Membrane SOAP Monitor Quick Start Guide
This tutorial explains how to set up a simple monitoring of SOAP messages. For more advanced stuff have a look into the documentation.
In this setup the client is modified to send messages to the monitor instead of sending messages directly to the target service. Then the monitor can display the message and route it to its final destination.
Figure 1:
Starting the Monitor
Download a Membrane Monitor distribution first and unpack its content into any folder. Then doubleclick the file membrane-monitor.exe.
After starting Membrane SOAP Monitor you can see the monitor GUI. To monitor connections you have to create a rule first.
Adding a Monitoring Rule
Click on the Add Button.
Figure 2:
Now choose the Simple Reverse Proxy Rule and click on the next button.
Figure 3:
Assume you want to monitor messages to your local server. First we have to specify at which TCP port the monitor is listening. You can choose any available port e. g. 2000.
Figure 4:
Now we specify the target where the monitor should send the messages to. Set Host to localhost and Port to the port used by the server where your service is running.
Figure 5:
If the monitor receives a message on port 2000 it will forward it to port 8000 on the same host.
The configuration of the monitor is done. Now we have to modify the client to monitor the messages.
Testing the Monitoring Setup
Open the URL http://localhost:2000 in your browser.
If you are using Tomcat you should see something like the screenshot in figure 6.
Figure 6:
Have a look at the Monitor GUI.
Figure 7:
Now we can turn to Web Services.
Modifying the client
The target endpoint address of the SOAP client has to be changed to the address of the monitor. Messages have to be sent to the monitor so that the monitor can display the message and send it to its final destination.
Suppose the target service and the monitor are running on the same computer. Then the only thing you have to change is the port number of the endpoint address. For example the endpoint address
http://localhost:8080/axis2/services/MyService
has to be changed to
http://localhost:2000/axis2/services/MyService
How to modify the endpoint address for a particular toolkit is described in the following documents:
Other toolkits like .NET, Perl or Python can be monitored with Membrane as well.
Monitoring
Now you can start the client and have a look at the GUI of the monitor. Figure 8 shows a captured request response message exchange.
Figure 8:
Besides displaying the request and response messages, Membrane Monitor offers a lot of functionality, e.g. to manipulate and resend messages. Have a look at the HowTos and the other documentation.