What's New in 8.1
What's New in 8.1.3
JMS Service
This release introduces a new JMS service, similar to the utility service that provides basic JMS operations like send and receive as well as counting the number of messages in a queue. All operations are available in JNDI and in non-JNDI mode.
XML/POX
As of this release, XSD files can now be imported directly and used as Service Contracts to invoke POX ("Plain old xml") Web services. In addition, the WSDL 1.1 HTTP binding is now supported for XML POST requests.
JMS testing
Building on from the initial support added in 8.1, this release adds support for specifying whether to use persistent delivery or not when invoking SOAP over JMS operations. In addition, support is added for named reply queues so that a SOAP over JMS service can now be invoked with a named reply queue instead of just a
temporary reply queue.
JMS Queue browser
We have introduced a new component in this release that can be used to browse a JMS queue, inspect message content and delete specific messages. This should help users in a number of scenarios including:
- After a "client receive timeout", to help diagnose if the message is still in queue and eventually delete it.
- Before sending message to check the queue status and eventually clean it up.
- Before starting a simulation to verify the queue is actually empty.
- During load check, to see how backed up the server is.
- At end of load check, to clean up the queue(s), in particular when there were failures.
Load Check enhancements
A mechanism has been provided to record, in a specific workspace, a sample of failed service calls during a load test.
Usability enhancements
A number of usability enhancements have been made in this release including:
- Resend will now start in the view (either XML or Pseudocode) that the original was send from.
- Messages now display how they were created (invoke, collector, scenario test, and so on).
- Schemas not inside WSDLs can be analyzed using Policy Check by importing them directly as contracts.
- Added the ability to rename scenario tests and simulations as well as the ability to ignore structural elements.
- Added the ability to compare contracts.
- Updated the contract files section to display the file graph for a contract instead of the previous default which was a file list view.
- Fault simulation: Now when creating reactions for SOAP requests, users will have the ability to respond with a SOAP fault. The version of the SOAP fault will be based on the operation chosen.
- Installer: The installer has been enhanced in this release to include support for installing the product in silent and properties-based modes.
Utility service
A new set of functions has been added to the utility service in this release to help users create more effective tests and load checks.
What's New in 8.1
JMS Testing
With Release 8.1 developers using Actional Diagnostics and development teams using Actional Application Development can test assets that are built directly on JMS with no underlying SOA architecture. In other words, development teams can now develop and test SOAP services whether those services use HTTP or JMS as a transport. This added capability provides a complete testing solution for the Progress portfolio of offerings. This new feature also helps Actional users transition from SOAP over HTTP to SOAP over JMS or vice versa—without coding—for greater flexibility in expanding their service and application environments.
Added Support
In Release 8.1, Actional extends its support for operating systems and Web services standards as follows:
- Mac OS X
- Safari
- WS-I Basic Profile 1.2
