Apache CXF Proxy Setting for Client with httpConduit

Many times its required to run the webservice clients from within the company firewall. This require to go through a proxy, in Apache CXF webservice framework you can specify the Proxy setting for client code in cxf.xml file. You will need to place this file in the class path of your client application. Here is the setting one will require put

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:http-conf="http://cxf.apache.org/transports/http/configuration"
xmlns:conf-sec="http://cxf.apache.org/configuration/security"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.0.xsd
http://cxf.apache.org/transports/http/configuration http://cxf.apache.org/schemas/configuration/http-conf.xsd">

<http-conf:conduit name="*.http-conduit">
<http-conf:client ProxyServer="http://www-url-to-my-proxy.com" ProxyServerPort="80" />
<http-conf:proxyAuthorization>
<conf-sec:UserName>username</conf-sec:UserName>
<conf-sec:Password>password</conf-sec:Password>
</http-conf:proxyAuthorization>
</http-conf:conduit>

</beans>

Why do we need GUICE ?

I was looking at one of the tech videos on GUICE framework. As I am not very familiar with this framework and I had some time on hand , I decided to go ahead and see this presentation.

Here are the important features discussed for Guice in this presentation

1. Dependency Injection
2. Modularize Code
3. Guice Servlet dispatcher
4. AOP – for transactions
5. Introspection for various Modules to see if dependency is broken

We can achieve all this features using Spring Framework and Maven. I guess maven is excellent tool to develop code in Modular fashion. You can divide your application in modules and these can be used across any other applications (if well defined). Plus Spring Framework provides the pretty good dependency injection and AOP.

So overall I am not sure as “Why GUICE ?”, when we can get the better things done through already well established framework. May be I will need to do some hands on to be able to find a better answer to this question

Scala

The scripting languages are gaining grounds at much more rapid pace. The scripting languages such as Groovy, and more recently Scala has added advantage as they give a mix of static language, dynamic language and functional language. I have worked on Groovy before during my with Grails framework, (which i believe is pretty good framework) but recently i have come across the Scala language. Currently my understanding of this language is kind of limited. But initial impression of this language seems to be very promising to me. Here is one of the interesting blog post i found, it gives comparision between Scala features and Groovy features. It also discusses other important features of Scala.

http://www.khelll.com/blog/scala/scala-is-my-next-choice

Ora 911 invalid characters in sql statement

If you get this error please make sure that the sql statement does not have any special characters in it. One of the most common issue is of adding

a semi colon ; at the end of sql statement.

JBoss Portal Release container 2

Read more:
Jboss Portal Blog

New Entry: GWT with Portlet

I have shifted my blog to a new location. Here is the link to the lastest post


GWT with portlets



tags: portal,GWT, portlet, JSR 168

IPC in JSR286

I was looking for an idea of what new features are added to jsr 286 for IPC. I found a few good articles on that topic.


http://blogs.sun.com/nav/entry/understanding_portlet_2_0_jsr

SideWalk: Grails Framework Java's answer to Ruby on Rails

With Ruby on Rails, the web-application development had become really fast especially for mid and small sized applications. A lot of credit goes to the Rails Framework. But still Ruby lack what Java has, including innumerable number of utilities, packages, resources, Industry investment and acceptability.

Well, i guess after working on Grails i think we have got the right combination. Grails is built on Groovy and Hibernate. I liked GRAILS more then Stripes Framework also. We were able to develop web-application(small sized) at much quicker pace. It is more closer to Ruby on Rails framework. Provide Scaffolding and auto generating many of the code and functionality. It uses convention over configuration to the maximum. It has very easy to use and intuitive tags for Ajax implementation.

Here is the link if want to know more http://grails.codehaus.org/

WebOS in Portals

The webOS is newer concept in web application domain. The concept is pretty simple of making browsers more capable, taking a step forward from Web 2.0. WebOS is a virtual operating system that runs in your web browser. Here is one of the article I found giving a comparison of latest WebOS present in market.

Big webOS roundup

I am not going to discuss further about webOS in this article. There has been a hype in market about Google Browser, Google coming out with similar GoogleOS. We have to wait and see when that happens.

In this article, I want to bring in light how useful webOS can be for Portals. Portal already provides the features such as SSO, Authentication, Personalization, Customization and so on. With the help of WebOS the portal can act like a virtual desktop for a person. A person can access it from anywhere from any machine on any OS. He will get all the functionality right in one browser.

eXo Portal, one of the leading open source portal, have come up with webOS implementation on Portals. eXo WebOS is coming out with desktop theme of Mac OS, Vista Theme.


There is also a demo link.
DEMO

Username: exoadmin
Password: exo




Here more info on webOS eXo portal Interview

Protocol to access Portlet repositories

I recently come across this new project Portlet Repository Protocol(PRP). The project is about able to establish a standard way in which various Portal Administrators can search, download and deploy the portlets from Portlet Repository. This furthur stresses the need of a vendor indpendent Repository Source, where one can find many readily available portlets on various Portals. Here is the link if you want to know more about PRP

Is portal going to keep Java a float ?

There is a discussion going on TSS, about a comment made by Tim Bray about how Php, RoR is more scalable then Java.

Even before RoR(Ruby on Rails), the simple websites were build over Php then on Java. This is because trying to build a small dynamic website on Java is more complex and time consuming, not to mention that to host Jsp website is more expensive then PHP. Thus its right, when we try to compare PHP and RoR and Java with respect to small websites and say, Php and RoR are better choices then Java/JSP.

But still when it comes to bigger applications, where authentication, Security, better architecture, is required Java is still way ahead of both RoR and Php. Now with Portal applications coming up in Java, I guess Java web-application development for bigger applications have taken a big lead. Portal provides the authentication, integration, security, personalization, customization facilities to the web-application with not a big effort. RoR success is because it automate many things and time to develop websites is greatly reduced. Portal also does similar thing for bigger web-applications. It provides SSO, Authentication…etc which are heart of any big application with lesser efforts.

But yes in near future we are about to see much development in RoR for small dynamic websites. So isn’t portal is the edge, that can keep Java a step ahead of all others. :)

Can Mashups be exploited more with Portals?

There have been quite a number of posts on Mashups now. Recently, Sun have released a sample implementation of Mashups with Portals. The sample code is good and it uses the Yahoo Map Api to develop the mashup. The Personalization features provided by portal can furthur enhance what mashups can do. They provide the RSS feed that one can add, to be displayed on yahoo maps.

This just shows a glimpse of how Portal can exploit power of Web2.0 and mashups. The end user can select his own mashups and personalize it to his own use. Though in this example the Ajax based api was used, it would be even more beneficial if Rest Protocol is used through Java. Take for example if we have Portlets for Google Calendar. We can have various such portlets which works on Rest Protocol and also uses the Power of Portals to personalize the things. There could be a way to single sign on, by storing important information in user preference data.

The above approach is to use Web2.0 content inside portals. The other examples in this regard would be use of wiki forums blogs with portals.

But the other approach is exporting the Portal data in form of Web2.0. I guess BEA Project Runner is based on such a concept. Its still under developement and we have to see what the end result will be. But this will allow the normal web-applications to be able to work with Portals applications.

Plus, we might wanna see the feature of allowing the portal to adapt itself according to the user interaction with the portal. Something like Tags etc.

Overall, i believe that Portal is truely the first step towards SOA, with Soap or with REST.

Your comments are appreciated.

Sample Implementation of Mashup Portlet on SUN Portal

Just a few days back i had posted an interesting article Portal Prospective:Mashups . I had talked about how the Mashups are different from Portal and how portals need to adapt to Web 2.0 technologies. Here is one of the sample implemetation of Mashup Portlet I found on Sun portal.

One more OS Portal with Ajax Framework -- Light Portal

There is yet another Open source portal, "Light Portal". Light Portal is under Apache License. Here is the short description

"Light is an Ajax and Java based Open Source Portal framework which can be seamlessly plugged in to any Java Web Application or as an independent Portal application. One of its unique features is that it can be turned on when users need to access their personalized portal and turned off when users want to do regular business processes."


Resources:
Website Link= Light Portal

Jboss Portal 2.4 Released

Jboss released its Jboss Portal 2.4. It has included features for better WSRP implementation. Here is the link to article JBOSS Portal 2.4GA Released

The Seven Secrets of SOA Success

Here is one of the interesting article on SOA implementation The Seven Secrets of SOA Success

BEA Acquires SOA Repository Flashline

In a trend to capture the SOA market, bigger firms are in spree of buying several SOA domain players. One more such aquisition happened last week. BEA acquired SOA Repository Flashline.

The new acquisition will boost BEA AquaLogic(TM) Service Registry and will provide a complete metadata management solution.

Here is the Link

BEA Releases BEA Weblogic 9.2

Bea has released its version of weblogic 9.2. The central points are :

• It does not include the Plumtree Portal Server.
• The Emphasis is on Service oriented architecture
• Better support for Ajax and WSRP
• Standards-based portlet federation, based upon the WSRP standard, with support for syndication of portal books and pages, personalized delivery, performance optimization and service lifecycle governance.
• A new community framework, as part of portal business services that is designed to simplify portal membership, management, and end user production of community portals.
• Portal lifecycle management capabilities including the new release of BEA Workshop for WebLogic which provides an Eclipse-based development environment for Java, portal, Web, and service-oriented applications. Also, portal propagation is included to help simplify the IT management for moving portals through staging from development to production.

For more information visit Weblogic press release