Test SOAP Web Services Effectively, Easily and Freely

Use raw ruby scripts, not SoapUI or PostMan.

In the article “Failed Tech Hype: SOAP Web Services”, I shared my experience and opinion as a programmer. As I switched my daytime job to a test automation engineer in 2010, here I would like to show you how I conduct automated testing SOAP web services, an approach I have successfully used in a number of projects.

Table of Contents:
· Why do most SOAP testing with SoapUI fail? 
· Understanding the fundamentals of SOAP
· Construct SOAP Request
  ∘ Generate SOAP requests using SoapUI
· Invoke a SOAP Web Service in Ruby
· Assert SOAP response
· SOAP Request with Dynamic Data
  ∘ Construct request messages with a template
  ∘ Generate message from a template with defined data
· More on Dynamic
· Continuous Testing
· A story of a junior test engineer learning this approach

Why does most SOAP testing with SoapUI fail?

Firstly, I do not use GUI tools such as SoapUI, Ready API or PostMan. Every project that I know attempted with the above have failed. (Check out my Definition of End-to-End Test Automation Success)

Yes, anyone can quickly create a handful of automated tests for a SOAP service with a GUI tool. However, there are some…