http analyzer to test and monitor ws

The http analyzer is not new in jdeveloper but in 11g Oracle added some new features. You can define now rules in the http analyzer. With these rules you can emulate ws and change your environment. The following rules are supported Tape, URL Substitution, Pass Through and Forward, I will explain these rules later in this blog. You can save and load the web services requests and responses in a ws-i log file, test a web service in the http analyzer in the same way as in the oc4j server and it supports https.

The display of a ws call with his return message is better and this display can also be used to test other web services like you can in the 10.1.3 oc4j container

The http analyzer support rules ,this means that one of the rules has to fire else the calling ws client gets a error. You can put in many rules and the http analyzer tests the rules from the first to the last. If the rulefilter matches then the analyzer does the action and waits for the next ws request

The first rule is forward. Forward does the same as in 10.1.3 , it passes the message on to the real web service.

In the url filter you can set the incoming url of the web service and in the target url you can set the real url of the web service. Filter tester is to test the url filter with the calling url. This can be handy because in the url filter you can define wildcards.
With the tape rule you can test the ws client without the need of the webservice. first you have to save the entries in a ws-i log file then you can use this file to respond to the ws client calls.

The url filter and filter tester are the same as forward rule. The tape path is the ws-i log file of the saved entries. The tape rule can correct the time and size of the entries in the ws-i log file so the returning message to the ws client is valid. Loop tape is necessary if you want to retry the ws client.

The last two rules are url substitution pass through rule. The first you can use if you want to change the url or parts of this url because you deployed it to an oc4j container in stead of the embedded oc4j of jdeveloper.

the pass through rule does nothing if it matches the url filter.

Conclusion, you can use the analyzer perfectly for your test environment because with the tape rule you don't need all the web services to test your ws client and if there is a change in your ws environment you can use the other rules to fix it or let is pass.