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This post assumes the basic working knowledge of SOAP UI testing tool, Oracle Service Bus11g and developing the REST based services.

Primer on REST

REST stands for ‘Representational State Transfer’ and it was first introduced by ‘Roy Fielding’ in his 2000 doctoral dissertation. REST is another architectural style of creating the web services that is different from SOAP based web services. REST based architectures communicate primarily through the transfer of representation of resources (information) and it uses simple XML over HTTP.

RESTful services adhere to certain set of constraints and architectural principles that include the following:

    · REST based architectures are built from resources that are uniquely identified by URIs and the only allowed operations are the HTTP operations: GET, POST, PUT and DELETE.

   · REST components manipulate resources by exchanging the representations of the resources. For example, a trading account can be represented by a XML document. In RESTful architecture a trading account might be updated by posting a XML document containing the modified trading account information to its URI.

Creating New REST Project

Open the SOAP UI and click on File -> New SOAP UI Project. Enter the project name and select the option ‘Add REST Service’ and click on OK.

In the next dialog window, Enter the Service Endpoint as :port">http://<hostname>:port where OSB runs and do not include the proxy service endpoint in this and check the option ‘Create Resource’.

In the next dialog window, Enter any value for the resource name to identify the resource and give the actual Proxy Service endpoint for Resource Path and click OK.

In the next dialog window, Enter any value for method name and select the HTTP method as your Proxy Service supports. Since my OSB proxy service supports only POST I am selecting the method as POST as shown below and click on OK.

Now verify that new REST project has been created and Request1 window is opened. To test your REST based proxy, modify the Media Type to ‘text/xml’, copy the request into request window and run by clicking on green arrow icon on the top.

Adding New Request to Existing Project

Right click and select the New Request as shown below:

Enter the Request Name as you need and click Ok to open the request editor. Once the request editor opens, copy the request into the request window and run as explained earlier.

Adding New Resource to Existing Project

Right click and select New Resource as shown in the below screenshot.

Enter the Resource Name and End point as explained in previous section to add another resource (proxy in our case) and click on OK.

Verify that another resource is added to the project that we have created and enter the Method Name and select POST method as explained earlier and click on OK. And run the request after pasting it in request window.