Assertions help

Hi Catty,

An assertion is very important. It is your way of saying "does the response contain what i want it to contain?" and if an assertion fails it's proof that the Web Service does not work.

My rule of thumb is that; Yes you should include assertions.

Now, you can group assertions into different categories:

Base Assertions:

These assertions coudl or should always be there, even when you have other assertions.

Schema Compliance
Validates the response message against its xml schema.
Cab always be used. If there is a mismatch between the message and what is returned it will fail
SOAP Fault.
Checks that the response is a soap fault. Really simple way to catch when the service is throwing a fault.
Not SOAP Fault
Checks that the response is not a soap fault. Good when you have a negative test.
SOAP Response
Checks that the response is valid SOAP Response. Can always be there.

Intermediate Assertions
These are medium complex assertions. I encourage using at least one of them.

Simple Contains
Checks for the existence of a token. Really Simple. Is there the text "Catty"
Simple somewhere in the message. Very Simple, but not very exact.

Not Contains
Checks for the non existence of a token. The opposite of above. I don't want "Catttty" in the response.
Response SLA
Simple. Checks the response time to be under a specified value; I want it to respond in a second, if not report it as an error.
XPath Match
The above where simple, but not very exact. XPath match is used to be exact; I want the element Username to be "Catty". Matches the result of a specified XPath expression against a predefined value. This is more complex, but soapUI Pro makes this into a simple point and click exercise. This is the assertion I always use and the one I live by. Or rather used to live by when I still worked in testing.

Advanced
Here are the Asseertions for more complex tasks.
XQuery Match
Good when you have large amounts of data in the responseMatches the result of a specified XQuery expression against a predefined value
Script Assertion
Allows a custom Groovy script for asserting the message exchange. Although complex it is still useful for more complex calculations, how do you know that the SSN return actually is a proper SSN? do a Script assertion.
WS-Security Status
This is for when the Web Service Implements WS-S. Checks that incoming WS-Security processing was successful
WS-Addressing Response Assertion
Checks that the response has valid WS-A header properties. This is for when the Web Service Implements WS-A.
WS-Addressing Request Assertion
Checks that the request has valid WS-A header properties.This is for when the Web Service Implements WS-A

/niclas
eviware.com

You are a star.. That makes sense even to the dumbest.

Thks a lot..

0ne final question pls...

Can you please describe XPath with a example on how to declare it in the Xpath Expression. Does my question makes any sense??

Thanks