The 2007-09-17 soapUI Pro snapshot adds the following improvements

• Grid DataSource for manually inputting data
• Added support for default authentication-settings per endpoint
• Possibility to close/open projects for improved startup times and memory consumption
• Added "Copy Request to TestRequests" action for merging/copying requests to a selection of target TestRequests
• Added "Clone Assertions" action to clone TestRequest assertions to other TestRequest Steps
• Added Initial integration for Apache CXF wsdl2java tool
• Added support for importing/handling remote projects (over http)
• Added possibility to post-process a collection of updated items (Requests, etc..) after certain actions
• Many minor improvements and Bug-fixes
  

(as always, fon't forget to backup your project files before testing!)

Grid DataSource for manual input of data

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For the situation where you want to manage the data for a data-source from within soapUI, this DataSource lets you add an arbitrary number of rows with text values for each property. The table also has copy/paste support for Excel interoperability.

(please not that the last empty row in the editor is not part of the data but only there for adding new rows..)

Added support for default authentication-settings per endpoint

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The "Service Endpoints" dialog shown from the Interface popup menu now allows association of default username/password/domain/WSS-Type/WSS-TimeToLive for an endpoint, removing the requirement to enter these at the request/test-request level. If required though, the specified values can still be overridden (but not cleared) on the request level. Property-expansion is supported at both endpoint/request level for these values, precedence is determined after expansion (ie if a request-level value expands to an empty string, the endpoint default is used if available).

Possibility to close/open projects for improved startup times and memory consumption

Projects can now be closed / opened from the Projects popup ("Close/Open Project") and Workspace popup ("Close/Open all.. Projects"). Closed projects are displayed with a grey project-icon and can be opened either via their right-button menu or by simply double-clicking them. A projects open-state is saved in the workspace and thus retained after a restart. Also, a global setting in the "UI Preferences" tab allows for closing of all projects at startup (recommended!). Closed projects will not be loaded from disk and will thus greatly improve startup times and reduce memory consumption.

Added "Copy Request to TestRequests" action for merging/copying requests to a selection of target TestRequests

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This action available from a standard Requests popup menu prompts to copy/merge the request to a selection of TestRequests in the same project. There are three modes for copying:
- Copy : Overwrites the target TestRequest
- Update : Merges values from the source Request into the target TestRequest without overwriting
- Keep Existing : Overwrites the target TestRequest after merging existing TestRequest values into the source Request

(Please note that the merging currently requires empty elements to merge into, it will not merge at the element level, only at the value level) 

For example the Update option can be used to update certain values in all TestRequests; create a request containing only the values to be updated and select the Update option and desired target requests

After performing this action, a list of modified TestRequests can be opened for manual checking, etc (see below on Item Lists..)

Added "Clone Assertions" action to clone TestRequest assertions to other TestRequest Steps

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This action available from the TestRequest popup and Assertions toolbar allows copying of a selection of Assertions to a selection of TestRequests in a target TestCase. Just like the above described "Copy Requests.." action, a list of modified TestRequests can optionally be opened for manual checking, etc.

Added Initial integration for Apache CXF wsdl2java tool

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The popular XFire SOAP Stack has recently been merged with the Celtix framework and transformed into "CXF", a project which is currently undergoing incubation at apache.org. The 2.0 release of CXF included their own "wsdl2java" tool for generating artifacts from an existing WSDL ("Contract-First Development"), which can now easily be triggered from within soapUI from the "Interface/Generate" and global "Tools" menu.

A global setting in the "Tools Settings" tab for "Apache CXF" has been added for specifying the location of the CXF installation.

Read more about CXF here and their wsdl2java tool here

Added support for importing/handling remote projects (over http)

soapUI can now handle project-files over http in read-only mode. When importing, the URL to project file is saved in the workspace and can be closed/opened/reloaded as usual. This opens for a number of possibilities;
- projects can easily be distributed to clients without the requirement to download updates, for example for testing or demonstration purposes. Basic authentication is supported
- the command-line testrunners also accept http-url project files, allowing for centralized storage of project files even if they are run in a distributed testing environment

If changes to a remote project need to be saved, the "Save as" menu option prompts to save the project locally, transforming it to a regular file-based project.

Added possibility to post-process a collection of updated items (Requests, etc..) after certain actions

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A number of actions currently update a number of target items (TestRequests, etc.). It may be required to manually check/post-process these after such an operation and they have been extended with an option to open a list of the modified items in a separate window which can be used for post-processing/navigating to changed items.

Currently the following actions support this:
- Update Definition : if requests/test-requests are set to be updated
- Copy Request To TestRequests (see above)
- Clone Assertions (see above)

This feature opens up for a range of process-oriented features in future versions: todo-lists, favorites, recent-modified, global search/replace, etc..

Minor improvements and bug-fixes

A number of minor improvements:
- Update Interface now has a seperate option to recreate TestRequests also
- Overview View now displays any message body (instead of requiring contract-compliance)
- One-way operations (those with no output message) should now be correctly handled in both MockServices and Requests/TestRequests (sourceforge bug 1792207)
- Contains/Not-Contains assertions now have an option to use regular-expression matching, read here on regex support
- Property Expansion is now supported in Conditional Goto Steps XPath expressions (sourceforge bug 1789984)
- TestCaseRunner now has a -o option to open generated HTML report in browser
- System properties are now accessible in property expansions; prefix with "##", for example ${##my.system.property}
- Added xerces-j 2.9.1 library for webstart compatibility with jre 1.6.0_02

A number of bug-fixes:
- DataSource ranges were not correctly applied
- TestRunner launch dialogs did not correctly add the global settings to the command-line
- Fixed save of empty properties in Properties Step (sourceforge bug 1791566)
- Fixed URL decoding of WSDL port locations (sourceforge bug 1793178)
- etc..

Project-File Impact

Many of the new new default-authentication possibility, regex support, open-report option and GridDataSource will impact project files if used. Initial project state is saved in the workspace file and new global settings in the soapui-settings.xml file.

Whats next?

We want to release 1.7.6 in the coming week, expect only bug-fixes until then!

Thank You!

For all your kind an superior feedback! Keep it coming!