SOAP: Web Services testing

This tutorial describes how to design a Virtual User containing SOAP requests. It will show you three different ways of creating SOAP requests in NeoLoad: from a WSDL file, from scratch, or from a recording sequence.

To gain the most from this tutorial, it is recommended to read SOAP requests<in_pdf_design>.

Understand the context

In the same way NeoLoad lets you define and load test HTTP interactions, NeoLoad provides the means to load test SOAP requests. SOAP requests are in many ways similar to pure HTTP requests. This means that all the features NeoLoad provides for HTTP requests will be available for SOAP. This includes, among others, using variables, defining validation expressions and of course obtaining load test results. However it is worthy to note that SOAP requests differ from HTTP request in several ways:

1. SOAP requests may not be associated to an HTML page the way HTTP requests are. If you record an HTML page containing SOAP requests, these requests will be recorded and associated to the page. On the other hand, if you record only SOAP requests, they will appear as standalone requests. For more information, see Record a SOAP request.
2. Not belonging to an HTML page, independent SOAP requests have no associated Think Time. If you want to test a sequence of SOAP calls, it is up to you to define delay actions to simulate latencies. For more information about delay actions, see Delay.
3. The way NeoLoad displays results differ from HTML pages and HTTP requests. For more information, see Quick tour on analyzing SOAP results.

NeoLoad provides three ways of defining a SOAP request and are covered by one of the following sections:

• Define a SOAP request based on a WSDL definition
• Manually define a SOAP request from ground up
• Record a SOAP request