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SoapUI Open Source future

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KarelHusa
Champion Level 2

SoapUI Open Source future

Dear all,

I wonder what is the Smartbear's (and the rest of community) plan for SoapUI OS future.

 

The SoapUI's Github (https://github.com/SmartBear/soapui ) shows there's almost no activity for quite a long time. 

 

Is Smartbear dropping its support for the SoapUI OS?

Do you have any plan to streamline SoapUI OS with ReadyAPI, so that the OS and commercial version could enjoy mutual synergy like some other open source products?

 

Best regards,

Karel 

 

Karel@apimate.eu
https://apimate.eu
8 REPLIES 8
richie
Community Hero

Hey @KarelHusa,

 

tbh - I don't really think smartbear actually 'support' SoapUI anyway - i.e.  if you have an issue you cant resolve, you just have to hope there's a kind and knowledgeable soapui/readyapi! user on the forum or stackoverflow that is willing to help - the only customer support available is for the licensed option (readyapi).

 

i still think its one of the best freeware options for api testing - postan isnt as functionally rich and the automation is clunky, restassured & restsharp requires either 100% java or c#, soatest is licensed, katalon api is free until you need to plug into a ci/cd/ct pipeline, but tools are catching up.  I mean - you cant load in an openAPI (swagger v3), soapui doesnt include an assertion verification point like readyapi! (meaning you cant write BDD tests properly), the event handling is only available in readyapi (even postman includes equivalent functionality in the freeware version!), etc, etc.

 

some companies will always go freeware no matter what (despite if the licensing costs of pro software would actually save money and increase story point throughput over time), but others will go freeware initially and discover the pro/licensed version is exactly what they need.  hence why i think its a strategic mistake for smartbear to ignore open source soapui, as soapui can be a gateway into licensing with readyapi!.

 

however, this approach will only continue if soapui is kept reasonably up to date, and as you say - the code updates are few and far between.

soapui was considered at my last contract, but because it didnt support creating BDDs and loading in an OAS, they went with Katalon api test.  Theyve since bought the licenses for katalon and that wouldve been readyapi licenses if soapui had included the BDD/OAS functionality.

 

just my opinion!

 

cheers,

 

rich  

if this helped answer the post, could you please mark it as 'solved'? Also if you consider whether the title of your post is relevant? Perhaps if the post is solved, it might make sense to update the Subject header field of the post to something more descriptive? This will help people when searching for problems. Ta
KarelHusa
Champion Level 2

Hi @richie,

I agree with most of your points. Though SoapUI OS is declining, it's still one of the best options for API testing. No doubt SoapUI has been a great success for many year.

 

However, it's advantage won't take long if the direction does not change -- that's why I am asking Smartbear, who was in the beginning and still is the main supporter/contributor.

 

Best regards,

Karel

 

Karel@apimate.eu
https://apimate.eu
nmrao
Champion Level 2

Not sure of the the release cadence.
However, there are still releases happening, say last release in July '20 though not much features or bug fixes went in there.
https://www.soapui.org/downloads/latest-release/release-notes/

I think, the most missing thing in the SoapUI is support of Open API. This was raised very long back.
https://community.smartbear.com/t5/SoapUI-Feature-Requests/OAS-3-0-tooling-support/idi-p/192615

May be it will be taken up for the productization only if there are more interest from the community by kudos / comments



Regards,
Rao.
nmrao
Champion Level 2

@KarelHusa,

Are you looking for any specific feature(s) in SoapUI OS?

By the way, they do accept development from contributors as well. Please see below if not already.
https://www.soapui.org/developers-corner/contributing/



Regards,
Rao.
KarelHusa
Champion Level 2

Hi @nmrao,

yes, OpenAPI 3.x is one of the features which are missing in SoapUI OS.

Similarly GraphQL and other technologies which came during the last years, when SoapUI OS development was already slowing down.

 

My question is basically whether SoapUI OS is an aging application or if there is some plan for its future.

 

Best regards,

Karel

 

Karel@apimate.eu
https://apimate.eu
nmrao
Champion Level 2

Hmm. Don't know any thing about GraphQL. But if there is driver available (I am sure there must be), then one can get it going in Soapui too.

As you pointed technology, another one I can think of is interaction with Kafka.
But, I guess(I can be wrong), with some scripting efforts, most things are achievable in Soapui OS.


Regards,
Rao.
AV
SmartBear Alumni (Retired)
SmartBear Alumni (Retired)

Hello, All! First of all on behalf of R&D team I want to say thank you so much for your interest in SoapUI. This is definitely great tool and we love it so much too. Unfortunately over the past year we definitely didn't spend any efforts supporting it there is an objective reason for that. ReadyAPI & SoapUI share the same development team, which is not so big as we wish. Anyway according to data we see it's extremely popular and millions of people use it.

I can not guarantee we would release new versions often moving forward, but defitely as soon as we get any small chance to spend with SoapUI we will merge your pull requests and we'll do our best to keep this product alive.

Definitely this product can not be maintained as ReadyAPI does just because its nature, but always feel free to ask your questions in the community, please also don't hesistate to request new features/bug fixes. If amount of the requests will be significant I'm sure our respectfull community managers will transfer them to company management and dev team will be happy to release new version.

 

Best regards,

Ilya Avdeev, ReadyAPI/SoapUI R&D team lead

KarelHusa
Champion Level 2

@AV ,

thank you for your answer, I appreciate that!

 

Best regards,

Karel

 

Karel@apimate.eu
https://apimate.eu
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