Soap UI is clunky and hard to use and lack web services features that are required for serious web services testing. SoapUI requires significant coding for building/maintaining test cases and suites. SoapSonar on other hand is code free, far more feature rich and cover web services ,SOAP and XML testing and WS-* standards extensively. I have seen that SOAPUI is generally 1-1.5 years behind in standards support compared to SOAPSonar. The UI for SOAPSnar is more professional and simpler to use. And they are far more widely deployed in web services testing community for Enterprise/Professional use. A couple of advantages that SOAPUI had over SOAPSonar .If we use WADL for REST testing, then go for SoapUI. They seem to be better at REST rather than SOAP.
I would recommend downloading both products and make sure that your WSDL load up properly first. Most products choke on sophisticated WSDLs so trying that out should be your first step. Next see how easy is it to build simple test cases. Subsequently you should try more complex standards such as WS-Security, SAML,WS-Policy, etc and see which product meet your needs.Also keep all aspects of testing functional, regression, security
Good blog post.
The first paragraph makes it sounds like you just ate a chili pepper right before writing the blog. You come out swinging.
I hope you will consider expanding on the short comings of soapUI. Is it SAML support that you see lacking in soapUI? I would like to see more concrete examples.
In my case, I love soapUI. Its support for multiple forms of WSDL is excellent. I’ve gone through several of the http://XMethods.com services. It amazes me how well soapUI handles all the dialects of WSDL there.
-Frank
I agree with the analysis of the product comparisons. I specialize in XML, SOAP, and Web Services testing and go into many company environments that are running soapUI. This choice seems based more on the open source free aspect than on the actual merits of the solution. The limits of this product as it relates to security or identity related aspects of deployments (i.e. SSL, WS-Security, SAML, WS-Identity) render this tool un-viable as a real enterprise solution for testing. It seems to work decently for simple WSDLs and REST testing, but falls short in any type of complex environment.
I have found that environments with complex WSDLs, i.e. ones with Schema that have constructs such as xsd:choice, or those which have the standard provisions of modern date \late-binding\ data types - those represented in schema as XSD polymorphism, are simply parsed incorrectly by soapUI with no indication that the product is actually building invalid SOAP messages from the WSDL schema.
On the flip side, I have used SOAPSonar heavily for XML, SOAP, and REST based testing with a lot of success. This product is more intuitive, more flexible, and more robust. It provides support for SSL, WS-Security, WS-Identity (including X.509 certs from SmartCards), and also has a number of features around automation, performance, and compliance analysis. Since SOAPSonar is available for free, I can see no compelling reason to opt for the soapUI open source solution.
The only reason I can see anyone touting the benefits of soapUI are those who haven’t yet tried SOAPSonar.
Based on my experiences SOAPUI is cumbersome interface, especially with complex WSDL and Schema. Also, I had a lot of problems with abstract schema types that eventually i also discovered that SOAPUI was actually generating invalid SOAP messages from WSDL schema. There is one thing, If you are going with REST testing I would suggest you to have a test drive of SOAPUI else I would strongly recommend SOAPSonar.
SOAPSonar has a very intuitive GUI and setting up and running tests is quite straightforward. SOAPSonar also has very solid features for identity and security testing. I found that I could load all the company WSDLs into this tool without error. One thing I would like to add. If we talk in the Load Testing or in Performance testing point of view, SOAPSonar latest version supports up to 200 virtual clients but i think SoapUI does not have any concept of virtual clients.
I agree with John Smith comments “The only reason I can see anyone touting the benefits of soapUI are those who haven’t yet tried SOAPSonar. “
I personally prefer SOATest from Parasoft. SoapUI is good for developer that wants to go deeper into the XML. For tester, and less geek people, then SOATest is my preferred. I did not test SOAPSonar from a long time now …