Lessons Learned in Parasoft SOAtest

I have used C# to do the test automation for many years. Currently I am working on the new project. The interest part is that the team uses Parasoft SOAtest to develop automation to test WCF methods. Here are some lessons I learned:

SQL query:

If we put SQL query in txt file, please don’t put any comment (- -) .  At the end of every line, please add more space. Otherwise, SQL query will not work.

Check out:

SOAtest doesn’t integrate with TFS very well. It has the merge issue. Only 1 person can check out one tst file. If 2 persons are working on the same tst file, once A checks in, B will lose his work. Therefore, one tst file is only for one WCF method.

Refresh Issue

If I duplicate set-up test and modify the data source column name in ‘Extraction”, sometimes this column doesn’t appear immediately in SOAP Client. Clicking “refresh” is not working either. I need to close SOATest and reopen it.

Global Variables:

Put the values in the Test Suite instead of putting them in local test scenario. If you put the values in test scenario and when executing all the tests, some variables will get confused and some tests will fail.

When I use this tool to develop test automation, I see so many issues in this product. My colleagues said Parasoft SOAtest costs 1 million dollars and adding one user needs to pay the license fee. 

It is not worth 1 million dollars because Parasoft SOAtest is not the high-quality product after using it.