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By Mike Gunderloy A pair of SOAP tools crossed my desk today. Maybe not everything in the universe is a Web Service yet, but you'd never know it from all of the activity in the vendor space. The first of these is the latest release of the XML Spy Suite, 4.3. Along with about a bazillion other features, this version includes a SOAP debugger. You can watch both requests and responses and edit them using all of the tools that XML Spy puts at your disposal. Here's a bit of a debugging session using their sample project:
The other tool is a little deal called NetTool, from the CapeClear folks. This one lets you set up a little proxy to intercept and forward SOAP requests and responses. It also lets you just put together your own SOAP messages and send them off, as you can see here:
Of the two, I found XMLSpy to be easier to get working as a SOAP proxy; NetTool requires having a Java VM installed, and its cross-platform UI us a bit less intuitive for me (because, of course, I'm not used to that look and feel). But the price is certainly right on NetTool. If you're working with Web Services, you'll probably eventually need one of these tools. Mike Gunderloy is the lead developer for Larkware and author of numerous books and articles on programming topics. |
XML Spy is $399 from the XML Spy website; you can download a 30-day full-featured trial version if you like. The program does every darned thing I can possibly imagine with XML, which doesn't stop them from adding new features on a regular basis. NetTool is free; you can read about it on the CapeScience website and then download your own copy. CapeScience is the developer support arm of CapeClear, who make some excellent products including the CapeStudio development environment for web services of all types. |
![[XMLSpy screenshot]](../Images/xmlspy.jpg)
