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.