This section describes additional configuration settings for SOAtest and Virtualize available in the Parasoft> Preferences menu.

Browser Settings

The Browser panel lets you set options related to Web scenario recording. Available settings include:

Proxy Configuration Details

When you record or run web scenarios in a browser, the proxy settings in the browser are set to an internal proxy maintained by SOAtest and/or Virtualize. All communication to and from the browser during recording and playback goes through the internal proxy, which is an intermediary used to capture traffic and otherwise facilitate execution. During recording and playback, SOAtest and/or Virtualize temporarily creates this proxy on localhost using the port specified by the Browser Playback setting’s Proxy port option.

The default host and port for the internal proxy is localhost:55555. Change the port number if this port is already in use using the controls Proxy port field. Do not change this from within the browser.

If your machine is configured to use your own proxy, you should configure SOAtest and/or Virtualize to point to that proxy. This enables SOAtest and/or Virtualize to configure its internal proxy to forward all traffic to the specified proxy configured in Proxy Settings.

Internet Explorer Notes

SOAtest and Virtualize modify the global registry settings prior to starting its instance of the browser. If an instance of Internet Explorer was running on the machine prior to launching SOAtest or Virtualize (not recommended), the global registry settings will not be set in the existing browser instance.

In these cases, check the Internet Options panel in the existing browser instance while a web scenario is running to verify that the settings point to SOAtest’s or Virtualize's proxy and click OK in the Internet Options panel. If you click OK, the proxy settings are updated in the existing browser instance. If you click Cancel, or do not go to the Internet Options panel, then the existing browser instance never picks up the proxy settings and should continue to navigate fine.

Proxy settings may not be reset properly if the browser exited abnormally, if there is a hanging browser process, etc. Such issues can affect new browser instances (or other programs that connect to the internet). If this happens, you can resolve it by resetting your machine’s proxy settings to the appropriate settings or killing any hanging browser processes.

Console Settings

The Console panel allows you to determine the amount of information that is reported to the Console view and whether it is automatically activated when it contains messages.

Continuous Testing Platform Settings

If you have Continuous Testing Platform (CTP) and a valid license, you can configure your connection to CTP:

Global Data Source Settings

Global Data Sources can be reused and shared outside of a single SOAtest project and across Virtualize deployments. The Global Data Source panel lets you determine how information about global data sources is saved.

Technical Support Settings

If you are experiencing problems with Virtualize, the best way to remedy the problem is to create a zip archive containing the related files, then send that zip file to Parasoft's support team. To facilitate this process, you can have the product automatically create an archive when problems occur. On average, these archives are about half a megabyte, and are created in about one minute.

By default, an archive is not created when problems occur. You can either manually prepare and send a support archive when needed, or you can modify Parasoft  archive creation options so that the product automatically prepares and sends an archive when problems occur.

To configure the product  to automatically prepare and send archives when problems occur:

  1. Open the Technical Support panel by choosing Parasoft> Preferences, then selecting the Parasoft> Technical Support category.
  2. Check Enable auto-creation of support archives.
  3. Customize additional options as needed. Note that Enable auto-creation of support archives and Send archives by email are not applicable to Virtualize.
  4. Click Apply, then OK.

To manually create a support archive:

To open the Technical Support Archive Manager, which allows you to review, e-mail, or delete recent support archives:

When creating a support archive it is best to ensure that it contains all the info which is relevant to the  problem and does not contain any unrelated info. To ensure that detailed logs are sent to the standard output console, add the following argument to virtualizecli:

-J-Dcom.parasoft.xtest.logging.config.jar.file=/com/parasoft/xtest/logging/log4j/config/eclipse.on.xml

Dictionary Settings

The Dictionary panel allows you to customize the dictionary that the Spell tool uses to identify misspelled words.

Adding Words

To add words to the dictionary:


You can also add reported misspelled words to the dictionary from the Quality Tasks view. Just right-click the reported misspelled word, then choose Add to Dictionary.

Adding Dictionaries

You can expand SOAtest’s built-in dictionary by extending it with additional sets of ispell-format dictionaries (such as dictionaries for language other than English, dictionaries of industry-specific terms, etc.). Each dictionary set has a name and one or more dictionaries.

To add an additional  dictionary set:

  1. Save the dictionaries in the SOAtest installation directory.
  2. Click the Add  button, then use the file chooser to select the set of dictionaries you want to add.

Adding Non-Text Characters or Words Containing Non-Text to the Dictionary

By default, SOAtest treats non-text characters as white space and does not allow you to add dictionary words that contain non-text characters. If you want SOAtest to consider a designated non-text character as a valid character within a word (rather than as one unit of white space), you need to add that character to the list of allowable non-text characters. This allows you to identify spelling errors in words that contain allowed non-text characters and to add dictionary words that contain allowed non-text characters.

To add non-text characters to the list of allowable non-text characters:

MIME Type Settings

The MIME Types panel lets you add and remove MIME types. In addition, it lets you specify the location of your preferred text and XML editors and lets you specify what editor you want to use to edit all files that have a particular MIME type.

To add, edit, or remove a MIME type:

Miscellaneous Settings

The Misc panel allows you to set the following miscellaneous settings:

Proxy Settings

The Proxy panel controls how SOAtest and/or Virtualize works with proxy servers. It does not control the separate intermediary proxy used for web scenarios (for details on this other proxy, see Proxy Configuration Details). 

HTTP proxies that do not require authentication can be used while managing remote SOAtest and Virtualize servers. HTTP proxies that require authentication will not be applied when adding a remote SOAtest or Virtualize server to the server tree.

Scanning Settings

This Scanning panel specifies settings related to how SOAtest scans Web applications. Available options include:

Scripting Settings

The Scripting panel allows you to specify properties used for custom scripts.

Security Settings

The Security panel allows you to set the following security settings:

In order to perform operations that use the XML Signature Verifier, XML Signer, or XML Encryption tools, or if using Key Stores, you will need to download and install the Unlimited Strength Java Cryptography Extension. For details, see JCE Prerequisite.

Keystores are specified at the test or responder suite level. If this option is selected, the following options are available in the Certificate and Private Key tabs:

About Kerberos Authentication

Kerberos authentication is known as a trusted third-party authentication mechanism. A client requests access to a service not directly, but from another service: the Key Distribution Center, which manages network-wide authorization. This mechanism facilitates Single Sign-On (SSO) so that a client need only provide authorization credentials once in a given time period (usually 8-10 hours). The authorization is granted in the form of a ticket which can then be cached and reused throughout the granted time period without re-authenticating.

Entities in a Kerberos-protected network, such as clients and servers, are known as principals. The network-space that Kerberos protects is known as a realm. Microsoft's IIS (Internet Information Services) Server provides HTTP-based services with Kerberos through the Negotiation protocol. Other server vendors provide their own implementations of Microsoft's Negotiate protocol.

The ticket that is received upon initial authentication is known as a Ticket Granting Ticket, or TGT. For example, in a Windows environment, the TGT is generated when first logging on to the workstation in the morning. SOAtest and/or Virtualize authorizes itself to use a Kerberos-protected service by retrieving a user's TGT from the system cache.

For tips on common Kerberos errors and how to solve them, see http://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/security/jgss/tutorials/Troubleshooting.html.

Configuring Kerberos Authentication 

  1. Configure the following options in the Security preferences panel:
  2. Select the tool for which you intend to use Kerberos authentication.
  3. Select the Transport tab and select Security from the left pane of the Transport tab.

Configure the following options from the security panel of the Transport tab:

  2. Now when you invoke your tool, the required Negotiate token will automatically be generated and send as an HTTP header.

Kerberos provides a mechanism to prevent so-called "replay" attacks where a user tries to provide captured duplicate credentials for a service in order to gain access to them.When performing a load test, where multiple virtual users provide the same user credentials, the KDC will respond as if a replay attack is occurring and errors will be thrown. This is expected behavior and it is uncertain at this point whether there is a work-around.

JCE Prerequisite

In order to perform security operations that use XML Signature Verifier, XML Signer, or XML Encryption tools—or to use Key Stores— you will need to download and install the Unlimited Strength Java Cryptography Extension. You can do this as follows:

  1. Go to http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html.
  2. Download the JCE Unlimited Strength Jurisdiction Policy Files.
  3. Install the downloaded files in into the following directory on your machine:
    [Parasoft Test install dir]\[Parasoft Test version number]\plugins\com.parasoft.xtest.jdk.eclipse.core.[platform]_[jre version]\jdk\jre\lib\security
    For example:
    C:\Program Files\Parasoft\Test\9.10\plugins\com.parasoft.xtest.jdk.eclipse.core.win32.x86_64_1.8.0.102\jdk\jre\lib\security
    Be sure to replace the existing local_policy.jar and US_export_policy.jar files with the new ones that you downloaded.

  4. Restart SOAtest and/or Virtualize.

To see exactly where Unlimited JCE policy files should be added on your system, look at the message shown if you view keystore settings in the preferences for two-way SSL.

This "Java Cryptography Extension (JCE) Unlimited Strength Jurisdiction Policy Files may need to be installed" message is displayed only if Unlimited JCE policy files are not yet installed to the JRE that  is running on. After the files are installed properly and product is restarted, the message will no longer be shown.

Server Settings

The Server panel allows you to configure the following settings for the SOAtest and/or Virtualize server. The SOAtest server allows you to work with the Call Back tool and Asynchronous testing—as well as Message Stub tools integrated into end-to-end test scenarios.

SOA Registry Settings

SOAtest can create tests that enforce policies applied to Web service assets that are declared in a BEA AquaLogic Enterprise Repository  or Software AG Centrasite repository as described in Using Oracle or BEA with SOAtest and Using Software AG CentraSite Active SOA with SOAtest. The SOA Registry panel allows you to specify settings that SOAtest will use by default in forms that reference such repositories. For instance, if you specify settings for BEA ALER here, SOAtest will use these values by default in the wizard for creating tests from BEA ALER.

SOAP Settings

The SOAP panel allows you to specify the following settings:

You can also customize how SOAtest and/or Virtualize serialize the SOAP objects they transmit and deserialize the SOAP messages they receive, but you cannot do so within the Preferences panel.

SOAP messages are deserialized from XML into some native format and objects are serialized into XML format so that they can be sent as responses.

To add a serializer/deserializer pair, you add a line to the register.py file in the <INSTALL_HOME>/plugins/com.parasoft.xtest.libs.web_<version>/root/startup directory. You must programmatically use Jython register Apache Axis-compliant serializers.

For Axis, you can retrieve the TypeMappingRegistry used by calling soatest.api.SOAPUtil.getDefaultAxisRegistry(). After you retrieve that registry, you can use the Axis API to register the serializer as needed.

System Properties Settings

The System Properties panel lets you add JAR files, class folders, and Java projects to the classpath if needed. Use the available controls to add or remove JAR files, class folders, and Java projects. The specified JAR files, classpaths, and Java projects  will be added to the system's classpath and the corresponding classes will be loaded into the JVM after SOAtest or Virtualize is restarted.

Click Reload to force classes from the class path entries to reload.

Enable the Automatically reload classes option if you want SOAtest/Virtualize to reload classes from your Eclipse project after being modified or recompiled.

If you want to quickly add a large number of jar files—or add jars to a headless instance of your Parasoft solution— copy them into one of the following directories within your workspace:

  • TestAssets/system_jars  

  • stubs/system_jars
  • VirtualAssets/system_jars
Jar files in those directories will automatically be loaded upon startup or after Reload is clicked in the Preferences page.

On a headless instance, if you want to reload the jars without having to restart SOAtest or Virtualize, call post /v<version>/preferences/systemProperties/reload from the REST API.

Traffic File Processing Settings

The Traffic File Processing panel lets you globally indicate that you want certain values (such as times-tamps) ignored whenever:

Virtualize is automatically configured to ignore timestamps—based on the regular expression [0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}T[0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}([.][0-9]{1,3})?(([+-][0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2})|Z)?

You can add or modify exclusions using the table controls. Element names are specified as exact matches or using a wildcard (*) to match everything. Values are specified as regular expressions.

UDDI Settings

The UDDI panel lets you set the UDDI inquiry endpoint, which is the endpoint that you want SOAtest to reference when performing dynamic router resolution. If you specify a UDDI registry here, the SOAP Client tool can search for a service by querying that registry using the UDDI serviceKey specified in the SOAP Client parameters. If you do not specify a UDDI registry here, you have to configure your SOAP Client tool so that the server endpoint is hard-coded as a router value.

WSDL History

The WSDL panel lets you review or modify the WSDLs that have been used in tools and projects. These WSDLs will be available for selection in relevant drop-down boxes. This way, if you need to specify the same WSDL multiple times, you don’t need to constantly type it in over and over again. 

Enable the Save WSDLs used in message responders, SOAP clients, and projects if you want SOAtest/Virtualize to save tests' or assets' WSDL URIs. If you are using SOAtest only, the option will read Save WSDLs used in SOAP clients and projects. If you are using Virtualize only, the option will read Save WSDLs used in message responders and projects. 

The WSDL URI field lists the WSDL URIs that will be available in tools’ WSDL URI drop down menu. By default, all WSDL URIs used in related tools are added to this list. Click on a URI in the field and click Refresh WSDL to refresh the WSDL from the given location URL and re-parse it.

Enable the WSDL/Schema Parsing section to check all schema locations in order to locate components belonging to a give target namespace. Disable this option to use only the first schema location encountered in order to resolve components for a given target namespace.

XML Conversion Settings

The XML Conversion settings panel lets you register data models for fixed length messages. 

For details on using this setting in Virtualize, see Fixed Length Message Responder. For details on using this setting in SOAtest, see Fixed Length Client and Fixed Length Call Back.

XML Schema History Settings

The XML Schema History panel lets you review or modify the XML Schemas that have been used in Messaging Clients (SOAtest), message responders (Virtualize), and projects. These Schemas will be available for selection in relevant drop-down boxes. This way, if you need to specify the same Schema multiple times, you don’t need to constantly type it in over and over again.

XML Schema Locations Settings

The XML Schema Locations panel lets you view, add, and remove schema locations.The XML Validator tool needs to know where to find the schema that it should use to validate the document of concern. In most cases this is a URI and is supplied within the document being validated. If, however, the URI for the schema is not supplied or if you want to use a different location, then disable the Use namespace as location URI for Schemas option for the XML Validator tool. For more information on the XML Validator tool, see XML Validator. When the tool is run with this option disabled, SOAtest will use the schema location(s) indicated in this panel. To add a new schema location:

  1. Click the Add button beneath the Namespace and Location columns.
  2. In the dialog that opens, specify the Namespace and Schema Location.
  3. Click OK after you have added all of the necessary locations.

To specify namespaces to skip:

  1. Click the Add button beneath the List of namespaces to skip during XML Validation table.
  2. In the dialog that opens, specify the namespace you want to skip.
  3. Click OK.

To add OASIS XML Catalog Locations:

  1. Click the Add button beneath the OASIS XML Catalog Locations section of the Schema Locations tab. The Location dialog box displays.
  2. Type in the OASIS XML Catalog Location or Browse to it by clicking the Browse button.
  3. Click OK after you have added all of the necessary locations.

Virtualize Localsettings

There are two ways to define localsettings files:

Localsettings files can specify the following settings.

Licensing Settings

SettingPurpose
virtualize.license. use_network=true|falseDetermines whether the current installation retrieves its license from LicenseServer.
virtualize.license. network.host=[host]

Specifies the machine name or IP address of the machine running LicenseServer Configuration Manager.

Example:

virtualize.license.network.host=10.9.1.63

virtualize.license. network.port=[port]

Specifies the LicenseServer port number.

Example:

virtualize.license.network.port=2222

virtualize.license.network.edition=[edition_name]

Specifies the type of license that you want this installation to retrieve from LicenseServer.

[edition_name] can be server_edition. To use a custom edition, do not set anything after the "="; simply leaving the value empty.

Example:

virtualize.license.network.edition=desktop_edition

virtualize.license.network.edition=server_edition

virtualize.license.autoconf.timeout=[seconds]Specifies the maximum number of seconds this installation will wait for the license to be automatically configured from LicenseServer. Default is 10.
virtualize.license.
local.expiration=[expiration]		Specifies the local license that you want this installation to use.
virtualize.license. local.password=[password]Specifies the local password that you want this installation to use.
virtualize.license.wait.for.tokens.time=[time in minutes]

Specifies the time that this installation will wait for a license if a license is not currently available. 

For example to make it  wait 3 minutes for license tokens, use virtualize.wait.for.tokens.time=3.

See Manually Adding the License to localsetttings for additional notes and examples.

Virtualize Settings

SettingPurpose
server.startupDetermines whether the server is automatically started upon Virtualize startup.
server.port.httpSpecifies the port that the Virtualize Server uses for HTTP.
server.port.httpsSpecifies the port that the Virtualize Server uses for HTTPS.
server.port.monitoringSpecifies the port that the Virtualize Server uses for monitoring.
system.properties.class-
path=[path1];[path2];[path3] ...

Specifies which jar files and class folders are in the classpath. 

For example: system.properties.classpath=C\:\\myjars\\myLib1.jar;C\:\\myjar s\\myLib2.jar

scripting.timeout.minutesSpecifies the number of minutes after which Virtualize will attempt to stop an unresponsive script and log an error message.
scripting.jython.homeSpecifies the Jython installation directory. This must be a single directory.
scripting.jython.pathUsed to add to your path modules that are not in your jython.home/Lib directory. Multiple paths can be listed.
datasources.jdbc.classpath=[path1];[path2];[path3] ...

Specifies the location of JDBC driver jar files and class folders.

Special characters (spaces, slashes, colons, etc.) must be escaped; for instance:

%20 = SPACE

%3A = :

%5C = \

%7B = {

%7D = }

%24 = $

If listing multiple jars, use \n as a delimiter.

For example,
C:\temp\with
space\${example}\jar.jar

becomes

C%3A%5Ctemp%5Cwith%20space%5C$2 4%7Bexample%7D%5Cjar.jar\n

traffic.wizard.xpath.ignores

Lets you globally indicate that you want certain values (such as times-tamps) ignored whenever:

  • you are creating parameterized .pvas from traffic, and
  • requiest body correlations are configured automatically.

Exclusions are specified in the format

traffic.wizard.xpath.ignores=[element name 1]:[value pattern 1];[element name 2]:[value pattern 2];[element name 3]:[value pattern 3]

For example:

traffic.wizard.xpath.ignores=*:[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}T[0-9]{2}:[0- 9]{2}:[0-9]{2}([.][0-9]{1,3})?(([+-][0-9]{2}:[0- 9]{2})|Z)?;uuid:[a-fA-F0-9]{8}-[a-fA-F0-9]{4}-[a-fA-F0-9]{4}-[a-fA-F0-9]{4}-[a-fA-F0-9]{12}

Note that when the backslash character (\) is used in the regular expression, it needs to be escaped.  For example, the regex [\d], which represents a single digit, would be entered as  [\\d].

Continuous Testing Platform Settings

SettingPurpose
env.manager.server

Specifies the location of the CTP server. Required

Example: env.manager.server=http://em_hostname:8080/

env.manager.server.name

Specifies the name that will be used to label this server on CTP.You can use whatever value will help you identify this server. Optional

Example: env.manager.server.name=MyVirtServerLabel

env.manager.notify

Determines whether the Virtualize server notifies Parasoft CTP when virtual assets are deployed. Optional

Example: env.manager.notify=true

env.manager.username

Specifies the username for logging into CTP. Optional

Example: env.manager.username=me

env.manager.password

Specifies the password for logging into CTP. Optional

Example: env.manager.password=12345

Miscellaneous Settings

SettingPurpose
dtp.autoconfig=true|false

Enables autoconfiguration with Parasoft Test settings stored on the DTP server.

Default: false

dtp.enabled=true|false

Determines whether the current Parasoft Test product is connected to DTP.

Default: false

dtp.server=[host]Specifies the host name of the DTP server.
dtp.port=[port]Specifies the DTP server port.
console.verbosity.level=low|normal|high

Specifies the verbosity level for the Console view. Available settings are:

low: Configures the Console view to show errors and basic information about the current step’s name and status (done, failed, up-to-date).

normal: Also shows command lines and issues reported during test and analysis.

high: Also shows warnings.

parallel.mode=Manual|Auto|Disabled

Determines which of the following modes is active:

  • Auto: Allows the product to control parallel processing settings.
  • Manual: Allows you to manually configure parallel processing settings to suit your specific needs.
  • Disabled: Configures the product to use only one of the available CPUs.
parallel.max_threads=<number>

Specifies the maximum number of  parallel threads that can be executed simultaneously. The actual number of parallel threads is determined based on the number of CPUs, available memory, and license settings.

parallel.free_memory_limit=<percentage>Specifies the amount of memory that should be kept free in low memory conditions (expressed as a percentage of the total memory available for the application). This is used to ensure that free memory is available for other processes.
parallel.no_memory_limit=true|falseIndicates that you do not want to place any restrictions (beyond existing system limitations) on the memory available to the product.
tasks.clear=true|falseClears existing tasks upon startup in cli mode. This prevents excessive time being spent "loading existing results." The default is true.
security.trust.all.certificatestrue|falseTells Virtualize that you want it to accept any certificate. This is useful if you want to load pages whose certificates are not "trusted."
security.use.default.java.cacertstrue|falseTells Virtualize that you want it to accept only certificates from the standard list of Java trusted certificate vendors.

Manually Adding the License to localsetttings

To add or change license settings vialocalsettings:

  1. If you will be using a custom edition license, define the appropriate license features in the localsettings as follows:
    [product].license.custom_edition_features= All enabled features
    Note that license feature settings apply only to custom edition licenses.

  2. Define the main license settings in the localsettings as follows:

    virtualize.license.network.edition= Type of license edition 
virtualize.license.use_network= Value (true or false) 
license.network.host= Host name
license.network.port= Port number

Here are several examples of properly-configured license settings in localsettings file:

Virtualize network license - desktop edition

virtualize.license.network.edition=desktop_edition 
virtualize.license.use_network=true
license.network.host=main1.parasoft.com.pl 
license.network.port=2222

Virtualize network license -custom edition with various features

virtualize.license.custom_edition_features=Virtualize, Server, Message Packs, Unlimited Million Hits / Day
virtualize.license.network.edition=custom_edition
virtualize.license.use_network=true
license.network.host=main1.parasoft.com.pl
license.network.port=2222

Virtualize network license -custom edition with various features

virtualize.license.local.expiration=2014-04-15
virtualize.license.local.password=PARASOFT_353E2A7DA4F3D4B2FF142B0A262AF62B9DEC3449 C124773BAF0B4B508FF21139E867D9772F3702716FCE6D8EA16ACE668DE0EE629D154713599203BD85CE1213_7937E7ED374E70FDD62EE8411C2BB2D8EB465019E64BF3EF3A87DE6B67FB10BBCAF8611B08F70 D9420AC574FC5B3E5EB7241B20506DE2C60B0D80462CBEDBD
virtualize.license.use_network=false

Note that with local licenses, the enabled features are specified via the generated password.