How do I investigate my java-based web service from .NET?

Question

I have publicised a Java method as a Web Service and I use the Web Service Explorer in Eclipse to invoke it and it works as expected. See http://soa2world.blogspot.com/2008/05/soap-client-eclipse-web-service.html for screen shots (not taken by me).

To ensure that this will also work against clients written in .NET I'd like to repeat the same excercise in a .NET based GUI thing, which given the WSDL creates a GUI interface (standalone or webbased) allowing me to put in values, and execute the result.

Visual Studio Express is fine as it is available for free, while the full Visual Studio requires a license purchase, so if I need it I require a good reason :)

What would be a clean, simple approach to this particular task? If it could do simple load testing that would be really nice :)

Thanks,

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Edit: The WCF Test Client with Visual Web Studio Express 2008 speaks SOAP 1.2 only. The Metro stack from Sun only speaks SOAP 1.1. Is there an version of WCF Test CLient which speaks SOAP 1.1?

Answer 1

I'm not sure why Visual Studio express is fine as opposed to full VS.NET given your reasons. Both develop for Windows based platforms.

Have you looked at the WCF Test Client (WcfTestClient.exe)? You can find out more information about it here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb552364.aspx

Answer 2

This is really simple, or I found it really simple when I did it with our Java based web-service hosted in tomcat.

• Start a new Solution of any kind in Visual Studio (should work in express).
• Right click the References folder in your Project and select Service Reference.
• Then put in your wsdl path into the address box and click Go.
• This retrieves information about your webservice from the wsdl and you'll be able to create a WebService reference from that.
• Then you can just use this like a Class and call the methods.

Sorry this isn't really well written and thought out but I don't currently have much time, good luck.