Prerequisites

• Before you can start creating parameterized test clients or Message Responders from traffic, your team must have a Data Repository Server installed and running. For details, see Installing a Remote Data Repository Server
• Message contents must be well-formed (e.g. if XML, it must be well-formed; if EDI, it must be a valid EDI message, etc.); otherwise, auto-creation of tests from the traffic might fail. SOAP messages and/or Message Responders must have only one top-level XML element.
• Message Grouping OptionsNote that the Data Repository does not support parameterization of JSON arrays with mixed types.  If a JSON array does have mixed types, SOAtest or Virtualize will assume that all elements in the array are the same type as the first element.

Using the Wizard

1. Choose the Traffic> Generate Parameterized Messages option in one of the available creation wizards. See the following chapters for additional details: 

   Adding Projects, Virtual Assets, and Responder Suites.

2. Specify the following information in the Traffic wizard and click Next:
   1. Specify the location of the traffic file.
   2. Change the character encoding if needed

   3. If you want to populate the wizard with a previous group of settings saved in a template, enter the location of that template.

      See Using Configuration Templates to Reuse and Share Wizard Settings for details about creating and using templates in Virtualize.

      

3. In the Parasoft Data Repository Settings page, specify which data repository should store the data used to parameterize the test clients or message responders and click Next. 
   

   

   

   • In the Server field, specify which server you want to connect to (either the embedded server or a remote server). If you select the embedded server, the Port, User, and Password fields will be grayed out. If you select a remote server, the Port, User, and Password fields will be automatically populated and can be adjusted as needed.

   • In the Repository name field, select or enter the name of the repository you want to use. If you enter the name of a new repository, that repository will be created.

   • When defining a repository connection, you can check the connection by clicking Validate. 

4. Configure the settings in the Message Formatand Grouping Strategy screen:

   

   
   

   1. Verify that Request message format and Response message format are set to the correct format. If not, select the appropriate format.Virtualize will attempt to identify the message format of the request and response based on the first message in the traffic file. All requests in a single traffic file are expected to have one format, and all responses in that same file are expected to have one format. The request format may be different than the request format. If the message format is not detected, Plain Text will be selected.

   2. Conversion options are available for some formats, such as EDI or custom formats. Click the Conversion Options button and make the desired changes. 

      

      
      

   3. Choose one of the message grouping options:

      • Based on operation/type: Group messages based on the operation or message type. This is useful for service traffic that contains messages that are distinctly identifiable either by operation or by the format's message type (i.e., the name of the element under the SOAP Body, the name of the root element in plain XML messages, or the message type of a specified message format). A responder is generated for each operation/type discovered within the traffic file.If you select this option, Virtualize will recommend grouping heuristics to apply, based on its analysis of the traffic file. You can change the pre-selected heuristics. To learn more about the heuristics, see Understanding Heuristics for Grouping by Operation - Type.

      • Based on similar requests: Group messages based on request message structure. This tells Virtualize to analyze the request message structures and group the request/response into responders so that each responder will contain responses that correlate with requests that have a similar structure. Messages are considered "similar" when they have an identical DOM tree model, even if they have different values. This option is used to optimize and simplify the rules for correlating requests to responses within each Message Responder.

      • Based on similar responses: Group messages based on response message structure. This tells Virtualize to analyze the response message structures and group the request/response pairs into responders so that each responder will contain responses that have a similar structure. Messages are considered "similar" when they have an identical DOM tree model, even if they have different values.

      • None: No grouping. A responder is generated for each response message in the traffic file. Use this option if you want every request/response pair in separate Message Responders.

        
        

5. Click Next and review the information about the operations and messages in the Message Grouping Review screen. 
1. The columns included are based on the grouping strategy applied. 
2. Each table row represents the criteria for defining a group. One group will be generated for each table row. One responder will be generated for each group. 

3. The correlation criteria will be processed in the order in which they appear in the table (from top to bottom). 

   For details on how these groupings were created, see Understanding Heuristics for Grouping by Operation - Type.

6. 1. Add, modify, reorder, and remove grouping criteria using the available controls. 

      See Customizing Grouping Criteria for details on configuring grouping criteria in Virtualize.

      If you change the criteria, be sure to click Regroup before proceeding.

   2. If all the Autoconfig boxes are checked and you want Virtualize to automatically configure Message Responders for the specified groups, you can skip this step.

      If you want to perform any of the following tasks, disable Autoconfig for each message group you want to customize, click Next, then configure the request mapping as described in Customizing Request Matching and Correlations:

      • Customize which parameter values should be used to determine the response messages of the virtual asset 
      • Modify the automated request/response pair matching 
      • Specify a WSDL or Schema

      Auto-configuration is typically available when there are multiple requests within a message group and there are differences in the paths, the parameters, or the body. If the Autoconfig box is grayed out, this means that autoconfiguration is not available for this group; for more details on why a specific group cannot be automatically configured, see the tooltip for that item.
      
      
      
      For more details on any of the items listed at the top of the panel (processed pairs, unprocessed pairs, messages that don’t match groups, etc.), click the associated hyperlinks.
      
      
      
      To review the messages associated with a particular responder—and/or to change the responder and data set name—click the related row in the Count column.
      
      
      
      

7. Click Next and configure the settings in the Request Matching screen.
   
   
   1. Click the Request/Response pairs tab and verify that the correct correlations have been made. You can click and drag the points connecting the requests and responses to change the match.
      
   2.  Click the Request Correlation tab choose a Responder mode from the drop-down menu. 
8. and configure how the imported traffic should be reused or how it should affect existing data in the Data Reuse screen.
1. The defined record identity is used to determine which data is new and which new records match existing records. If it has not already been specified for this data set, the identity can be added/modified from the data tree in this page. 
2. The tree indicates identity fields with green arrow icons. Existing data sets are noted with annotations.

3. You can control how new data from the traffic file will extend and/or update existing repository data sets. 

4. You can also control whether matching data (data that matches existing record types, as determined by the identity) reuses existing record types or updates an existing record. The Reuse option enables you to reuse/share the existing records that match. The Update option enables you to update the existing records’ corresponding fields with data from the traffic and add new records for new record types.
    

   Virtualize Only Options

   Replace: Erase existing data then add the new data.

   Merge: Import new data without modifying existing data.

   Update: Update matching records with new data and create new records as needed.

   Overwrite: Update matching records (with matching keys) with new data, do not create any additional records.

   
   

   For Virtualize, see Configuring Data Reuse and Updating.

5. The Infer constraints from option enables the Virtualize to determine the characteristics of the data stored in the repository. You can infer constraints based on the data or a service definition.
9. Click Next and specify any additional configurations in the Final Options screen:
   1. You can configure the wizard to create messages in Form or Literal mode. These modes present a Form Input view (see Form Input) or a Literal view (see Literal).   

   2. You can enable the Export configuration data into a reusable template option and specify a file name and location to save the settings you used in this wizard as a template. 

      If you are creating the .pva in the Virtual Assets folder, which results in automated deployment, complete the Deploy Virtual Asset wizard page by specifying the desired name and deployment path for the virtual asset that will be created and click Next. The virtual asset will be deployed at the listed endpoint. For details, see Configuring Individual Virtual Asset Deployment Settings.

   3. Click Finish.

The following items will be created and configured:

If the .pva was created in the Virtual Asset folder, the virtual asset will be automatically deployed to the local Virtualize server as the wizard completes. Otherwise, it can be manually deployed to local or remote servers.

For details on how to edit and extend the data stored in the data repository, see Viewing and Modifying the Repository Structure and Contents.

Note that custom transport headers and any SOAP Headers (e.g. WS-Security Headers) that are present in the traffic file are not configured automatically into the generated assets or data repository data sets. You can specify them in the generated Message Responders

 (see Message Responder Overview for details)

.

Deploying the Virtual Assets

If the .pva was created in the Virtual Asset folder, the virtual assets is automatically deployed to the local Virtualize server as the wizard completes. Otherwise, you can deploy it to local or remote servers whenever you are ready.

For a more detailed discussion of deployment procedures and options, see Deploying Virtual Assets - Overview.

Customizing the Virtual Assets

For details on how to customize the Message Responder’s behavior, see Message Responder Overview.

 Understanding Choice/Extension Type Support

If you do not enter a WSDL or schema file at the end of the wizard, Virtualize uses the data structure of recorded traffic to create the data repository. When the data structure of an element varies in the recorded traffic, it is likely that the type for that element is a choice in the underlying schema. However, the wizard does not explicitly support choice types; it interprets an element’s data structure as a sequence of all possible child elements.

For example, assume an element whose actual schema is like this:




<element name="parent">     <complexType>         <choice minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded">             <element name="child1"/>              <element name="child2"/>              <element name="child3"/>         </choice>     </complexType>  </element>




Virtualize will represent the element with the following data structure:




<element name="parent">     <complexType>         <sequence>             <element name="child1" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>              <element name="child2" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>              <element name="child3" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>         </sequence>     </complexType>  </element>




Although the recorded traffic might have child elements appear in a varying order (e.g., the "parent" in one of the response message has "child1" and then "child2", while the "parent" in another response message has "child2" and then "child1"), Virtualize will parameterize message data in a fixed order. Thus, in this example, the elements "child1" and "child2" will always be in the same order within the response message.

Completing the Virtualize Wizard: Advanced Topics

The following topics provide additional details that will help you complete the wizard:

• • Using Configuration Templates to Reuse and Share Wizard Settings
    • Understanding Heuristics for Grouping by Operation - Type
    • Customizing Grouping Criteria
    • Customizing Request Matching and Correlations
    • Configuring Data Reuse and Updating

Video Tutorial: Creating Virtual Assets from Traffic Recorded with a Message Proxy

In this video you'll learn how to create a virtual asset from traffic recorded with a message proxy.