SoapUI began as a side project. Since then, it has been one of the most successful testing tools. You can find more information on the blog!
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SoapUI's Birth
Ole Lensmar, CTO of Smartbear, was an architect on a large integration project in 2004. There was no commercially available web service testing tool available during the product's development. Ole's second son was born around this time. He had less time to sleep at night, so he looked for a hobby project to occupy his awake hours, which became SoapUI. This not only solved the problem, but it also - after approximately one year later, he published his development on SourceForge, and he has since created a market-leading API testing tool.
SoapUI is an open-source, free software (with a paid version) written in Java and Groovy. Over the last 15 years, it has grown to become the most widely used API test tool on the market, with millions of users. One of the reasons for its popularity is its ease of use: it has a user-friendly graphical interface that allows you to quickly create automated functional, regression, security, and load tests. It runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS environments. Besides, it can be easily integrated with common tools such as Maven, Hudson, JUnit, and Apache Ant.
ReadyAPI vs. SoapUI
SoapUI Pro, the previously mentioned paid version, is now available as ReadyAPI. More than 4,000 businesses use this tool. Smartbear, the development firm, cites no smaller companies as references than Pfizer, Nasa, FedEx, Volvo, and Oracle, all of which are currently mentioned on a daily basis.
One of ReadyAPI's greatest strengths is that it promotes teamwork by allowing members to share projects with one another, allowing Jira and Git integration. Furthermore, visual aids make it easier to create and run tests, allowing junior colleagues to learn to use them more quickly. It enables data-driven testing, supports CI / CD integration, and enables you to examine and analyze problems more quickly using the internal Reporting Dashboard. Both the free and paid versions receive a lot of attention in professional forums. The greatest advantage of both ReadyAPI and SoapUI is their ease of use, though SoapUI outperforms both in terms of meeting business needs. ReadyAPI has better updates and support, but this is understandable and to be expected for paid software.
Smartbear offers a 14-day free trial of ReadyAPI.
Alternatives
SoapUI earned a silver medal among the most popular API testing tools in 2020. Katalon Studio came in first, followed by Postman on the podium. Katalon Studio bills itself as a comprehensive, end-to-end automated testing solution. It can be used to test web, desktop, and mobile applications as well as APIs. Postman began as a Chrome plugin, but it now comes in Windows and Mac OS X versions as well. SoapUI is a worthy competitor due to its ease of use.
Summary
Over the last few years, there has been a steady increase in interest in API testing, with 75 percent of companies in the industry making API quality a top priority. SoapUI is a user-friendly solution to this problem for testers and developers and is a very popular DevOps tool.
The SoapUI is becoming increasingly common in automated tester job advertisements, so those interested in this field should definitely learn about it.
