Web Services on Drugs

Customer Service and user experience

2011-11-26T18:31:00.001-08:00

I have been trying to setup a new account with Amazon to get into the french version of the associate program, and got an email with potential french readers. It all started well, with a nice intro:

Cher Partenaire,
Merci d'avoir pris contact avec le Programme Partenaires d'Amazon.fr.

Then, there was a link:

Ai-je résolu votre problème?

Si non, cliquez ici s'il vous plaît : +a short link

After I answered a few questions, I got a nice 'Call Me' offer, except they are close right now.

Why are we not able to get a better user experience and see the open hours upfront?

It would be nice to have an asynchronous way to keep in touch on my current issue or ticket. CRM has still a long way to go, especially for free services. Or am I asking too much here?

Amazon search box is gone

2011-06-30T05:50:00.000-07:00

Until I can find a way to setup my french account on Amazon Associates, the link to search is gone from by blog as it's now a dead account.

From twitter:
RT @Scobleizer An Open Letter To Jeff Bezos On Terminating The Amazon Affiliate Program In California http://t.co/By2lZxC from @dannysullivan

Thanks you, Jerry Brown.

Lose end of 2010, as we get ready for .next

2010-12-25T14:12:00.000-08:00

It has been a very quiet year on the blogging side. Most of the free time was spent on the new media, trying to figure out why Facebook and Twitter were so useful to communicate with the world.

As I am wrapping up the year, I have two new books on my night stand:

Processing XML documents with Oracle JDeveloper 11g

Web 2.0 Solutions with Oracle WebCenter 11g

With this on my to-read list, I should be able to convert my experimentations into something useful. I need to find a better way to:

keep track of my comic books and follow the new releases dates
build a collection of my preferred recipes, from the family and friends, together with the pictures I shoot and store in my Smug-mug account.

Let see how I can make it happend in 2011 ;-)

Mon humeur du jour.

2010-10-18T09:43:00.000-07:00

Suicide pill in full motion :

Java Decompiler

2010-04-28T23:05:00.000-07:00

I have a new tools to share with you : JD GUI

http://java.decompiler.free.fr/?q=jdgui

It's one of the must-have if you need to figure out why things are not working the way you expect them to work...

After two days searching for a NPE, which was not reported, I wished I would not have wait that long before to get down to the rubber.

Hoping I'll learn from my mistakes.

Remember the bad smell:

try {
} catch {
return null;
}

My $0.02 for today.

Friday the 30th, Halloween is just around the corner

2009-10-30T14:50:00.000-07:00

Always been confused between 13th and 30th, when it goes to English pronunciation - go figure.

There has been a lot going on, and it may explain why my blog has been so quiet lately. Here are some fun facts and though about Web square (a.k.a 2.0):

Thanks to a spammer, I came across an old post of mine where I was happy to see my ranking in the oc4j WS forum so high. Since, I have been moving to other area of development, and only reply to forum post using feedly reader, when I kind of see obvious error I can help with. I used to have a gold medal - now I am a newbie again. Did I lost my mojo?
My new center of interest goes around ADF nowadays, and there is a new blog to add to your list - ADF Garage.

On the fun part, I am wondering if it would make sense to put multiple mobile version of web sites, side by side in a single page, instead of using the full blown version, even when you are on a wide-screen computer, attached to a fast network.

Try facebook and twitter mobile editions, side by side as google gadgets or with the eXo portal - Tug, are you reading this?
I love the karma feature in feedly - it give you some interesting inside on what others do with your tweets. I need to figure out a way to get google reader setup for source inside the firewall...
Typo are very easy with mobile device, and the use of # with the wrong keyword make it all goes to the drain - search #oow2009 vs. #oow09 :-) / We need auto correct on the fly to supplement our slow brains or chubby fingers...

And my next fun project is to write a tool to cleanup some large XML files; a small jazn-data.xml file, with about ~13k lines. I need a nice UI to search for grants for given resource path or by role. For the job, I'll pick JDeveloper 11g and his companion book : Processing XML documents with Oracle JDeveloper 11g. I'll report back once I have it all figured out, in a couple of nights ;-)

Until then, Happy Halloween everyone.

Should I write code before I can test it?

2009-04-02T16:02:00.000-07:00

Maybe this would be better as a question on twitter, as I may not get to many comment here on my web 1.5 journal.

Is it OK to write code I cannot test and assumes that by the time I am done writing the features I have in mind, the environment to test it would be available, or should I start setting up the environment first, and get the hello world application up and running with the monitoring and clean log files, so that I can then go ahead with small incremental cycles which are all providing features I can test as I go?

On another topic, when can you consider that a forum or forum category is to be considered dead?
a) 0 post in a day
b) 0 post in a week ?
c) 0 post in a month?

iFool

2009-04-01T13:05:00.000-07:00

No comment, I have been looking forward to my new toys for days now, and the news is out on April first ...

Thinking to light the fireplace tonight ?

2008-12-07T18:40:00.000-08:00

Check this first:

JDeveloper 11g on Mac OS-X

2008-11-04T13:32:00.000-08:00

Today, I have been stuck at home, and it was a good opportunity for me to upgrade my current 10g release of JDeveloper to the latest and greatest, on my iMac.
So far so good, but remember the basics: read the releases notes, and Google for someone else, with past experience on your issue at hand.
1) setup JDK 1.6 / for me it was already part of the 'OS', just needed to change the default JDK - Applications > Utils > Java > Admin Java, DRAG the 1.6 Version at the top in the list
2) tweak JDK so that the JDev installer does find home as a valid one - It's all documented in the readme (watch for the missing /).
3) Next, you can setup your own .app file to have a nice icon to start from (there is more than just an icon if you are really looking into it).

Now, that I have my first "Hello Eric" service up on WLS, I can start to look at the next steps: setup SVN and get going with the new discovery process.

By the time I am done here, America will have a new president. Let's hope they get the upgrade too.

Random notes

2008-10-20T11:26:00.000-07:00

For some time, I have been away from my blog, and sent most of my spare time on facebook, trying to figure out why I should use it. did not find the answer yet ... but I am sure there is some. otherwise, why would everyone been their, and acept my request to connect with them in the first place?

I have a new comic strip to share with you: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cautionary.png

If you are still in WS-Land, you may find useful information from Gerard on his blog.

Until next time.

Gary Vaynerchuk on National TV

2008-08-21T12:46:00.000-07:00

If you are into wine, you may like this wen site: http://tv.winelibrary.com/. Gary Vaynerchuk is fun to watch, on his TV show.
I am now waiting for Loic Le Meur to have his version of wine testing on Seemic, so that Robert Scoble knows what to buy, next time he looks for a good bottle.
But, why do we need to through Facebook or FriendConnect in the mix?

Random link

2008-06-03T14:47:00.000-07:00

As father day is coming around the conner, here is some could stuff I'll love to have:
the virtual goggles: http://www.psfk.com/2008/06/virtual-googles-for-your-future-robotic-assistant.html
the BAD Mini Club: http://jalopnik.com/390392/a-bad-bad-mini-clubman-for-a-good-cause

Hard to guess error, which may not be obvious at first

2008-05-30T10:49:00.000-07:00

As you are getting up to speed with the command line option you get with the Oracle Web Service stack, you may ran into the following error message (hopefully, you will be able to google this post) : "method java.util.Collections.emptyList with signature ()Ljava.util.List; was not found."

As the string is directly coming back from the java.lang.NoSuchMethodError exception, there is little to be done about it, other that checking that you have pre-requist before to get started. A better error message would have been "JAVA 5 or higher required".

If you ran into this issue, the simplest test to perform is to check the version of the JDK you are getting in your environment ($ java -version will do it).

I guess it's why I am using the ant task instead of the command line option, those days...

Hope it save some of you some time some day.

HTTP Analyzer :: Cru 2008

2008-04-14T12:37:00.000-07:00

As I am spending more and more time with BPEL and more complex deployment layout, trapping the SOAP messages going across multiple nodes was becoming harder, until I got introduced to one of the new features from JDeveloper. With the 11g TP3, available from OTN (see announcement), there is a new feature that makes working with the HTTP Analyzer tool even better; the Rules and Filters.

You can define rules and associate with your HTTP listner. Back in 2006, I was explaining how to navigate from message to message with the blue arrows. With this release, you have a new TAB - named correlation - that groups message by logical unit; the grouping is done with the WS-Addressing MessageID (see Figure 1).
Let starts by getting the setup right. For that, you will need to do the following (the exact step may varied, based on you specific configuration setup):

Find the IP address (or hostname) of the system where you run JDeveloper, and make sure that this system can be access from the location where your BPEL server runs - 130.35.74.160 in our current scenario. You will also need to find the port number assigned to the HTTP Analyzer instance you run - 8099 in our scenario.
Find out if you have already some proxy setting setup on your SOA installation. If you don't have any, then you will just need to had a new entry, but if you have already some default setup, it's important to find it, so that you can overwrite the existing setup - in our current scenario, I have a script, $HOME/soa/bin/soaenv, which define a system property.
old: JAVA_PROXY="-Dhttp.proxySet=true -Dhttp.proxyHost=proxy.rajkovic.org -Dhttp.proxyPort=80 -Dhttp.nonProxyHosts=happy|happy.rajkovic.org|localhost|127.0.0.1|*rajkovic.org"
new: JAVA_PROXY="-Dhttp.proxySet=true -Dhttp.proxyHost=130.35.74.160 -Dhttp.proxyPort=8099"
Start HTTP Analyzer first - click on the green arrow.
Start the remote process for your SOA server instance - $HOME/soa/bin/startsoa in our scenario.

Once this is done, it's business as usual. In my case, I use SOAP UI to invoke my composite, but you have many other options available, including HTTP Analyzer and the 'send request' feature.

During setup, there are a few mistakes to avoid, to get this working right the first time :

If you remove all the entries from the exclude list (-Dhttp.nonProxyHosts option), you need to start your HTTP Analyzer process before you start the server. The ping perform during startup will fails unless you are already listening to request on 130.35.74.160:8099. You can see the ping request as entry #1 in the Sequence pane (Figure 2).
If you are using localhost within BPEL, you need to setup rules to forward request back to the original service endpoints, as illustrated with the Rules Configuration (Figure 3). Without this rule setup, the HTTP Analyzer process does not know how to route request to 'http://localhost:8880' - This is what happened to me with entry #11 in the Sequence pane (Figure 2).
If you don't want to have all the requests going through your HTTP listener, you can change the way you deploy your process, and use either the IP address or the hostname in your BPEL process, instead of localhost, and handle the exclude list appropriately. I have found that using the IP address is a simple way to filter those request, as all your 'normal' request will continue to use the fully qualified name of the server. This is illustrated with the 3 groups of messages in Figure 1, where we used IP@ (#2-#5), fully qualified hostname (#7-#10), and localhost (#12-#15) in turns.

Figure 1 :: Correlation Pane

If you don't see any message, at first, make sure you toggle back to the 'Sequence' pane; you will not get message correlated with each other, unless you have the magic correlation ID in those messages, and you get successful MEP (code 200 or 202).

Figure 2 :: Sequence Pane

Setting up the rules to forward requests targeted at localhost back to the reel location is a very neat feature, as it does not requires to make any change on the remote applications.

Figure 3 :: Rules Configuration
Here is a very simple rule, that works with a single service endpoint. As you get more and more endpoint going through your HTTP Analyzer, remember that you can setup more than one listener, with different port numbers and different sets of rules.

To make this google friendly, here are the error message seen on the first time errors I encounter. Hope this solve you some grief too.

SOA startup, waiting for ping to succeed:

08/04/14 09:49:01 Oracle Containers for J2EE 11g (11.1.1.0.0) initialized.
08/04/14 09:49:49 -------> CompositeDeployerTimer triggered
08/04/14 09:49:49 -------> CompositeDeployerTimer trying http connection to http://happy.rajkovic.org:8880
08/04/14 09:49:49 -------> CompositeDeployerTimer ping failed.
08/04/14 09:49:49 -------> CompositeDeployerTimer: Server not ready. Will retry in 30 seconds.

HTTP Analyzer error when trying to reach localhost:8880 (without the rule):

An exception occurred while retrieving the response for http://localhost:8880/SetTransform/SetTransformService.
java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused: connect
...

And finally, remember that you can save those messages captured into a file, using the WS-I.org file format. It's a great way to exchange those SOAP M.E.P. around, with your co-workers or in house WS-Residents.

With this, have fun in today's world of SOA.

T.G.I.F.

2008-03-07T10:56:00.000-08:00

Happy Hour or special Boost - see http://www.aldenteblog.com/2008/03/happy-hour-drin.html

And for Monday, we will be back to the healthy version...

Next-Generation Grid Enabled SOA

2008-02-12T17:25:00.000-08:00

If you have ~one hour to spare in from of your computer, or at the Gym with the podcast version, this presentation from Dave Chappell is worth your time.

I love the introduction of BPEL Dehydration Example which starts with a sip of water ;-)

Getting back to the big picture, when you are down to the rubber, trying to make versioning works with Web Services is not a bad idea.

Before, there was Web 1.0 - Kudo to this app developer

2008-02-05T10:24:00.000-08:00

You don't need to with Web 2.0 to build a Web Application that is usable and fast. Remember how Google was (and still his on the search part).

If you are using the Oracle Middle Ware, I'll recommend the peek console, for the Oscar nomination - http://localhost:8988/peek with the latest Tech Preview III.
Special Kudos for the developer-architect-QA guys (maybe they are the same after all).

From Random pics

My Youtube watch for today: Chem-Culture

setEndpoint('endpoint') on JAX-WS

2008-01-25T15:45:00.000-08:00

I have been so used to the simple way to overwrite the URL endpoint you get from the WSDL location with the Oracle's JAX-RPC client proxy, that I have to remember it's that easy on JAX-WS based proxy:

URL endpointUrl;

((BindingProvider)port).getRequestContext().put(BindingProvider.ENDPOINT_ADDRESS_PROPERTY,
endpointUrl.toExternalForm());

Some reading and video to watch, while your are waiting for your commit,merge, or other integration task to complete: Linus Torvalds on GIT and SCM.

My recent YouTube watch:
Head tracking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw
Décompte des manifestants: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFYGxSfVoyU
Blue-ray: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiI-z87Hmlk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=friS4OOcdgQ
Mergers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOlznuyPOeM

JAX-RPC or JAX-WS ?

2007-12-07T17:27:00.001-08:00

With the latest technology preview of JDeveloper, you have to choose between two flavors. Kind of like Strawberry vs. Vanilla. Which one should I pick. After all it's a question of taste.
Personally, I pick JAX-RPC for the following reasons:
- It's more stable as it was already part of 10.1.3 release.
- There is a nice helper to set endpoint address (and other little things).
- It does not query for the WSDL every time you instantiate a new object, which is mainly adding HTTP requests I do not want to see in the HTTP Analyzer window.
- Most of the time, I can work around schema issues with the no-data-binding options. You just need to learn how to leverage this class: oracle.webservices.SOAPUtil and the 'toSOAPElement()' method.

If you are looking into new features, like addressing, ws-rm or any policy-based feature, you should look at JAX-WS. It's the future.

For those who are missing setEndpoint(), the equivalent in JAX-WS will look like this:
URL endpointUrl;
...
((BindingProvider)port).getRequestContext().put(BindingProvider.ENDPOINT_ADDRESS_PROPERTY,
endpointUrl.toExternalForm());

It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks...

Is bigger really better ?

2007-12-06T12:45:00.000-08:00

Do you need dual screen or a bigger screen?

For a long time, I have been thinking that having dual screen setup was more productive than having a single screen, then I start to look at some other developers having a single large 24" screen with many xterm.

I am getting tired to see pop-up showing up in the middle of the virtual screen that is the result of two screens.

I know, the correct answer is to have 3 screens. Then, the small pop-up will be centered in the middle of the virtual space as well as the physical display.

Soon, I'm hoping to get a new 24" iMac for my home operations. Yes, I still believe in Santa...

My YouTube pick for today (in memory of WebVan):
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=5TYobcseYfE
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=fi4fzvQ6I-o

Until next time...

Bye bye Vista - Welcome Linux

2007-12-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

I have been busy recently, and this is how it translate on my blog. Not much was happening there... I use to post about Web Services, and Vista until that day, where I got a system upgrade.
It all started nicely with a nice screen and a simple prompt.

The only problem was that it took me to much time before to get to that screen. (I even had the time to turn on the camera on my "Mobile5" device to take the two shoots.

That was it. Bye bye vista / Welcome to Entreprise Linux 5.
Maybe, it was made to happen, when I picked this background for my laptop.

To be fair, I have to said that I got my first 'screen of death' on my iMac during the same periode of time...

With all that, I wish you a good day.
Next time, I may be back with useful stuff.

Undeploy app from JDeveloper 11g

2007-10-16T17:28:00.000-07:00

With Technology Preview II, you can now undeploy your J2EE applications from within JDeveloper - no need to get back to the command line or to write ant task to do this.

From the 'view' menu, select the 'Application Server Navigator'
Navigate to Application Servers -> IDE Connections -> [AppServerConnection] -> standalone -> Applications
Select your application node and using the context menu, pick the 'undeploy' command.

It's that simple:

[AppServerConnection] has to be replaced with the name of the name you gave to your connection.

JDeveloper .Next

2007-10-10T13:45:00.000-07:00

If you are trying to stay on top of the latest technologies in the Java land, you can get your hands on the latest preview version of JDeveloper today:

Oracle JDeveloper 11g Technical Preview 2 is available here

More on this, once I get a chance to install the Mac OS X version.

Web Services: TopDown vs. BottomUp

2007-06-21T13:42:00.001-07:00

As I am going through some more web-services related work, I came across two arguments to favor TodDown (or WSDL first) design pattern:

1) Including the partner link information that BPEL is expecting to find is trivial when you own the WSDL document. Try to get this added at the end of your document, using code first...

<plnk:partnerLinkType name="StepTransform"
xmlns:plnk="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2003/05/partner-link/">
<plnk:role name="XmlStepTransformPort">
<plnk:portType name="tns:XmlStepTransformPort"/>
</plnk:role>
</plnk:partnerLinkType>

2)Adding wsdl:documentation element within wsdl:portType/wsdl:operation will improve the end-user experience, and should be done always. It's like arguing against the value of javadoc on external APIs....

Today, the mood is WSDL first: Design, then code.

Consistency and Diagnosability - ζ release

2007-05-24T14:30:00.000-07:00

This could be another WTF entry, somewhere else...

A small sample from a log file,as I was trying to search for some potential explanation - No, I didn't made it up or remove a single line in between.

07/05/24 14:25:52 ------> creating monitor
2007-05-24 14:25:52.203 ERROR WSM-xxxx Unable to find audit event definitions.
May 24, 2007 2:25:52 PM xxxx.xxxxx.audit.spi.AuditProvider init

just using some xxxxx so that google does not index this blog entry, and you end-up here while trying to find some help on the net.

It may be time to rethink the Greek alphabet and start using the letter zeta (ζ)...

Internal Server Error (unexpected null value for literal data)

2007-05-22T11:10:00.000-07:00

Here is a slightly different version of an error, that took me more than a blink off an eye to recognize.

Unlike in my previous post, the error is coming from the server, wrapped in a soap:fault.

<env:Body>
<env:Fault>
<faultcode>env:Server</faultcode>
<faultstring>Internal Server Error (unexpected null value for literal data)</faultstring>
</env:Fault>
</env:Body>

The root cause is the same -- a serialization error, but this time on the implementation of the service instead of the client proxy. Remember that all the parts of the schema not marked as nullable or optional must have a value. And you have the same options to handle this:

change your XML Schema, so that it's aligned with your code.
add code in the generated JavaBean, so that you have default value set
remember to always use all the setter when instantiating a new Java object that will be included in the response (this is error prone, so it's why I like #2 better).

Using SOAP UI was the quickest way to run and run again, until the server side was fixed - 0 line of code, and the ability to save and replay the same request over and over.

Hope this will save some time, some day, to some of you...

JDev 11g new feature - webapp.deploy

2007-05-17T22:47:00.001-07:00

If you are moving from JDeveloper 10g to 11g Technology Preview, as I did in the past days, you may find this handy - it took me a while to figure it out, so it may save you time.

I used to deploy my Web Services applications directly from the IDE with the context menu on the webapp.deploy node, as in the picture below.

With 11g, it's a little different. The node is gone; instead you can find the command directly on the project's node.

And, if you want to make modification to the deployment descriptor, you will find a new entry in the project properties screen, under the deployment category.

I'll share some more, as there are some nice features. Check the "Test Proxy" feature on Brian's blog.

Who likes F.U.D.G.E ?

2007-05-11T15:40:00.000-07:00

The new acronym FUDGE of the day: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt around Governance in the Enterprise. No, it's not a cookie, but it goes well with S.C.A: Society of Confused Architects.

Who Need Dual Screen?

2007-05-10T11:51:00.000-07:00

I do - a picture is worth 100ths words...

And you only need to hit (right-Shift + Print Screen) to get both screens into your clipboard.

By the way, you can see the new version of JDeveloper with the WSIL browser and the Test Web Service integration, working on a remote OC4J instance even with 0 project on your local disk - pretty cool. I'll write some more about it once I got it figured out.
Nice Work, Alan and Gerard (sorry if I missed anyone).

Latest OC4J released

2007-05-07T15:28:00.000-07:00

As we are heading to the 2007 cru for JavaOne, we are also getting the latest oc4j version available, to start playing with the latest technology available on the J2EE trent: get it from OTN on the oc4j homepage.

This mark another personal achievement : closing up on the number of posts with Mike, on the OTN Web Services forum.

PHP and JDeveloper - Hand by Hand

2007-04-16T23:39:00.000-07:00

If you are looking for a simple editor, with the ability to do simple validation of your PHP files, JDeveloper 10.1.3.2 may be an option for you. Look for the PHP extension using the "Check for Updates..." feature in the Help menu.
For long, I have been thinking that scripting was not easy to use, as you have to wait until the execution time to get syntax errors. Now, you can see some of the basic syntax error as you type in.

Here are some other resources I wanted to share:
- The DeployPHP Series
- Configuring MySQL DataSources with OC4J and JDeveloper
- How To Use ADF Business Components with MySQL

Web services are getting the back seat on my blog;-)

iPod auto sink

2007-04-09T16:06:00.000-07:00

Is there anyway we can turn off the use of this nice "auto erase" feature on the iTunes software, so that you don't loose the content if the pop-up "do you want to erase the content of this foreigner iPod?" get the focus as you are typing in text and hit ENTER ?

The result is quiet simple: a clean iPod. Cool to go with this piece of electronic equipement to the gym. I guess it will be my lane excuse to go back home directly, tonight ;-)

This will be a good one for the 'get a Mac' commercial...

[SOAPAction] Error: Unable to determine operation id

2007-04-03T10:21:00.000-07:00

To try to make it easier for those who google with error message, here are two possible explanations for this error message, when using JAX-RPC based Web Service runtine.
a) The value of the SOAPAction attribute on the HTTP Header on the wire do not match with the value expected by the service endpoint, as advertised on the WSDL soap:binding.
Wire sample:

...
User-Agent: Oracle HTTPClient Version 10h
SOAPAction: "CalculatePrice"
...

WSDL snippet:

44    <binding name="XmlCalculatePricePort" type="tns:XmlCalculatePricePort">
45      <soap:binding transport="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/http"
46                    style="document"/>
47      <operation name="CalculatePrice">
48        <soap:operation soapAction="CalculatePrice"/>
49        <input>
50          <soap:body use="literal"/>
51        </input>
52        <output>
53          <soap:body use="literal"/>
54        </output>
55      </operation>
56    </binding>

Note: the use of the quote is highly recommended for better interoperability.

b) If the service do not rely on this HTTP header to route incomming messages to specific operation (uses empty value in the WSDL soap:binding), it will use the fully qualified name (or QName) of the first child of the soap:body element to route the incomming message -- {http://siebel.com/OrderManagement/Quote/PSP}CalculatePrice_Input in the example below. If the value on the wire does not match with the one expected (and advertized in the WSDL), you may get the error message listed above. In such case, make sure that the name is properly qualified. A common mistake here is to use the wrong namespace.

  1  <?xml version = '1.0' encoding = 'UTF-8'?>
  2  <env:Envelope xmlns:env="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
  3                xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
  4                xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  5                xmlns:ns0="http://siebel.com/OrderManagement/Quote/PSP">
  6     <env:Body>
  7        <ns0:CalculatePrice_Input>
  8           <ListOfQuote xmlns="http://siebel.com/OrderManagement/Quote/Data">
  9              <Quote>

Elections 2007 - qui l'eu cru !!!

2007-04-01T22:00:00.000-07:00

Je ressemble à Dominique Voynet 40%

Mes points communs avec les autres candidats:
2/ François Bayrou 40%
3/ Olivier Besancenot 36%
4/ Marie-Georges Buffet 36%
5/ Nicolas Sarkozy 32%
6/ Ségolène Royal 32%
7/ Philippe de Villiers 28%
8/ Frédéric Nihous 24%
9/ Jean-Marie Le Pen 16%
10/ Arlette Laguiller 12%

Why do I get a null value back...

2007-03-30T17:21:00.000-07:00

Why do I get a null value back from my JAVA object when the data was there in my XML stream?

This is a question, that I have seen over and over with different O2X mapping technologies. Sometime using JAXB, sometime using Web Services, and now with SDO. It's also a common issue with .NET Web services.

I do see the data on the wire or in my XML file, but I am getting a null value once I try to retrive it using the JAVA accessor APIs. How is this possible, is this a bug?

The short answer is No. It's a feature!!! When the instance data do not match with the schema definition, it will be silently ignored by the XML processor (a.k.a. de-serialization layer). Let me try to give a simple example to illustrate this.

XML Schema

 1  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
 2  <xsd:schema xmlns="http://www.oracle.com/ias/automation/dte"
 3              xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
 4              targetNamespace="http://www.oracle.com/ias/automation/dte">
 5    <xsd:element name="travelGuide">
 6      <xsd:complexType>
 7        <xsd:sequence>
 8          <xsd:element ref="map"/>
 9        </xsd:sequence>
10      </xsd:complexType>
11    </xsd:element>
12    <xsd:element name="map">
13      <xsd:complexType>
14        <xsd:sequence>
15          <xsd:element maxOccurs="unbounded" minOccurs="1" ref="route"/>
16        </xsd:sequence>
17      </xsd:complexType>
18    </xsd:element>
19    <xsd:element name="route">
20      <xsd:complexType>
21        <xsd:sequence>
22          <xsd:element name="from" type="xsd:string"/>
23          <xsd:element name="to" type="xsd:string"/>
24        </xsd:sequence>
25        <xsd:attribute name="distance" type="xsd:int"/>
26      </xsd:complexType>
27    </xsd:element>
28  </xsd:schema>

XML instance

 1  <travelGuide xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
 2               xmlns="http://www.oracle.com/ias/automation/dte">
 3   <map>
 4    <route distance="500">
 5     <from>bangalore</from>
 6     <to>chennai</to>
 7    </route>
 8   </map>
 9  </travelGuide>

Sample Test Code:


 1  package test;
 2  
 3  import junit.framework.TestCase;
 4  
 5  import oracle.xml.parser.schema.XMLSchema;
 6  import oracle.xml.parser.schema.XSDBuilder;
 7  import oracle.xml.parser.v2.DOMParser;
 8  import oracle.xml.parser.v2.XMLParseException;
 9  import oracle.xml.parser.v2.XMLParser;
10  
11  public class SchemaValidationTest extends TestCase {
12      static final String XML_URI = "file:///dev/howto/jaxb-test/travel.xml";
13      static final String XSD_URI = "file:///dev/howto/jaxb-test/travel.xsd";
14  
15      public SchemaValidationTest(String sTestName) {
16          super(sTestName);
17      }
18  
19      public void testValidation() throws Exception {
20          DOMParser dp = new DOMParser();
21          // Turns Schema Validation on
22          dp.setValidationMode(XMLParser.SCHEMA_VALIDATION);
23          // Uses System.out to get any validation error
24          dp.setErrorStream(System.out);
25          // Set Schema Object for Validation
26          dp.setXMLSchema(new XSDBuilder().build(XSD_URI));
27          dp.parse(XML_URI);
28      }
29  }

The output from the test, with validation errors, looks like this:

file:///dev/howto/jaxb-test/travel.xml<Line 5, Column 10>: XML-24534: (Error) Element 'from' not expected.
file:///dev/howto/jaxb-test/travel.xml<Line 6, Column 8>: XML-24534: (Error) Element 'to' not expected.
file:///dev/howto/jaxb-test/travel.xml<Line 7, Column 11>: XML-24521: (Error) Element not completed: 'route'

The explaination: In the instance data, we have a fully qualified name (or QName) for the element that is '{http://www.oracle.com/ias/automation/dte}from' while the expectation, based on the schema definition was to have an unqualified element (or with an empty namespace) and usulally noted as '{}from'. In other words, a simple impedance mismatch.

Here you have two way to solve the issue:
a) change the schema definition to match with the wire format. In our sample, adding the 'elementFormDefault="qualified"' attribute to the schema is all it takes.

b) change the instance data so that it is consistent with the XML Schema. In our sample, you need to put from and to in no-namespace, by adding an empty default namespace on each element, like this:

 4    <route distance="500">
 5     <from xmlns="">bangalore</from>
 6     <to xmlns="">chennai</to>
 7    </route>

Remember... When you have some doubt, you should make sure that you have the right assumption; make sure that the XML schema and the XML instance data are consistent with each other.

Here is a paper worth reading, if you are new to these concepts: XML Schema: Understanding Namespaces.

Multiple servies in a single application.

2007-03-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

Here are some simple step by step instructions to be able to package two Web Services that implement the same service with different SEI, using a single contract (the wire format as described in the WSDL).

Here is the Ant task once would write to achieve this:


<o:topdownassemble uri="PojoPricer"
  output="./to_hide"
  classname="com.siebel.ordermanagement.quote.psp.PojoPriceCalculator"
  input="./classes"
  wsdl="./etc/calculateprice.wsdl"/>
<o:topdownassemble uri="XmlPricer"
  output="./to_hide"
  classname="com.siebel.ordermanagement.quote.psp.XmlPriceCalculator"
  input="./classes"
  wsdl="./etc/calculateprice.wsdl"
  ear="./dist/${app.name}.ear"
  databinding="false"
  appendtoexistingdds="true/>

Unfortunately, this will not work, as the two service endpoints are using the same service name.

[o:topDownAssemble] oracle.j2ee.ws.common.tools.api.ValidationException:
Could not update web.xml because "CalculatePricePort"
already exists. The value of generated by wsa is port name.
If bottom-up assembling approach is used, please specify a portName argument
value that does not already exist. If topdown assembling approach or genDDs is
used, put the two webservices in different wars so they do not share deployment
descriptors.

First, you will need to develop the first service instance, using the basic Top-Down assemble method. For now, we will assume that you have already done this. Check the WS User's Guide on OTN.

Now, here are the few steps in question:

make a copy of the primary WSDL, into the one that would be used for the second service endpoint - in our case xmlcalulateprice.wsdl.

change the following names in the new WSDL:

the service
the binding
the port

add a second assemble task on your Ant file. now that you are using a new name for the service and binding, the names are not going to clash, and WSA assemble command will be working just fine. The sample above gives a template of the two top-down assemble command - just remember to use a different WSDL filename.

assemble and deploy the updated application.

It's that simple ;-)

Now, we have two service endpoints packaged in a single .ear/.war file. You can use this in two scenario:

compare the performance of different XML-Java binding options.

deploy a new revision of your service without to break backward compatibility.

You will notice that the changes I have described in step #2 above do not have any impact on the format of the SOAP message on the wire.

To be able to compare the two WSDL files, there is a cool feature in JDeveloper, that will be a time saver for you, if you get acquinted with, before you need to debug broken services - it's the file comparaison utility: select your two files, using the contextual right click menu, uses 'Compare With' -> 'Each Other'. To work well with XML files, the trick is to use the 'Reformat ' option first on both files, so that they have similar linefeed breaks and overall layout.

Scalling your Web Site for the un-expected...

2007-03-25T20:51:00.000-07:00

This was so funny (or sad) that I could not keep it for myself: A web application with Oracle's branding that is not able to handle the load as the Access ODBC drivers gets the number of connections down to 0. There was just a few hundreds of frantic web shoppers trying to get first to the registration page. A static HTML form may have done just fine.

Next time you design a web site to scale up, remember to avoid unnecessary use of resource that are finite...

soap UI - or a dream come true

2007-03-22T11:38:00.000-07:00

If you are on the market for a tool that can help you with your SOA quest, here is a new addition to the mandatory toolbox (or USB key swiss knife).

Finding Oracle in the drop-down list, together with Axis and XFire is a sign: there are some real people out there using our stuff.

And, the best part is that it works!!! I won't need to continu maintaining my own ant scripts for plain vanilla use of wsa when I am not using JDeveloper. Download the latest here and see it for yourself, if you don't believe me.

Vista unzip performance, PNG files and more

2007-03-08T08:57:00.000-08:00

I) Unzip speed.

I found an easy work around for my unzip issue; it's called PODP (Plain Old Dos Promt). Thanks to C. Spieler, I can execute unzip from the command line.

C:\Users\erajkovi\Downloads>unzip sqldeveloper-1.1.2.2579-no-jre.zip -d \opt

II) Screen capture and files size.

This may just be a fact: PNG is far from giving you a compression level that is comparable to JPEG on Windows Vista, using Paint. I have done a screen capture of my full desktop screen (1280x1024) and save it in PNG, as I was becoming acoustate to use open formats. The bottom line:

vista-desktop.jpg -> size = 190KB
vista-desktop.png -> size = 2.690MB

I must be doing something wrong...

III) SQL Developer Migration Workbench Early Adopter for public evaluation is out !!!

JAX-WS 2.1 : First spin.

2007-03-01T23:25:00.000-08:00

JAX-WS 2.1 is out.

Here is a blog entry that will give you all the details you need: see the Fast & Furious.
For me, it means it's time to give it a try and build some interface to PayPal Web services. The performance improvement seams to be worth a closer look.

In my current project, I have start to look at performance between different implementations for a given Business Process, and I am getting to the point were the interpretation of the performance number can be swinged either way, just with a few tweaks on my dataset.
Here is a tip I wanted to share with those that are trying to use SOAPElement --the JAX-RPC/SAAJ equivalent of the DOM Element-- when trying to work with large datagram that are handled as XML: Make sure you do not try to preserve whitespace. Otherwise, for every nested element you have (XMLElement) you will have an extra java object to carry the linefeed (an XMLText). It can add up very quick.

The key is on line 193, in the code folowing code snippet:


189      private SOAPElement getDocumentFromString(String xmlStream) {
190          SOAPElement res = null;
191          try {
192              DOMParser builder = new DOMParser();
193              builder.setPreserveWhitespace(false);
194              builder.parse(new StringReader(xmlStream));
195              res = SOAPUtil.toSOAPElement((Element)builder.getDocument().getDocumentElement());
196          } catch (Exception ex) {
197              ex.printStackTrace();
198          }
199          return res;
200      }

Vista and the integrated unzip feature, tips wanted?

2007-02-28T19:49:00.000-08:00

If you have any tips to share, please drop me a comment here. It may help other as well...

So far, the only result I got from Google are this "Worse Than Failure" entry with screen shoot similar to mine, and an entry from Microsoft's support that seams off topic...

Here is how the process started.

After I got started on search the net and into the mood that trigger this entry, it got even worth.

A few years back, at JavaOne, there was a presentation were Oracle was demonstrating how JDeveloper intaller, or the lack of it, was easy to used, compared to the VisualStudio equivalent of the time.

Could have this been done on purpose?

Or is this just that I need to turn off the remaining security features that I have still not totaly disabled?

By the time the unzip was done with the extra process, I had already configure IIS 7.0 on than same Vista Ultimate instance, thanks to this post. Just remember to enable the new default port on your local firewall. Some things are getting better...

SOAPFaultException: IllegalArgumentException: Decoding tip

2007-02-20T12:29:00.000-08:00

As part of my ongoing work on the SOA and SCA (Society of Confused Architects) bandwagon, I have a new not-so-easy error to explain and share with you.

Here is how the error will reads from the client side, when using Oracle Web Services tech Stack on the 10gR3 releases:

javax.xml.rpc.soap.SOAPFaultException: Caught exception while handling request:
deserialization error: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException

The SOAP response will look something like that:


 1  <?xml version = '1.0' encoding = 'UTF-8'?>
 2  <env:Envelope xmlns:env="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
 3     <env:Body>
 4        <env:Fault>
 5           <faultcode>env:Client</faultcode>
 6           <faultstring>Caught exception while handling request: deserialization
 7                        error: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException</faultstring>
 8        </env:Fault>
 9     </env:Body>
10  </env:Envelope>

In my case, the error was just because I was having an invalid value
for some XML Schema type - the incomming value was not in the set
defined in the schema.


 1  <xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
 2             xmlns:tns="http://ws.rajkovic.org/samples"
 3             targetNamespace="http://ws.rajkovic.org/samples"
 4             elementFormDefault="qualified"
 5             attributeFormDefault="unqualified">
 6  ...
 7        <xs:simpleType name="TitleType">
 8          <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
 9            <xs:enumeration value="Company"/>
10            <xs:enumeration value="Mr."/>
11            <xs:enumeration value="Ms."/>
12          </xs:restriction>
13        </xs:simpleType>
14        <xs:element name="title" type="tns:TitleType"/>
15  ...
16  </xs:schema>

Hope it can help some of you out there, getting to the bottom
of your interoperability issues faster.

-Ecco

WS 10.1.3.1 faultcode of the day - env:Server UndeclaredThrowableException

2007-02-06T16:19:00.000-08:00

Here is an error that I have seen a few time in the past days, for which I have not find an easy way around. Just a user error, hard to catch...

<env:Body>
<env:Fault>
<faultcode>env:Server</faultcode>
<faultstring>Internal Server Error (Caught exception while handling request: java.lang.reflect.UndeclaredThrowableException)</faultstring>
</env:Fault>
</env:Body>

In playing with the 'mapheaderstoparameters' option for the topDownAssemble target, I forgot to change the method signature on the implementation class before to repackage my application. When the code generated at deployement time does not match with the code packaged in your application, this is the error you may get.

Until we get smarter in the code generation and have dynamic services with pre-deployment check, the best remains to make a knot on your handkerchief.

Some random notes, in a developer's reading day.

2007-02-05T09:51:00.000-08:00

Here are some random link to resources I found on the Web, that I have read over the weekend, and that I'll keep in my bookmarks for a while. As I am in transit between different computers, I figure out that my blog was not a bad place to keep them handy...

A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection

Just one viewpoint on Vista's content protection system.

As a side note, I have seen Vista Ultimate running on a brand new high-end system over the weekend, at a friend's home, with an XBox360 and a huge TV screen.

Very nice !!! I am jealous, I can't do the same with a 24 inch iMac using my Home Theater setup.

Musings of a Windows Vista Technical Evangelist

A nice blog with tones of tips on Windows Vista.

The Top 12 Productivity Killers in Your Development Methodology

I especially have this one reasoning in my mind: "Fact 12: Coding conventions are efficient; they must be imposed." I still have not been able to understand why this is not de-jure in any software development organisation - small or large.

Mustang Must-Haves: What's Cool in Java SE 6

Start thinking about 6.0, so you will be ready on time. For me, it just mean I have to start running my code using 6.0 JDK and see if my IDE can handle it. As you need to pick the best tool for the job, it may be time to evaluate a new tool.

I have also start to use JDeveloper to play with mySQL, Subversion, Hibernate, and found some interesting how-to on the topics. I'll have to make another compilation of what is useful and some of the traps I didn't missed, in case it helps others.

It was a busy weekend ;-)

Santa, or a serious ramen shop for serious ramen fans.

2007-02-02T19:12:00.000-08:00

Today was another farwell lunch; this time it's mine turn.

The destination was Santa, a ramen place downtown San Mateo.

The first time I eat there, about 5 years ago, was when I was interviewing for my current job position.
Serge, Olivier, the only reel changes since that time are that the Japanese TV shows are no longer part of the 'atmosphere' and that you are both far away. Nilesh will be able to carry on the tradition.

After all, there is such thing as a free lunch !!!
For some, it was the price to pay to see me going away.

So long everyone.

Access to SOAP Header from response payload

2007-01-23T23:25:00.000-08:00

As I was trying to explain the difference between SOAPElement (a.k.a. XMLElement or Element in the java world) and Document, I got to realized that this know-how could be usefull when you need to access the content of the soap:header that is comming back from the service endpoint on the response.

To illustrate this technique, I'll be using WS-Addessing and the .NET endpoint Microsoft exposes for testing purposes (http://131.107.72.15/WSAddressingCR_Service_WCF/WSAddressing10.svc).

In my test scenario, the request looks like this

<env:Envelope xmlns:env="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<env:Header>
<wsa:Action xmlns:wsa="http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing">http://example.org/action/echoIn</wsa:Action>
<wsa:ReplyTo xmlns:wsa="http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing">
<wsa:Address xmlns:wsa="http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing">http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing/anonymous</wsa:Address>
</wsa:ReplyTo>
<wsa:To xmlns:wsa="http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing">http://131.107.72.15:80/WSAddressingCR_Service_WCF/WSAddressing10.svc/Soap12</wsa:To>
</env:Header>
<env:Body>
<ans12:echoIn xmlns:ans12="http://example.org/echo">test1132</ans12:echoIn>
</env:Body>
</env:Envelope>

For now, I'll assume that you can figure out the way to send the proper SOAP Header in the request, and point you at the documentation if you need further information about JAX-RPC handlers.

To construct the client, you can use the following ant target:

<target name="genproxy">
<delete dir="./gen_src"/>
  <o:genproxy wsdl="./etc/wcf-server/WSAddressingCR.wsdl" output="./gen_src" debug="true" classpath="./classes">
   <o:handler name="AddressingClientHandler" class="org.w3c.addressing.ClientHandler">
    <o:soapheader value="{http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing}Action">
     <o:initparam name="test" value="testValue"/>
    </o:soapheader>
   </o:handler>
  </o:genproxy>
</target>

The trick to get access to the soap:header in the response is as follow:

use the databinding="false" option on the o:genProxy command - this will change the method signature of your java code, and give you access to the raw XML.
from the SOAPElement you are getting in return, get back to the containing XML Document - the soap:envelope. Once you have it, you can access any value from the soap:header

It's that simple. The draw back of this is on the java side - now, you have to construct the SOAP request and decode the SOAP response by hand. It's only a temporary solution, until we get to J2SE 6.0 and JAX-WS.

code snippet:
SOAPElement result = myPort.echo(input);
System.out.println("result as SOAPElement");
((XMLElement) result).print(System.out);
System.out.println("result as Document");
((XMLElement) result.getOwnerDocument().getDocumentElement()).print(System.out);

output:

result as SOAPElement
<echoOut xmlns="http://example.org/echo">test1132</echoOut>
result as Document
<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing">
<s:Header>
<a:Action s:mustUnderstand="1">http://example.org/action/echoOut </a:Action>
</s:Header>
<s:Body>
<echoOut xmlns="http://example.org/echo">test1132</echoOut>
</s:Body>
</s:Envelope>

In this example, the a:Action header is not that usefull, but imagine you can gain access to a:RelatesTo or a:MessageID using the same technique.

Have fun!!!

Did I hear Raw Food ?

2007-01-18T18:21:00.000-08:00

This was my lunch plate, from koma-sushi in Menlo Park. I'll to see with my coach if this is a good lunch, based on my current exercise level [0 step/day] and my beer drinking exercise from the past days...

I guess I really need to get the iPhone to have better picture quality.

Upgrading to Vista today ...

2007-01-11T23:37:00.000-08:00

I could not resist on this one...

After seeing the PS3 vs WII ads on YouTube, I am getting used to the pattern. but the last "Get a Mac" clip on Surgery made my day.

For me, the upgrade was not that painfull after all. just a few hours to scan and rescan the disk - I was using RC2, so it's one could expect as you move to the production release.

Next week, I'll try to locate the anti-virus release of Symantec that's supported for Vista - it should be out by now.

For me, the killer app on Vista remain the index on the outlook email that can be accessed from the start menu - Spotlight re-invented, just better.

By the way, did you see the new iPhone, the phone re-invented, an ipod with a rotary wheel, like in the old days. When are we going to get iPod analog, for the vynil lovers?

Invalid WSDL - and the answer is ...

2007-01-04T23:37:00.000-08:00

I forgot to provide the answer on last quizz about invalid WSDL, and XML tips.

The WSDL in question: http://www.rajkovic.org/ws/wsdl/bads/annotatedBank2.wsdl

The issue: by mistake, I did reuse the same prefix for two namespace. The tns prefix is associated with 'http://ws.rajkovic.org/demo/annotatedBank'
at the global scope (wsdl:definitions) and reused with 'http://ws.rajkovic.org/demo/annotatedBank/types'
at the schema scope (xsd:schema element).

In the wsdl:part, element="tns:create-account" references an element named {http://ws.rajkovic.org/demo/annotatedBank}create-account, which is not found. Based on the schema's targetNamespace, the QName (qualified name) of the element is {http://ws.rajkovic.org/demo/annotatedBank/types}create-account.

There are two ways to fix this error:

Uses the same targetNamespace URI (and tns prefix) for both WSDL and Schema elements. Keep It Simple as much as possible.
Introduce a new prefixe in your wsdl:definition element (xmlns:types="http://ws.rajkovic.org/demo/annotatedBank/types") and uses the newly introduced prefixe to reference elements defined in your schema (element="types:create-account"). It's not a bad idea to avoid reusing the same prefix with different URI in a single document. That way, you will avoid this pitfall.

Remember: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Here is today's WSDL: http://www.rajkovic.org/ws/wsdl/bads/kiss-20070104.wsdl. Can you spot the mistake?

I agree, it's getting a little more involved.

Have fun,

You can always get back to your favorite sudoku du jour.

Happy New Year

2007-01-01T23:28:00.000-08:00

As we get into 2007, it's time to take new resolutions, and make some predictions.

Resolution: to post on this blog once a week, about Web Services and other rant.
Prediction: 2007 will be the year of WS-*, the JAX-WS APIs and Java 6.0.

Happy 2007 !!!

model error: element "{http://...}foo" not found

2006-12-18T21:44:00.000-08:00

As I got some reply off-line, on my previous post, it's time to gives the explanation for the first invalid WSDL.

First, here is my ANT script (build.xml), that can be used to validate any WSDL in JDeveloper 10.1.3:

<project name="blog-demo" default="all" basedir="." xmlns:o="antlib:oracle">
<property file="build.properties"/>
<target name="analyze">
<o:analyze wsdl="http://www.rajkovic.org/ws/wsdl/bads/annotatedBank.wsdl"/>
</target>
</project>

and the output

analyze:
model error: element "{http://ws.rajkovic.org/demo/annotatedBank}create-account" not found.

In annotatedBank.wsdl, there is a missing element: <types>. The <schema> element cannot be a direct child of the <definitions> element. In my broken sample, the schema is invisible, and therefore the element 'create-account' cannot be found. Check the valid WSDL.

To challenge your knowledge, here is another broken WSDL: http://www.rajkovic.org/ws/wsdl/bads/annotatedBank2.wsdl . This is another common error that you may encounter while trying to author WSDL files by hand.

Let see who can find the error...

java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused

2006-12-17T18:45:00.000-08:00

As I am still getting question related to this error, when using JDeveloper, I'll describe my troubleshooting tips here, so that it can be indexed by Google (and other search engines).

If you can access the web resource from IE or Mozilla, but can't get the WSDL to work with JDeveloper, you are most likely facing a common issue. Your HTTP proxy setup may be incorrect.

Here is the screenshoot of the configuration from JDeveloper 10.1.3.1. Last time I used JDeveloper, I was using the HTTP Analyzer feature and I forgot to turn it off before to exit the application. When I re-started JDeveloper the next day, the proxy was still setup for port 8099.

Here is a sample of the output you may get when you face this configuration error:
Buildfile: /Users/eric/devroot/build.xml analyze: Failed to read wsdl file at: "http://www.rajkovic.org/ws/wsdl/bads/annotatedBank.wsdl", caused by: java.net.ConnectException. : Connection refused

Remember to stop HTTP Analyzer before to exit JDeveloper or to check your proxy setting often, and you will be OK.

Broken WSDL, but why?

2006-12-16T19:04:00.000-08:00

I have started to rely on the XML schema validation that is embedded in JDeveloper and forgot some of the basic check I was doing manually prior to that.

To help improving on error reporting, so that we can make file easier for developers of Web Services, I'll try to compile a list of broken WSDLs, so that we can use them when looking for negative test scenario.

Here is the first one: http://www.rajkovic.org/ws/wsdl/bads/annotatedBank.wsdl. You can try it, see what error you get and if it make any sense to you. Post a comment with the error you find in this WSDL :-)

Have Fun !!!

Common JAXRPC error - unexpected element name

2006-12-09T16:11:00.000-08:00

If you are using JAXRPC, there is an error message that may be hard to connect back to the root cause of the problem. The error message reads something like:
unexpected element name: expected=FileMetadata, actual={urn:FileUpload}FileMetadata.

There may be multiple causes for this error message. The first you want to look at is the flavor of XML schema advertized in the WSDL.

The default value for the elementFormDefault attribute is unqualified (see the w3c spec), which is what the error message above is trying to convey. In the schema section of your WSDL, make sure you can find the declaration: elementFormDefault="qualified"

Sometime, this get lost in the edits of the WSDL file, and many Web Services toolkits wont validate on the consumer side (Axis and .NET are among those). If you cannot alter the original WSDL, make a local copy that you can use to generate your artifacts, then contact the service provider so that they can make the change. The WS-I tools should be able to help you detect this kind of issues with minimal efforts.

Who needs private coaching ?

2006-12-08T23:22:00.000-08:00

Having your own private coach did not seams like something anyone will ever be able to afford. With the rising new technologies behind web2.0, I may be proven wrong...

I am still doing good with my programm to loose weight, as I have someone home that watch out for me (and my diet).

If you are not as lucky as I am, maybe you should contact Coach Valerie!!!

Googling and more...

2006-11-30T22:48:00.000-08:00

Here are some pieces of Web2.0 I haved enjoyed today. I figure out I should share them.
How to Design a Good API & Why it Matters (1 hour worth listening too)

The S stands for Simple

I found this catching title funny:
"Want to be cool? Learn REST. Want a career? Learn WS."

learned that "to Google" is now a verb that is on some dictionary - Thanks Antoine !!!

found out why I have an iMac at home - Thanks Yobo !!! (you'll have one soon...)

and finaly, tested UberIcon from Punk Software - Thanks Olivier !!!

dmg for JDev 10.1.3.1 on MAC is available from OTN

2006-11-18T12:01:00.000-08:00

I have missed the annoucement, so I figure other may also be looking for it:
Check the OTN download page for the latest download.
Another usefull page to bookmark are the Main Documentation and J2EE & Web Services pages.

Changing the version of JDK used by JDeveloper

2006-11-01T21:16:00.000-08:00

I have recently learned a quick and lazy way to change the version of the JDK used to run JDeveloper 10g R3. I am sure there is an option somewhere in the configuration screen to do the same, which I couldn't find...

While JDeveloper is not running, locate the embedded JDK on disk and rename (or delete) that directory. For me, it was C:\opt\jdev\jdk. Once it's done, restart and you will by asked to locate the version of the JDK you want to use.

It's another step to get going with JAVA on Vista.

-ecco

Running Java on Vista RC2, some tips...

2006-10-30T17:59:00.000-08:00

As days go by, I am able to get more and more done on my desktop, but still to figure out how to get the productivity increase, as I was initially expecting from a modern OS.

The last issues that I was facing was IPv6 vs. IPv4, and I have now been able to google the resource that explain it all: "The Cable Guy - October 2005" on MSDN, especially the 'Disabling IPv6' section.

Unless you disable IPv6 on all interfaces, you will have to change your way to start java process. Here is my new way to launch JUnit tests from ant:
<junit showoutput="true" fork="yes">
<jvmarg value="-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true">
...

I had to use the same option when starting the server-side process for my J2EE container. As this is not exactly lightweight, I'll have to find a better way forward (most likely hack with the registry as advised by the Cable Guy). For some reason, I was expecting to find such information from the new integrated search features...

Next, you will need to check the properties for the files and directories created when you unzip a file in place, using the embedded feature that come with Vista. All the files are read-only by default.

Last is the permission required to run any java process. I used to have a bunch of batch files pre-cooked to start my processes with different option (debug, verbose, ...), and keep all those shortcut on my desktop. Now, I am back to Linux land and need to remember to 'sudo' so that the process has enough privilege to do his job. In Vista, it's called "Run as administrator".

When you have the cmd windows opened, remember to check the title bar every time you run into any failure during the execution of your processes or tests. I am still used to the double-click on my desktop icons instead of the 'right-click + run as' required.

Hope you will find this useful and that it will save you some time and frustration.
-- Ecco

Vista RC2 - a better experience

2006-10-27T00:33:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, I stop by Microsoft booth at Oracle Open World to check out Vista.

Back home, I did burn the DVD of RC2 and try the system upgrade from RC1.

It was just fine, and I am now back to normal network speed.

If you think about giving Vista a trial, go directly to RC2 ;-)

Connection reset from a WCF Web Service

2006-10-22T21:48:00.000-07:00

Here is an error message you may see, when calling WCF Web Services from java:
IOException retrieving the response: java.net.SocketException: Connection reset

As it may not be obvious the first time you see it, this may save you some time.

One reason for this behaviour is when the WCF endpint is expecting to see wsa:Action SOAP header in the request.

To find out if you are facing this case, you have to look inside the WSDL, and search for the policy that describes the contract for your endpoint.

<wsp:Policy wsu:Id="CustomBinding_Echo1_policy">
  <wsp:ExactlyOne>
    <wsp:All>
      <wsaw:UsingAddressing/>
    </wsp:All>
  </wsp:ExactlyOne>
</wsp:Policy>

To make this a concrete example, here is a sample WSDL. To find the policy, you will need to follow the import as the policy are not always advertized in the top-level document.

Here is how the import looks:

  <wsdl:import namespace="http://example.org/" location="http://.../WSAddressing10.svc?wsdl=wsdl1"/>

To get around this, make sure you have the proper wsa:Action value in the reques, as in this sample:

<env:Header xmlns:wsa="http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing">
  <wsa:Action>http://example.org/action/echoIn</wsa:Action>
  <wsa:ReplyTo>
    <wsa:Address>http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing/anonymous</wsa:Address>
  </wsa:ReplyTo>
  <wsa:To>http://.../WSAddressing10.svc/Soap12</wsa:To>
</env:Header>

Another thing to watch for is the value used for the SOAP Action (SOAP 1.1) or the action attribute in the Content-type (for SOAP 1.2).

Here is a SOAP 1.2 sample:
Content-type: application/soap+xml; charset=UTF-8;
action="http://example.org/action/echoIn"

Remember that the two value must be identical, for the messages to be processed by WCF. Otherwise, you will get a "connection reset" error message at best, or see the connection left open indefinitely.

Happy SOA coding

-Ecco

Productivity Hints

2006-10-22T20:19:00.001-07:00

It's funny to see how creative developers can be when they are testing their features, or is this really that hard to slice Angel Cake?

Just a random screen, as I was starting the latest version of JDeveloper 10.1.3.1 on my iMac.

Going the Vista way

2006-10-17T18:41:00.000-07:00

As a geek, and an iMac user at home, I had to try the newly released Windows Vista, after my recent trip to Redmond.

Microsoft is even branding its refreshment after its new baby.

After a clean install and a seamless connection on the corporate network, with access to the network printers and the shared disks on my linux systems, it was time to start reel work.

My luck started to go south. Connecting my iPod shuffle on the keyboard's USB connector to access it as a memory stick did bring up an error pop-up.

Next was a strange behavior when scrolling into my Java applications. After a quick email to the in-house guru, and a pointer to this blog, I was back on track...

Since this morning, I have been trying to download the latest JDK from Sun's web site, so that I can get my Java applications in a usable state, and I am back to the stone age on the modem speed.

I'll need to figure out which setup I need to tweak to get back the the ligthning speed of modern computers.

Let see how it goes. Hopefully, my next story will be on a better tone.

10/18 Update - watch out for IPv6 vs. IPv4. Let's hope this is it.

MTOM the Oracle way

2006-09-07T07:23:00.000-07:00

I just saw the annoncement from Tug on the OTN Web Services forum about a new HowTo: Use MTOM to Exchange Binary Data Using Web Services

Nice work Tug!

I hope this is the first in a long serie...

-ecco

2006-09-01: A Date To Remember

2006-09-01T21:56:00.000-07:00

Today is a big date for me and my new diet.

The initial goal was to loose over 20 pounds. On the scale at the gym, the magic number was 22!!!

Yes, 22 pounds since I started in early July after our vacation in southern California.

Let see where I go from here...

-ecco

Oracle SOA Suite 10.1.3 Developer Preview

2006-08-16T21:00:00.000-07:00

In case you did not see the news, the new Oracle SOA Suite 10.1.3 Developer Preview is available from OTN for download. Check it out !!!

In the Web Services front, there are some new features available to make your life easier. Over the next weeks, I'll try it out on my new home computer and share some of the findings here.

To share you experience and give us feedback, visit the Web Services forum on OTN.

-ecco

.NET Web Service response is null on client side

2006-07-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

If you are trying to use a .NET client to invoke some Web Service, and you are getting an empty result (or return value) one of the possible explaination is that the format of the SOAP response on the wire does not match the format advertise in the WSDL.

Unlike most JAX-RPC stacks who will fault in such case, when deserialization fails (XML 2 JAVA), the .NET stack ignore the unexpected nodes, and continue processing with the default value for the types, based on the CLR dafault behaviour.

When you are in doubt, remember to capture the SOAP payload for manual introspection and try with another client stack.

-ecco

A Book on Database Web Services

2006-07-21T21:32:00.000-07:00

For those that want to interface the Oracle Database with Web Service, there is a nice book just good released for you: Oracle Database Programming Using Java and Web Services, by Kuassi Mensah

Finding messages with HTTP Analyzer

2006-07-06T20:51:00.000-07:00

I got catch by surprise a few times, trying to capture SOAP messages with JDeveloper's integrated HTTP Analyzer and figured out it's worth sharing with others. Here it is.

When using JDeveloper's HTTP Analyzer to capture messages exchanges, I sometime get the wrong proxy setting, forget about it, fix it and try to run, run and run without to see any message captured. In reallity, messages are captured but are not displayed when you keep the focus on the Data pane.

Remember to watch the next/previous message buttons in the toolbar. If they are blue (not disabled), you have message captured, as shown in Figure 2. Just click on the button to display one of the messages. You can also switch back to the history pane, as shown in Figure 3.

Here are the screens, with some hint highlighted with red-circle.

Figure 1 - HTML Analyzer with focus on the Data pane

Figure 2 - Same HTML Analyzer with focus on the Data pane, after running the test

Figure 3 - HTML Analyzer with focus on the History pane

Hope this will save you some time and frustration.
-ecco

Ted Neward on Web Services

2006-07-05T22:45:00.000-07:00

If you are into Web Service, and are trying to understand where the industry is going, you should take a few minutes and listen to this interview on the ServerSide: Ted Neward - Web Services and Security.

If you don't have the time to check it out, here are some highlight from the transcript:

I have to go to each of the vendors and I have to beat them over the head with a two-by-four to stop making web services look like RPC calls.

Start from your code, just sprinkle some web service magic pixie dust on it and lo and behold you have a web service, bad things, bad, bad, bad, bad. I need to beat the vendors over the head to stop doing that... That’s just not going to work.

If you're out there today building a web service and you're not downloading the other platform and working with that as part of your test suites. If you're building a Java web service, you have to download the .NET framework, you have to download NUnit and you have to write your unit tests as NUnit .NET unit tests. If you're not doing that you're fooling yourself.

If you just want to do CORBA with angle brackets, fine, you can do it, but don’t be surprised when partners come to you and say it doesn’t work and when you tell them, “Well, that’s because the problem is on your end”.

But you should find the time to listen to Ted's interview!

unacceptable symbols

2006-07-05T22:14:00.000-07:00

Recently, as I was following our IT policies and run Windows Update, I got the following message:
"This item updates the Bookshelf Symbol 7 font included in some Microsoft products. The font has been found to contain unacceptable symbols. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer."

How can Microsoft expect you will run your business on Windows 2003 Advanced Server and be OK the restart your computer for a silly font with a symbol in the wrong place?

I don't get it...

For the full story, check this detailed blog entry.

Failed to find wsa.jar.

2006-06-02T22:55:00.000-07:00

Just realized as I am working on some sample code with JDeveloper 10.1.3 and the WSA ant targets that there is a warning that can be missleading to new users.

Here is what you see in the 'Apache Ant - Log' window:

Buildfile: C:\dev\howto\xml-client\build.xml

genproxy:
Failed to find wsa.jar.

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 11 seconds

In my environment, with the build.properties file generated by JDeveloper, the issue was that the environment variable used a relative path.

#Wed May 31 23:39:13 PDT 2006
javac.debug=on
oracle.home=../../../opt/jdev/
...

WSA is looking for oracle.home or oc4j.home to locate oc4j.home/webservices/lib/wsa.jar

Using an absolute path is all it takes to get ride of the extra warning.
#Wed May 31 23:39:13 PDT 2006
javac.debug=on
oracle.home=/opt/jdev/
...

For more details, see 'Setting Up Ant for WebServicesAssembler'

No big deal, just noise.

Susan Duncan Filtering the Muddy Waters of Web Services, SOA, Oracle ADF and tools

2006-06-02T21:08:00.000-07:00

Susan, welcome to the blogsphere.
Here is a new resource for SOA and Web Services:Susan Duncan Filtering the Muddy Waters of Web Services, SOA, Oracle ADF and tools. If you are looking for some pointers to get your WSS services going, you should at it to your feed.

-ecco.

Just for Fun

2006-05-14T15:03:00.000-07:00

Sometime, a picture is worth a thousand words. This one says it all. In other words, when it does not works as expected, "the problem is most likely between the chair and the keyborad", another version of R.T.F.M.

JDeveloper's WSDL Editor - how to get better clues

2006-05-02T20:49:00.000-07:00

Recently, I have been helping customers with broken WSDL files. I decided it would be valuable to others as well. Here are my 2 tips.

JDeveloper Editor

JDeveloper 10g R3

Switch the Editor view from Design to Source.

If there is any syntax error, you will see some orange or red on the right side of the screen.

If you mouse-over the lines that are underline in orange or red, you will see the pop-up window with some information describing the syntax error. In this case, there is something wrong with the <include> element.

WSA ant task analyze

analyze

model error: element "{http://vs.cegetel.com}creerContracSimp" not found.

With the two tools combined, you are in good hands.

Hope you will find this usefull.
-ecco

BPEL Process Tracing

2006-04-24T21:38:00.000-07:00

When you are dealing with Web services, there is a common problem that you have to deal with; Capturing SOAP request/response as they flow on the wire between the client and the service endpoint.

Tug's blog entry give you all the steps required to be successful with the setup, when using Oracle BPEL process manager.

I have to try using Tug's instruction in conjunction to Mindreef's SOAPscope to see how it works. At first, it looks very promising.

-ecco

Having Fun playing on the Internet

2006-04-21T19:32:00.000-07:00

If you are looking for something to do over the weekend, as the rain returns here are some cool links I wanted to share:

For the youngsters: Visit http://www.jigkids.com/ and complete your own puzzle online.

For the older: The Sudoku of the day

And for the rest of us, just a little reading from the 2005 Darwin Awards finalists.

-ecco

Web Services and XML Documents

2006-04-20T23:27:00.000-07:00

For some it's obvious. As it was not for me, I decided to put it on e-paper so that you can google this when you need it.

If you want to exchange XML Document, meaning the whole content of an XML file, with Web services, you should not use org.w3c.dom.Document or any other object representation of your XML DOM tree in your method signature. Instead, you should be using a Plain Old Types (POT) like String or byte[].

Take the following code sample, here using JSR-181 annotations:


@WebMethod
public Document getDocument(String input) {
  Document res = null;
  try {
    DOMParser builder = new DOMParser();
    builder.parse(new StringReader(STR_XML_DOCUMENT));
    res = builder.getDocument();
  } catch (Exception ex) {
    ex.printStackTrace();
  }
  return res;
}

private static final String STR_XML_DOCUMENT =
  "<?xml version=\"1.0\"?>\n" + 
  "<!DOCTYPE module PUBLIC\n" +
  "\"-//Puppy Crawl//DTD Check Configuration 1.2//EN\"\n" +
  "\"http://www.puppycrawl.com/dtds/configuration_1_2.dtd\">\n" +
  "\n" + "<module name=\"Checker\">\n" +
  " <!-- Comments are safe -->\n" +
  " <metadata name=\"com.atlas-sw.eclipse\" value=\"I like   Sydney\"/>\n" +
  "</module>";

You will be able to assemble and deploy the service endpoint just fine, but it may not behaves as once could expect. The SOAP Response carries only the inner Element; the <module> node.


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <env:Envelope 
   xmlns:env="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
   xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   xmlns:ns0="http://rajkovic.org/types/">
  <env:Body>
    <ans1:getDocumentResponse        xmlns:ans1="http://rajkovic.org/">
      <ns0:return>
        <module name="Checker">
          <metadata name="com.atlas-sw.eclipse" value="I like Sydney"/>
        </module>
      </ns0:return>
    </ans1:getDocumentResponse>
  </env:Body>
</env:Envelope>

If the PI, CDATA or comments are important to you, using org.w3c.dom.Document or org.w3c.dom.Element is not an option. Instead, you should be using xsd:string or some binary data type like byte[].

-ecco

ps. This information is based on the current 10.1.3.0 release of JDeveloper.

unexpected null value for literal data

2006-04-02T20:34:00.000-07:00

There is a challenge that is hard to overcome at first; making sense of error messages.

You can always Google with the text of the error, “unexpected null value for literal data” and hope to be lucky. If you are using Oracle Application Server 10.1.3.0, here is the explaination for the message and two ways out.

The Exception:

unexpected null value for literal data
at oracle.j2ee.ws.common.util.exception.JAXRPCExceptionBase.<init>(JAXRPCExceptionBase.java:52)
at oracle.j2ee.ws.common.encoding.SerializationException.<init>(SerializationException.java:26)
...

The relevant schema:

<complexType name="Customer">
<sequence>
<element name="address" type="tns:Address"/>
<element name="firstName" type="string"/>
<element name="lastName" type="string"/>
</sequence>
</complexType>

A sample code that will cause this exception:

public void testServ() throws Exception {
ServiceSoapHttpPortClient service = new ServiceSoapHttpPortClient();

Customer c = new Customer();
c.setFirstName("eric");
c.setLastName("rajkovic");
service.echoCustomer(c);
}

The problem: Based on the schema definition, the Address is required for every Customer instance. This is because the default value for the minOccurs attribute is 1.

The ways out: i) make sure that you do not use any 'null' value in your Java code for inputs that are mendatories, based on the schema definition or ii) make the element optional in the schema. This second option will be especially handy if you have a large number of complex types nested in your schema and the server is OK with missing input elements.

i) modified client code:

public void testServ() throws Exception {
ServiceSoapHttpPortClient service = new ServiceSoapHttpPortClient();

Customer c = new Customer();
c.setFirstName("eric");
c.setLastName("rajkovic");
Address a = new Address();
a.setStreet("street name");
c.setAddress(a);
service.echoCustomer(c);
}

ii) modified XML Schema

<complexType name="Customer">
<sequence>
<element name="address" type="tns:Address" minOccurs="0"/>
<element name="firstName" type="string"/>
<element name="lastName" type="string"/>
</sequence>
</complexType>

It's the drawback of trying to be strict and avoid serialiazing data that may be rejected by a strict service endpoint.

-ecco

360 Degree DB Programming

2006-03-31T15:28:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the blogging world, Kuassi.

I'll have to check 360 Degree DB Programming and learn new tips and tricks from you.

Goog luck with this new endhavour :-)
-ecco

XML processor or Regex, that is the question.

2006-03-30T21:27:00.000-08:00

Sometime, you have to wonder why something works the way it does.

The most recent time I had to scratch my head, was when trying to showcase the integration of Web services with the Office 2003 Research pane. It let me wonder what SOAP toolkit is used to build the client side piece. The answer came from the wire; some homegrown client, identified as 'Microsoft Office/11.0 (Windows NT 5.2; Microsoft Office 11.0.6568; Pro)' in the user-agent field.

If you scope the namespace as Microsoft expects them to be, based on the WSDL they advertise, or include a whitespace between the parameter element and the registration response, it won't work. And the error is displayed as "No services were added because the service provider did not provide any valid information." - not exactly true...

When you put this is context of other papers, like 'Why XML Security is Broken', it make it all clear - The XML processing is most likely limited to some kind of optimized text processor that's only serving one purpose: extract the business data from the SOAP wrapper as fast as possible. As I was hutting for some hint, I discovered that the Office 2003 research pane accepts either literal or encoded response.

Nowadays, Web services and SOAP are only used as a transport channel for Plain Old Text (or binary data). Do not try to mix the schema that describes the operations and the underlying business objects.

It’s kind of sad to see that we cannot use XML as a native format inside the SOAP envelope.

-ecco

Can I dance with you?

2006-02-18T18:34:00.000-08:00

I don't know how to Tango, but I still want to dance with you.

I just came across Harold's blog entry about Sun's project Tango and Arun's "It takes 2 to tango" post. As they put it, the focus is to have interop working between Sun and Microsoft. What about the other platforms? Hopefully, we will get back to the 'true interop' model and the n*m spirit of SOAPBuilder. It will benefit all users of Web services, and make investment in the technologie worthwile.

From the outcome of the plugfest event, you get the guaranty that you will be able to call Microsoft endpoints from your platform and that you can host Microsoft-friendly services, that customer's of the .NET platform can consume.

The missing piece: any level of confidence that your customers will be able to consume your own flavor of WSDL, if you are not using the Microsoft style and formats - see my post on Office 2003 for such example, were the WSDL is following the WS-I profile but fails to mimic some Microsoft secret-sauce.

Hope that the SOAPbuilder community can find a way to get back some traction - "whatever happened to interop testing" thread may tell us ...

-Ecco

Where is my code ?

2006-02-07T21:48:00.000-08:00

Just find a new 'feature' in JDeveloper 10gR3 that was surprising at first. When you use the "Create Web Service Proxy" wizard, there is only one icon in the Application Navigator. Trying to locate the java classes by opening the packages structure won't work.

Here are two options:

Switch to the System Navigator.

Open the Structure pane and select the proxy node - the 'Round4XSDTestProxy' node in the Application Navigator. The content of the structure pane will list all the classes, including the Client class that contains the main method for your quick tests.

Happy coding,
-Ecco

Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3

2006-01-30T23:04:00.000-08:00

The 10.1.3.0 has been going live over the weekend. Here are few link worth adding to your bookmark shortlist: Documentation, Web services APIs Javadoc, and HowTo's.

If you did not get the bits yet, here they are. Download version 10.1.3 of Oracle Application Server 10g and Oracle JDeveloper 10g.

Happy coding!
-Ecco

JDeveloper 10gR3 and Web Services

2006-01-12T20:27:00.000-08:00

If you are planing on developing Web Services on the Oracle stack, using the latest 10.1.3 preview available, I have a couple of tips for you:

Once you are done with the HelloWorld sample service, consider moving from the wizard-based development model to the ant-based scripting on top of WSA - the underlying Web Service Assembler utility.
If you have decided to use the CLI [Command Line Interface] mode to build your simple services, just because an IDE is not for you, I have the same recomendation to make: consider moving from the CLI base model to the ANT base development environment.

Here are my main reasons for that:

JDeveloper's support for annotation (JSR-181) is not intuitive as you have to joggle between code changes and re-enter the wizard while WSA does give you a more predictible development process. Note that you need JDK 1.5.x in order to leveareage annotations - It's the only way to handle SOAP header in bottom-up scenario, if you need to have a rational for using annotation.
WSA's CLI does not support all the complex scenario that can be handled using ANT script - Search for 'oracle:port' in the user's guide to see for yourself.

For these two reasons, switching to ant-based development as soon as possible in your development cycles will be a lifesaver, once you are under presure to deliver this last-minute features that cannot be handled with JDev or the CLI modes.

That said, you can still run your ant target from within JDeveloper - it works great. Remember to run ant in a separate process, and that the setup of JDeveloper process -like HTTP proxy setting- are not propagated automatically to the ant process.

The only time where I find the CLI still valuable is to rapidely test and develop client-side artifacts. There, the mode I used most are: genProxy, analyze, fetchWsdl and genInterface. Those commands are only usefull once, and you are not likely to re-run them as part of your automated build process. If you are, ant is your prefered mode, again.

Happy Coding !!!

-Ecco

MS Office 2003 - Generated code with no parameter

2006-01-06T15:28:00.000-08:00

In the process of getting my Web services integrated with the Office 2003 desktop suite, I run into another issue, which is again anoing. Even with a WSDL that adhers to WS-I BP1.x, the experience, out off the box is not that snooth.

The sympthome: the VBA code generated for each operation, do not have any parameter or return value. Here is a simple example with 2 operations.

Public Sub wsm_getVersion()
...
Public Sub wsm_echoString()
...

At first, this code looks fine, and there is no error message, warning, or hint of any kind that can be used to figure that the code generated is not functional. Before to delve into the WSDL and Schema definition, here is the code that one would have expected.

Public Function wsm_getVersion() As String
...
Public Function wsm_echoString(ByVal str_input As String) As String
...

The problem: The wizard is not able to process the type definition of any top-level element, unless the type definition is inlined. Here is the sample output element/type defition for the echoString operation:

<element name="echoStringResponse" type="tns:echoStringResponse"/>
<complexType name="echoStringResponse">
<sequence>
<element name="result" type="string" nillable="true"/>
</sequence>
</complexType>

The solution: change the XML schema in the WSDL, to follow the format recognized by Office, with anonymous complexType for all the wrapper elements - thoses created to mimic RPC style with document-literal-wrapped.

<element name="echoStringResponseElement">
<complexType>
<sequence>
<element name="result" type="string" nillable="true"/>
</sequence>
</complexType>
</element>

Hard to figure this one out, unless you can put the 2 WSDLs side by side.

Happy Coding,
-Ecco

Web Services Design Tips - SOAPAction

2006-01-05T18:40:00.000-08:00

Recently, I have been asked why a service was not working without the infamous SOAPAction, and I figured out I should try to explain it, one for all. Let me know if it works for you.
As the SOAPAction is transport specific -an HTTP header field, you should try to avoid it's use when authoring WSDL files for your new services, especially if you plan to use other transports for the same service. There are only a few usecases where you really need it: it's when you are using 'bare-style' document-literal binding or overloaded method (if your language of choice permit it).
The Key to this problem is to understand the relationship between the WSDL and the wire format, and to realize that the name of the wsdl:operation is not necessary present on the wire. Let's take an example to clarify this point. Here is a simple JAVA interface, that will be our samle code today:
Figure 1. Sample JAVA SEI

public interface SEI extends java.rmi.Remote {
public String lookupPhone(String eid)
  throws java.rmi.RemoteException;

public String lookupEmail(String eid)
  throws java.rmi.RemoteException;
}

This JAVA SEI can be converted into the following WSDL format.
Figure 2. Sample WSDL equivalent to the SEI

  <types>
  <schema xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
targetnamespace="http://ws.fusion.com/"
elementformdefault="qualified"
tns="http://ws.fusion.com/">
      <element name="eid" type="string" nillable="true">
      <element name="result" type="string" nillable="true">
  </element>
</element>
<message name="lookupEmail">
  <part name="eid" element="tns:eid">
</part>
<message name="lookupEmailResponse">
  <part name="result" element="tns:result">
</part>
<message name="lookupPhone">
  <part name="eid" element="tns:eid">
</part>
<message name="lookupPhoneResponse">
  <part name="result" element="tns:result">
</part>
<porttype name="WrappedService">
  <operation name="lookupEmail">
      <input message="tns:lookupEmail">
      <output message="tns:lookupEmailResponse">
  </output>
  <operation name="lookupPhone">
      <input message="tns:lookupPhone">
      <output message="tns:lookupPhoneResponse">
  </output>
</operation>

Figure 3. Sample SOAP payload

<env:Envelope xmlns:env="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
 xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<env:Body>
   <ans1:eid xmlns:ans1="http://ws.fusion.com/">eid</ans1:eid>
</env:Body>
</env:Envelope>

From the wire format above, once cannot tell is the message is targeted at the lookupEmail operation or at the lookupPhone operation. In order to route this message, you need extra information - it's the purpose of the SOAPAction header in the list displayed below.
Figure 4. Sample set of HTTP header

User-Agent: Oracle HTTPClient Version 10h
SOAPAction: "urn:lookupEmail"
Accept-Encoding: gzip, x-gzip, compress, x-compress
Content-type: text/xml; charset=UTF-8
Content-length: 302

The main reason the SOAPAction is used by most Web Services framework is as a performance optimization. It provides a key to lookup the operation where the message should be routed at, without to have to process the SOAP payload (the soap:body).

To sum up:

use an empty value if you can.
use it when you are using overloaded methods - the QName of the top-level element of the soap:body can be used to uniquely identify the operation that should process the incoming message.
if you are after the performance boost, use a short value as it will also an impact too. No need to wait for the 69th caracther of the string before to find a charater that can be used to dicriminate from other values. Think tinyurl vs verbose text.

Note that this tips is specific to SOAP 1.1 and will not apply moving forward, as the routing attribute will be factored in the addressing header.

Happy Coding !

-Ecco

WSDL and Extensibilty

2005-12-23T22:58:00.000-08:00

If you are curious about any vs. anyType, here is a recent paper from Russell Butek that may be helpfull. For me, the common usage of any / anyType remains the way the DataSet are exposed in WSDL, with Microsoft .NET 1.1:

<s:element name="GetAuthorsResponse">
   <s:complexType>
      <s:sequence>
         <s:element minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1"
            name="GetAuthorsResult">
            <s:complexType>
               <s:sequence>
                  <s:element ref="s:schema" />
                  <s:any />
•••
</s:element>

A basic rule to keep in mind, when you author your own WSDL files. Uses xsd:anyType where you will otherwise use xsd:int, xsd:string or any other XML type. Uses xsd:any where you will otherwise use a named element (not a type).

And to keep out of trouble, only use xsd:anyType when you want to handle arbitrary XML documents. Refrain yourself from using it when you try to think OO in XML.

Have fun while authoring your Services Interfaces.

Happy Chirstmas,

-Ecco

Is WS-I BP good for you?

2005-12-21T22:48:00.000-08:00

As I spend time looking at web services in real life, there is a question that is comming back, all the time:
What is wrong with my WSDL?

Today, I am looking at Microsoft Office 2003 Web Services Toolkit. Why do I get 0 as Search Results with a WSDL that is looking good, and pass the WS-I Basic Profile report without any error?
Here is a screen shoot with the error message. This error is not listed as one of the top-5 common problems [look at the troubleshooting section].
.
Using the A9 search with image-on was an easy way to locate atricles with the screen that is giving me troubles. For this sample, I am using a WSDL from systinet.
As you do not have access to this service, hosted by Systinet, you have to work without access to the server. It's as simple as one-two:

make a local copy of the WSDL.
on your local copy, remove the 'parts' attribute on all the soap:body elements, inside the binding.

<input>
  <soap:body parts='parameters' use='literal'/>
</input>

Note that you have to use the file:// protocole to work with a local file system.

In conclusion, following the WS-I Profile recomendation is a good start, but is not good enought to ensure that your web services can be consumed by the mass. Once you have identify the set of toolkits most likely to be used by your customers, you have to make sure that your services can be used in those environment. Nothing replace testing.

-Ecco

Looking for a new acronym ?

2005-11-30T10:44:00.000-08:00

The acronym of the day - SCA.

If you are curious about the new acronym of the week, don't rely on Google too much. It does not means 'Sexual Compulsives Anonymous' in our context. Instead, it means 'Service Component Architecture'.

Revolution is around the corner

2005-10-05T23:12:00.000-07:00

This article is incredible: "Bell Launches Ingenious Bicycle Anti-Theft Product".

I had to share this one.
-ecco

Vista Beta 2, take II

2005-10-04T21:32:00.000-07:00

After spending a few days with my installation, I am starting to find that it was only a beta drop, after all.
I am running into some interesting issues with access priviledge. I have been used to start my process using 'sudo' on Linux, so that I can work around some system checks without to go through a real server strength installation.
For now, I'll give it another shoot, before to go for a clean install and avoid the potential trouble with the Window XP upgrade part.
-ecco

Vista Beta 2 - Nice look

2005-10-01T22:21:00.000-07:00

Finally,

I have found the time to get build 5219 of Windows Vista installed on my laptop. It was a seamless experience, that started on the wrong foot, but with an happy ending. I did not use NFS - still the FAT32 - did not have the 9GB of free disk space required - bye bye Oracle db 9r2.

The other surprise was with the time it took to finalize the installation, having the same screen asking me not to reboot yet for over 3 hours - good for our front yard, where I have spend most of the afternoon.

Cisco wireless is working again, and I do not seam to have any problem. I can start to play with the new stuff there !!!

-ecco

OOW Demo3 - .NET/J2EE interop by examples

2005-09-27T22:04:00.000-07:00

Last week, I have been presenting at Oracle Open World on the subject of Web services interoperability between .NET and J2EE, with a focus on Oracle's implementation of JAX-RPC that is available in our latest developer preview.

Today, I have a very simple example of 'tweaking a local copy of the original WSDL'.

Here is the WSDL : http://www.tilisoft.com/ws/LocInfo/ZipCode.asmx?WSDL

C:\ow2005\Demo3>java -jar /oc4j/webservices/lib/wsa.jar genProxy output ./gen_src wsdl http://www.tilisoft.com/ws/LocInfo/ZipCode.asmx?WSDL
SEVERE: WSDL validation failed. The wsdl contains a mixture of styles - "document" and "rpc". Only "rpc" OR "document" is supported in a wsdl, not both.

work around:
- make a local copy
- edit the WSDL, and replace the instances of rpc with document.
- re-run the genProxy command

For some reason, the publisher of this service has been using 'rpc' at the service level, then 'document' at the operation level (or method level in C#).

<wsdl:binding name="ZipCodeSoap" type="tns:ZipCodeSoap">
  <soap:binding transport="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/http" style="rpc" />
  <wsdl:operation name="GetDistance">
    <soap:operation soapAction="http://www.tilisoft.com/ws/LocInfo/GetDistance" style="document" />

There is just one line to modify to get going.

  <soap:binding transport="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/http" style="document" />

Done deal, you can generate the code with the local copy.

C:\ow2005\Demo3>java -jar /oc4j/webservices/lib/wsa.jar genProxy output ./gen_src wsdl ./etc/ZipCodeV2.wsdl

To test the generated code, edit
C:\ow2005\Demo3\gen_src\com\tilisoft\www\locinfo\ZipCodeSoapClient.java

Just add those 3 lines to the main method:

    // Add your own code here
    Element res = (Element)myPort.getInfo("94403");

    System.out.println("info for 94403 :");
    ((XMLElement)res).print(System.out);

The output will be looking like this (truncated for preserving space here) :

     [java] calling http://www.tilisoft.com/ws/LocInfo/ZipCode.asmx
     [java] info for 94403 :
     [java] <GetInfoResult xmlns="http://www.tilisoft.com/ws/LocInfo/literalTypes">
...

Now, you have access to the raw data from the ADO.NET dataset, and you can start to write your own XSLT to extract the data.

-ecco

Usefull C# code snippet

2005-09-21T17:26:00.000-07:00

If you are trying to look at the payload, when writing C# code, here is the way I ussually send the request from my C# client through an HTTP proxy. Usually, I am using the one that is embedded in JDeveloper.

using System.Net; // for proxy setup
...
IWebProxy proxyObject = new WebProxy("http://hostname:8099", false);
service.Proxy = proxyObject;

Note: do not use localhost or 127.0.0.1 if you want to hit the network layer.

When all the stars start to get aligned...

2005-09-20T11:26:00.000-07:00

Discovered a cool post on WCF position regarding RPC-literal: "RPC" vs. Messaging in WCF.
It looks like the old position, from the early days of .NET is no longer the norm. The choice is back to the developers. Now, we can rename this post the way it was supposed to be name: 'RPC/Literal and French Choice'.

The way to go forward is still with the Document-Literal-MSS [Microsoft Secret Sauce] format, a.k.a Wrapped style. The legacy is sutch that you will have interoperability problem if you use this message format with a non-indigo based .NET framework.

-ecco

Simon Says - Top 10 tips on interop

2005-09-14T14:26:00.000-07:00

If you don't have the time to watch msdntv, here they are:

#10 - no empty array (or arrays with un-initialized elements to be more precise)
Person[] getPeoples() { return new Person[10]; }
#9 - package name (don't use equal test when comparing complexType - result in class cast or compiler error)
#8 - test for null ; don't use ==. instead use isNull()
#7 - no null for Date (System.DateTime does not have a null).
It's supported in indigo but don't use.
#6 - date comparaison (use compareTo)
#5 - use a trace tool (console, proxy)
#4 - code so that you can change port number.
#3 - Unit Test (another good practice)
#2 - use doc/literal (WS-I recommend doc/literal, WS-I allow rpc/literal, niche market)
#1 - use XSD first (but still use your WS platform or toolkit for the WSDL from code).

A few comments I have :

#5 - I'll even go further on this one - Mindreef's SOAPscope rules !!!
#4 - this is just good practice, not an interop tip.
#3 - And make sure that you do not rely on default values in the unit test;
0 + 0 = 0 or 1 - 1 = 0 are not good candidates for unit test.
#2 - ws-i.org does not recommend doc/literal over rpc/literal; Microsoft does.
#1 - what do we do with xsd:dateTime, based on #7 ?

-ecco

404 - Not Found

2005-09-01T23:55:00.000-07:00

Bush Error 404 - Bush Not Found In Crawford
If the page does not load for you, hit refresh (or the any key).

found it on Chris's Rants

Back online

2005-09-01T23:44:00.000-07:00

Almost a month now that the vacations are over and I have finally been able to recover my account information to resume this endavour.
It's amazing to see how much damage a set of little software glitches can do...

-ecco