Monday 14 September 2015

SoapUI: increase memory settings

I have some testcases to run a complex of OSB services that processes documents in a content server.
Using a customization file I changed the endpoints of the content server's webservices to mock-services in SoapUI.

In these testcases I kick-off the OSB services, and in successive MockResponse-teststeps I try to catch the service-requests of OSB. This enables me to set assertions on the messages that OSB sends out to the content server, and thus validate the messages built in the OSB-proxies.

I found that one testcase can run correctly for one time, but running it the second time, or running a second testcase succesively, may fail.


Now it is quite important to have the successive MockResponse-teststeps started at the start of the previous teststep.


At the failing test step, OSB apparently sends a request that isn't caught by SoapUI or SoapUI responds with a HTTP-500 (Internal Server error).


Using JVisualVM, monitored the Heap of the JVM of SoapUI, and I found that just about the time the start/run of the failing teststep, there is an increase in heap. Now, since I found that having the set the Start Step property of each MockResponse-step is important, I figured it seems that timing is everything: also an increase of the Heap consumes time, and is presumably triggered by a major Garbage Collect, that halts the application for a brief moment.


So I wanted to increase the amount of heap. Since SoapUI is started with an .exe file (under Windows that is), the JVM properties (SoapUI is a Java application) are stored in a file. Under windows it can be found in "c:\Program Files\SmartBear\SoapUI-5.1.3\bin", depending on the version of SoapUI.
The file is called "SoapUI-5.1.3.vmoptions" and has the following contents:

-Xms1024m
-Xmx1536m
-Dsoapui.properties=soapui.properties
-Dsoapui.home=C:\Program Files\SmartBear\SoapUI-5.1.3/bin
-Dsoapui.ext.libraries=C:\Program Files\SmartBear\SoapUI-5.1.3/bin/ext
-Dsoapui.ext.listeners=C:\Program Files\SmartBear\SoapUI-5.1.3/bin/listeners
-Dsoapui.ext.actions=C:\Program Files\SmartBear\SoapUI-5.1.3/bin/actions
-Dwsi.dir=C:\Program Files\SmartBear\SoapUI-5.1.3/wsi-test-tools
-Djava.library.path=C:\Program Files\SmartBear\SoapUI-5.1.3/bin
-Djava.util.Arrays.useLegacyMergeSort=true
-splash:soapui-splash.png


You'll need to change the security properties to enable yourself to edit/save it. Then change the -Xms and -Xmx properties according to your needs. The defaults are quite "cautious": -Xms200m and -Xms1000m.

Using JVisualVM you can see that with a restart the new memory settings are picked up and in my case that no increase in Heap is needed during the tests.

2 comments:

  1. Is the heap the only memory type that can be changed?

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  2. Hi Joe,

    SoapUI is java, based on Oracle Hotspot. So Java Heap is the only relevant memory setting (Xms, Xmx). You could bringup permspace. But as long as you don't add any libraries your self, I think you can keep that at the default.

    Regards,
    Martien

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