless of the underlying technology.

Provides a Graphical Interface

The graphical interface provided by SoapUI enables users to test web services without having adequate technical expertise. They can further use the graphical interface to test web services based on both WSDL and SOAP. The web service client provided by the graphical interface can further generate web services and requests automatically.

Provides a Command Line Option

The experienced QA professionals also have option to use the command line option provided by SoapUI. So they can run the tests directly from the task scheduler. The option enables them to execute the automated tests in batch files. The testers can further use the command line option to customize the execution of tests, and having control over tests, output and parameters. 

Facilitates Regression and Functional Testing Automation

The testers can use SoapUI to automate their functional and regression testing efforts without putting any extra effort. They can simply avail the features provided by the application to validate the quality of web services. Further, they can easily write functional tests, create test suites, add test cases to the test suite, and add assertions to the test cases. The users can further take advantage of the drag and drop action to simplify creation and execution of complex test scenarios.

Allows Testers to Replicate Web Services in Advance

Often developers find it daunting to test the web services in the implementation stage. Many developers even put additional time and effort to replicate the full-scale production environment to test the web services effectively. SoapUI makes it easier for QA professionals to test web services without replicating production environment. They can use the application to test web services before their implementation. SoapUI further helps testers to mimic the behaviour and features of both REST and SOAP APIs through the SoapUI Mock Services.

 Supports Multiple Environments

SoapUI can be used for performing functional and regression tests in both staging and production environments. So the testers can use a single tool to assess the web services in multiple environments. At the same time, they also have option to change the test setup smoothly according to the environment.

Comes with Advanced Security Features

SoapUI further comes with features to protect the web application and services from various security threats. It helps users to secure their databases by creating and submitting malicious SQL statements. Likewise, the QA professionals can conduct XML bomb scans to check if the website’s performance is affected when users try to submit larger documents. They can further prevent cross site scripting (XSS) attacks by checking if the parameters used in its messages are being exposed by the web service.

Despite being an open source tool, SoapUI is being updated at frequent intervals. The SoapUI 5.2 comes with JSON based assertions and three distinct built-in functions. At the same time, enterprises can also invest in SoapUI Pro to avail a number of additional features and enhancements for web service testing.