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maxfactor's avatar
maxfactor
Occasional Contributor
12 years ago

How to share Excel DataSource amoung Agents

I have a SoapUI pro 4.5.1 test case that reads from an Excel spreadsheet with 10 rows of data used to create DataSource values. I also have a LoadUI Pro 2.5.1 which has a VU to test the SoapUI test case in a distributed manner. The SoapUI test case works perfect in standalone mode and a non-distributed LoadUI test case also works perfect.

But it would appear that when I set the LoadUI test case to run in distributed mode the agents running on different machines do not have access to the Excel file (as I guess I should expect). I have the following 'check marked' in the DataSource options associated with the Excel file:
"Shared"
"Restart Shared"
"Restart on Run"

My question is: How do I need to configure the test case (either in LoadUI or SoapUI or the agents) such that it can be distributed to remote agents? Do I need to copy the Excel file to every agent computer? Or is there a way to configure the agent to know where to look (on which computer) for the Excel file, such as modifying the log4j.xml file?

Thanks

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  • SmartBear_Suppo's avatar
    SmartBear_Suppo
    SmartBear Alumni (Retired)
    12 years ago
    The only way for the agents to have access to the Excel data source is, like you said, copying the file to the expected location in every machine where you run the agents. This is because it is SoapUI actually reading the data source, and SoapUI does not have distributed mode.

    If this is troublesome for you, we can open a feature request and look into that. We are always happy to receive feedback from customers regarding how we can improve our software. Would you like that?

    Regards,

    Renato Athaydes
    SmartBear Sweden
  • maxfactor's avatar
    maxfactor
    Occasional Contributor
    12 years ago
    Hi Renato. Yes, I do think that feature would be very useful to us. We want to run on dozens of machines and the Excel drives the entire process so it would be very inconvenient to have to constantly copy new versions of the Excel to these other machines. I would think that this feature would be very important in general to many users especially considering that distributed testing is such a huge selling feature of LoadUI. I would be pretty amazed if I am the first person to want such a feature.

    Perhaps in this scenario I should not be using an Excel? Is there some other text based data source mechanism (i.e. not a real 'database') that I should be using that would have an automatic distribution feature?

    Thanks.
  • maxfactor's avatar
    maxfactor
    Occasional Contributor
    12 years ago
    I should have also asked, where is "the expected location"? I think that means that I have to recreate an identical custom folder structure (note that it is NOT in /.soapui folder) on each agent machine and put the Excel file in that folder. Is that correct? Or does it belong in the ...../Agent/.bin folder?
  • maxfactor's avatar
    maxfactor
    Occasional Contributor
    12 years ago
    As I discovered, and to be more specific about Renato's answer: If you use an Excel file as a data source and you want to run in LoadUI distributed mode then you must copy the Excel file to the same folder as the Agent executable (installation folder) on every machine where you want to run an agent.

    i.e. you do NOT copy the Excel to the ".../.loadui" folder and you do NOT copy it to a replicated SoapUI project folder tree (where the Excel had originally come from)