Cannot Create new SoapUI Project from a wsdl that binds ok in CICS WS on mainframe

Question

I'm trying to create a new SoapUI project from a wsdl and xsd that bind ok on mainframe to create a CICS WebService so cannot imagine any syntax error or the like.

Please note I've tried this in SoapUI v5.4.0 & v5.2.1 (NOT SoapUI Pro).

The popup message states;

Error loading [http://localhost/var/cics/msp/dev10/DataContracts/Include/Generic.xsd]: org.apache.xmlbeans.XmlException: org.apache.xmlbeans.XmlException: error: Reference to undefined entity: raquo

The pertinent bit of error log is below, but not particularly useful to me as I cannot determine what is wrong.

2019-11-25 14:26:44,477 ERROR [errorlog] com.eviware.soapui.impl.support.definition.support.InvalidDefinitionException
com.eviware.soapui.impl.support.definition.support.InvalidDefinitionException
at com.eviware.soapui.impl.wsdl.support.wsdl.WsdlLoader.makeInvalidDefinitionException(WsdlLoader.java:127)
at com.eviware.soapui.impl.wsdl.support.wsdl.WsdlLoader.loadXmlObject(WsdlLoader.java:117)
at com.eviware.soapui.impl.wsdl.support.xsd.SchemaUtils.getDefinitionParts(SchemaUtils.java:486)
at com.eviware.soapui.impl.wsdl.support.xsd.SchemaUtils.selectDefinitionParts(SchemaUtils.java:513)
at com.eviware.soapui.impl.wsdl.support.xsd.SchemaUtils.getDefinitionParts(SchemaUtils.java:496)
at com.eviware.soapui.impl.wsdl.support.xsd.SchemaUtils.selectDefinitionParts(SchemaUtils.java:513)
at com.eviware.soapui.impl.wsdl.support.xsd.SchemaUtils.getDefinitionParts(SchemaUtils.java:496)
at com.eviware.soapui.impl.wsdl.support.xsd.SchemaUtils.getDefinitionParts(SchemaUtils.java:475)
at com.eviware.soapui.impl.support.definition.support.AbstractDefinitionCache.update(AbstractDefinitionCache.java:92)
at com.eviware.soapui.impl.support.definition.support.AbstractDefinitionContext$Loader.construct(AbstractDefinitionContext.java:208)
at com.eviware.soapui.support.swing.SwingWorkerDelegator.construct(SwingWorkerDelegator.java:46)
at com.eviware.soapui.support.swing.SwingWorker$2.run(SwingWorker.java:131)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

Any and all suggestions as to what is wrong will be gratefully received.

richie · Accepted Answer

Hey MickH,Yeah, my immediate thought was that the file was malformed (so wont open in a browser or anything with an xml parser), but the error message indicates different.Did i understand correctly....the .xsd is embedded in the .wsdl?In that case if you open the .wsdl in any text editor (if youve got xmlspy thats even better as it has an xmlparser included) and search for the ampersand character.There should be an entity placeholder that isnt one of the five allowed entities (&amp;amp;  or  &amp;gt;  or  &amp;lt;  or  &amp;apos;  or  &amp;quot;  which corresponds to &amp; or &gt; or &lt; or ' or ")There should be another entity value starting with the ampersand character (i.e. '&amp;') that isn't one of the five allowed.  That'll be the problem and you need to encode or remove.Nice one,Rich

richie · Answer

Hi ,You've posted this in the wrong forum fella, you need to post this in the free open source SoapUI forum rather than the paid for ReadyAPI! forum. I'm not saying this to be awkward or anything, but SoapUI is quite different to ReadyAPI! now and so you might not get this problem in ReadyAPI!, despite issue appearing with SoapUi (and vice versa).HOWEVER, I saw in one part of the error log it mentioned undefined entity and i csn guess what the problem is.  There are 5 entities (reserved character placeholders in xml).  Somewhere in the file you have an undefined entity - so you have a placeholder such as nonbreaking space character ..i.e. &amp;nbsp in your .wsdl that isn't being recognised by UTF-8 which is the default charset for xml, so either you remove these unrecognised entity values OR you alter them to a value that is accepted such as &amp;#160Cheers,Rich

nmrao · Answer

Please try opening the wsdl from browser and see if that is ok or do you see any error.

mickh · Answer

Thanks for the replies thus far.&nbsp;Yes, the wsdl opens fine in Internet Explorer. I then can port it to mainframe and bind it into a CICS Webservice so syntactically the wsdl and associated xsd&nbsp;is fine.&nbsp;I think Richie has touched upon the real problem in that SoapUI is objecting to some form of non-displayable character/s. However, I cannot see these in Visual Studio Code and do not know how to view / find these. Any further suggestions along these lines would be helpful.&nbsp;TIA&nbsp;

mickh · Answer

hi Richie,many thanks for looking at this, it's a real peculiar one.&nbsp;I suspect it has something to do with codeset translation but unfortunately I do not have anything to find offending characters on the mainframe. Please allow me to explain the development process.&nbsp;The object is to get a formed wsdl and xsd onto the unix box where CICS binds them into a CICS Webservice (under the name of the xsd). This part works absolutely fine the steps being;i) Develop on the pc in Visual Studio Code (&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;)ii) Transfer components to mainframe and change codeset 1st line to&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="EBCDIC-CP-US" standalone="no"?&gt;iii) Transfer to Unix machine and get CICS WS to bind the members. All good so far.&nbsp;In order to test the Webservice, I browse the unix wsdl in Internet Explorer and offer the address in IE to create a new SoapUI project. It is at this point that I encounter the SoapUI problem.&nbsp;This is a tried and tested method of testing the wsdl's and works for all other examples.&nbsp;So, can I assume that there is some 'dodgy' character in the Unix version of the constructs that SoapUI does not like? TIA

richie · Answer

Hey MickH,It's been about 5 years since i last came across a mainframe and EBCDIC, so you'll have to bare with me, but i'm guessing that's where the problem lies.I'm also a bit lost at the method of soapui project you're using.  Its been a number of years since i was proficient with soapui (i've been using ReadyAPI! for the last 4 years or so), but when i create a project via a .wsdl, i create the project by loading in the .wsdl.  Does soapui support this method of project creation?  I can't remember.  Either way that doesn't really matter cos you've used the method you're using before.Anyway.  Going back to my original thought.  If you're 100% positive the error response is a bit of a red herring and you don't have any undefined entities, if i understand your process I'm wondering if your project is being created with the .xml default of UTF-8, but your .wsdl has EBCDIC chars that aren't recognised by UTF-8 and this is what the problem is?I'm typing this out on my phone so can't really do much but i'd do a comparison of UTF-8 vs EBCDIC-CP-US charsets and go from there.I'd also investigate if you can load in the EBCDIC-CP-US charset into soapui.  I know you can load other language charsets into ReadyAPI! cos i've seen posts from people that were testing using Chinese ideographs (or whatever the correct phrase is).  Perhaps if you can add the EBCDIC charset into soapui, could could then specify the EBCDIC charset in your soapuisettings.xml (or wherever the current charset is stored) which might allow you to create a project .xml with EBCDIC rather than UTF-8I need to highlight that the above are just ramblings on my part and i don't know for sure if this is the answer, but i'm almost certain (with the current info i have and without access to your system) the EBCDIC .wsdl vs a UTF-8 project is the problem.Hope this helps!Rich

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Cannot Create new SoapUI Project from a wsdl that binds ok in CICS WS on mainframe

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