Mocking in web services testing

Mock services come in handy for web services testing in many ways. In simple terms, when you do not have access to the real web service, you have no option other than to simulate that service. Apart from that, what are the common situations where service mocking is highly desired?

Mock services and contract-first web service development

You may have remembered that we discussed two SOAP web services development approaches in Chapter 1, Web Services Testing and soapUI—code first and contract first. Though we followed the code-first methodology when implementing our sample web services project during Chapter 2, The Sample Project, the recommended web service development practice is contract first. In the contract-first methodology, you start from the web service's contract, in other words, the WSDL. Though there are many reasons for recommending contract first as the better choice over code first, the primary reason is its flexibility. When you start with the...