Parasoft SOAtest : Fixed the error message- the maximum message size quota for incoming messages (65536) has been exceeded.

Our team is using Parasoft SOAtest to test WCF method. After executing all tests, the following error appears.

Message: The maximum message size quota for incoming messages (65536) has been exceeded. To increase the quota, use the MaxReceivedMessageSize property on the appropriate binding element.

In C# , I know it is easy to adjust MaxReceivedMessageSize in app.config and the issue will be going away.

But in Parasoft SOAtest, how to fix this issue? 

If we change the Default to Custom and uncheck Constrain request to WSDL, the issue is going away.

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.

Fixed the issue: Integration test failed due to curly quotes

Last week, when doing integration test with another team member, he mentioned that one row in the inbound table showed the invalid character. After looking into this interesting issue in our DB, here is the screenshot.

How could this issue happen?

If users are typing apostrophe in MS Word or Outlook, it shows the first one above (Curly quote or Smart quote) by default.

If they copy and paste into the system, after we publish the data, the integration test fails due to invalid characters (the second one above)

How to turn off Smart quote and use Straight quotes in MS word? Here are the steps:

Open MS Word 2010 -> File-Options-Proofing-> AutoCorrect Options->AutoFormat As You Type-> Uncheck Straight quotes with smart quotes.

Usually users won't do it in this way. The best way is that we need to validate the data with Curly quote often in the DB.

Fixed the issue: Could not start build: You are not authorized to access

This morning, our team members could not queue a new build successfully. We got the following error message. But we can still hit the following URL successfully.

Go to security setting in TFS 2013 Dashboard  and I don’t see any issue at all.

After logging to build machine and restarting the related build services, I got the logon failure .It means the password of TFS build account was expired.

This error message “You are not authorized to access” is really confusing and Microsoft needs to provide the better error message to handle this scenario.

After updating the new password of TFS build account , queuing a new build is always successful. 

TFS 2013 Dashboard: Users can’t export work items to MS Excel ( bad design)

Today one colleague would like to export work items to MS Excel in TFS 2013 dashboard and he could not find it. I could not find it, either. It was working in TFS 2010 web access. I only see one option: Send query as an email. 

After posting a question in MSDN forum, I finally notice this feature was removed in TFS 2012.

The company pays so much money to let users use TFS 2013 enterprise version and finally they can’t use the basic function of exporting work items to MS Excel.  What should they do?

I would say it is bad design and not user friendly. 

SQL Query: Get the correct Fiscal Year and Quarter

Today I need to compare the data accuracy between 2 tables in SQL Server 2008 R2. There is one interesting scenario of Fiscal Year and Quarter for me to validate. The first quarter of a fiscal year starts on October 1 every year.  

For example,

Q4 (FY 2013): July –September, 2013

Q1 (FY 2014): October -December, 2013

Q2 (FY2014):  January –March, 2014

Q3 (FY2014):  April –June, 2014

Q4 (FY2014):  July –September, 2014

Actually, we can use datapart and case when  in SQL query easily.

After that, here is the expected result. 

Fixed the issue: Invalid Column Name appears in SQL Server Management Studio

Today I used SSMS to select  new columns in SQL query and  it showed invalid column Name ‘XXXXX’.  But running the query has no issue at all.

After looking into this interesting issue, it is easy to fix it.

Just click Edit-> Intellisense-> Refresh Local Cache and  you are all set. 

Fixed the issue: Visual Studio 2012 IDE shows the error – Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

I have Visual Studio 2013 IDE and Visual Studio 2012 IDE installed in my work laptop.

Today when I used Visual Studio 2012 IDE to open one solution file, for some reason, all files were not showing up in Solution Explorer. I used File-Open ->Project/Solution to open the solution file, it showed the error- Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

What happened with Visual Studio 2012?  It must be one line code in Visual Studio 2012 that can’t handle very well and throw the error.  Visual Studio 2013 is working fine.

After looking into this issue, after I deleted all files in the following folder, opening solution file has no issue at all.

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0

Fixed the issue: LOAD TEST menu doesn’t appear in Visual Studio 2013

Today I opened one solution file via Visual Studio 2013 and noticed one interesting issue: LOAD TEST Menu doesn't appear in Visual Studio 2013, but it appears in another solution file.

After looking into this issue , I found out the difference between these 2 .csproj files.

Just add this missing  WebTest Project Type in the solution file, reopen it, and LOAD TEST menu appears again.

Fixed the issue: Some tests failed in TFS 2013 build due to the Error Code: 502 Proxy Error: The ISA Server denied the specified Uniform Resource Locator

We just upgraded from TFS 2010 to TFS 2013, but we still use the same Build Agent. One interesting part was that after I pushed a new build, some tests failed in TFS build and here was the error message.

Error Code: 502 Proxy Error: The ISA Server denied the specified Uniform Resource Locator

I was not aware of this IP address and this server. After I logged to the Build Agent and used mstest to run one test again, the test still failed. After looking into this issue for a while, here are the steps to fix the build issue.

Open IE and go to Tools > Internet Options > Connections > LAN Settings > Proxy Server > Advanced > Exceptions 

Add IP address and domain name (i.e 10.2.1.5; xxx.domain.com) and apply the changes.

Run the test again or queue a new build. The tests pass in TFS 2013 build.