Create simulations

Simulations are a set of virtual services and connections that you can use instead of real services that are unavailable in your test environment. A virtual service needs connections to communicate with a service. This means that data is sent to or received from the destination or location that you've specified as the connection in your simulation, such as an URL, port, etc.

You can create simulations in the following ways:

Create a simulation file

Your simulation file needs the following elements:

  • Use these top-level elements of a simulation file to define the behavior of a simulation:

    Main element

    Description

    Example

    connections

    Connections that are required for communication with a service.

    Example

    includes

    Links to other simulation files. You can reuse simulations in multiple other simulations, so you don't have to redo your work. The file path can be absolute or relative to the current schema location.

    C:\my_simulations\test.yaml

    name

    Name of the simulation.

    My simulation

    resources

    Resources that you want to share between different services.

    Example

    schema

    Version name of the schema applied to the simulation YAML file. This property is mandatory and the value must be SimV1.

    SimV1

    services

    Virtual services that you want to simulate.

    Example

    templates

    Messages and connections that can be referenced in the virtual services via the property basedOn.

    myMessage,

    myConnection

  • The simulation file must include one or more connections to communicate with a service. Use connection properties to define them.

  • Use message properties to define the content of your outgoing messages.

  • Use resources properties in your simulation file to reference a resource, such as a data structure.

  • Use service properties to specify the order in which you want to send or receive messages.

  • Use steps properties to define the process of a service.

  • Define rules properties to select which messages you want to send or receive.

  • Find out which values you can use to define your properties and how to specify them.

The schema file is a YAML file and follows YAML patterns. For information on how to work with YAML files, see the YAML documentation.

What's next

Start the created simulation with a Simulator agent.