The capability builds upon current SOAPscope functionality.

"What we provide right now is more of an ad hoc testing," for Web services, said Frank Grossman, co-founder and CTO of Mindreef. Right now, it is easy to invoke a service and check the values coming back, but this does not make it easy to fully automate the process, Grossman said.

In the load testing arena, Mindreef plans to add Load Test, featuring easy-to-use functional test tools, to SOAPscope Server. These tools would be usable by persons not experienced with XML, said Murphy. The intent is to provide load testing at the earliest stage of the development cycle.

Load testing can check for transaction volumes against Web services endpoints, for example, Murphy said.

Mindreef reported this week that it doubled sales in 2006 over 2005 and surpassed 3,000 customers and 43,000 downloads of its SOAPscope products.