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paulAtErb's avatar
paulAtErb
Occasional Contributor
13 years ago

Where do I begin?

Is anyone else lost here, or is it just me?

I just want to consume a Web Service from one of our Vendors. All I want to do is make a request and receive data back. I never dreamed it would be this complicated. What kind of expertise do you need have to consume a Web Services? Do I need to be an expert in .net, C, C++, XML HTML, etc. (because I'm not). I am trying soapUI in the hope that it might help me understand how the Web Service that I'm trying to consume works. I did the tutorial "Your First soapUI Project" and read the "10 Tips for soapUI Beginners" and I'm still pretty much totally lost. (I also find it a bit insulting when they keep saying over and over again how "easy" it is....easy is relative.) I have looked everywhere for something that is truly at the beginner level and haven't been able to find anything.

If anyone knows of a course, or book, or anything that would help a true beginner I'd really appreciate you letting me know what it is. I've been a programmer in the trucking industry for over 25 years. My main area of experince is with RPG on an IBM Power 7 platform.

Also...I have the free soapUI version...can you actually do anything with the free version, or do you pretty much have to have the Pro version?

Thanks for your time.
Paul.

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  • clarksj71's avatar
    clarksj71
    Occasional Contributor
    13 years ago
    Hi Again,

    I was finally able to get a project created, and to see the operations your working with. From what I can tell. The issue that your having is probably with security. My best guess is that the service is looking for credentials in some form. Since I'm getting connection "refused" on every request. What you will need is to ask shawtracking.ca some questions. I would do this.

    1) Ask them for a sample request of each operation that your attempting to consume. (note: this will give you the format of all required values and should make it easier to get your requests correct the first time.
    2) I know this is some layer of security. Ask them if they are using Incoming WS-Security, Outgoing WS-Security, Keystore, or Truststore....Or just ask them how they are authenticating your incoming requests/responses. The answer should be one of the 4 listed below or maybe a more than one of these. You will need to get the values from them.

    Incoming WS-Security (you will need: Name, Decrypt Keystore, Signature Keystore, and Password)
    Outgoing WS-Security (you will need: Name, Default Username/Alias, Default Password, Actor)
    Keystore (you will need: Source, Status, Password, Default Alias, Alias Password)
    Truststore (you will need: Source, Status, Password, Default Alias, Alias Password)

    Once you have these vaule you can go back to your soap ui project and double click on the project name. Then click the "WS-Security Configurations" tab (there are 4 tabs listed). This is where the values will be entered.

    From here...if this doesn't help then it s over my head.

    Best Regards,

    Stephen Clark
    President, AppTest LLC
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    http://www.apptestqa.com

    sclark@apptestqa.com

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