Chapter 28: Web Services and Jini

One of the middleware frameworks being heavily promoted ay present is that of Web Services. These are built upon the invocation protocol SOAP, the specification language WSDL and the discovery system UDDI. In this chapter we look how clients and services from different frameworks can interoperate, with particular reference to Web Services and Jini

While this book has been about Jini, there are many other middleware systems in use, such as CORBA, Web Services, UPnP, Salutation and many others. While it would be very convenient to a software developer if all but their favourite middleware were to disappear, this is unlikely to happen. There are technical and political reasons for many of these frameworks to survive, and so the software developer will just have to live in a world of multiple middleware systems.

Users on the other hand just want their different pieces of software to work together no matter what framework is used. It is upto the software developer to figure out how to get a web Service client to work with a mixture of Jini and UPnP services, say.

The most common way of getting such mixtures to work is by a bridge. That is, to get a Web Service client to talk to a Jini service, typically a bridge will be an application that will sit between these and act as a Web Service service and a Jini client. In the middle, the bridge translates from one framework to the other, in both directions. This is shown in the figure.

There are actually two aspects to a bridge: one is concerned with discovery and the other with invocation.

1. Discovery allows one middleware client to discover a different middleware service e.g. a CORBA client discovering a Jini service. Typically this is done by the client discovering the bridge, and the bridge discovering the service. This may involve two service cache managers (lookup services, name services, etc).
2. The bridge allows one middleware client to make calls on another middleware service e.g. a CORBA client making calls on a Jini service. It will convert calls received under one protocol into calls in the other. This will often involve conversion of data from one format to another.

Web services and Jini have special features that make this a simpler task than in general

1. Web Services are supposed to use the discovery system UDDI. However, UDDI was designed independently as a global white/yellow/green/blue pages directory and turns out to be poorly suited to Web Service discovery. In practise, it seems that most Web Service developers rely on the URL's hard-coded into WSDL files, and don't do any discovery at all.
2. In Chapter One was a section "The end of protocols" which talked about how Jini doesn't really care about invocation protocols but only about discovery. Of course, a lot of this book has been about how invocation of a service is done, but much of that is about the choices that a service developer has. The client doesn't care.
3. The XML data types don't map directly onto Java data types and vice versa. However, there are now standardised mappings with implementations from several vendors.

1. Web services don't need to be discovered, just looked up. Web clients don't need to do discovery since they have the service URL hard-coded in the WSDL document.
2. Jini clients and services can talk SOAP (the Web Service protocol) just as easily as they can talk any other invocation protocol. The client doesn't even know what invocation protocol is used, while the service programmer just has to "SOAP-enable" the services.
3. Jini clients and services can make use of existing libraries to handle SOAP queries.

Just looking at the case of a Jini client talking to a Web Service, this can lead to several models, as pictured in the figures. In the first, the proxy can be an ordinary (e.g. Jeri) proxy talking back to its service. This service also acts as a Web Service client.

We illustrate this with a simple web service, for file classification again. To avoid the complexities of Web Service types and with deployment of such services, we simplify the service to one that takes a string as filename and returns the MIME type as a string major/minor. The class is not in a package, allowing simple deployment under Apache Axis. The implementation of this service is then straightforward

	

/**
 * FileClassifierService.java
 */

public class FileClassifierService {

    public String getMIMEType(String fileName) {
        if (fileName.endsWith(".gif")) {
            return "image/gif";
        } else if (fileName.endsWith(".jpeg")) {
            return "image/jpeg";
        } else if (fileName.endsWith(".mpg")) {
            return "video/mpeg";
        } else if (fileName.endsWith(".txt")) {
            return "text/plain";
        } else if (fileName.endsWith(".html")) {
            return "text/html";
        } else
            // fill in lots of other types,
            // but eventually give up and
            return "";
    }

    public FileClassifierService() {
	// empty
    }
    
} // FileClassifierService

      

The Apache Axis server run under Apache Tomcat is a popular means of delivering Web Services written in Java. It includes libraries for both client- and service-side. The simplest wasy of deploying the service under Axis is to copy the implementation source code to the axis/webapps directory, renaming the extension as .jws instead of .java

The service can of course be written in many different languages. This is usually done by a horrible practice which has become common with Web Services: reverse engineer the implementation given above to a WSDL specification and then forward engineer this to your favourite language. We shall ignore all such issues here.

On the client-side, a consumer of this service can then be written most simply as

	package ws;

import org.apache.axis.client.Call;
import org.apache.axis.client.Service;
import javax.xml.namespace.QName;
import ws.MIMEType;

public class TestWSClient {
    public static void main(String [] args) {
	try {
	    String endpoint =
		"http://localhost:8080/axis/FileClassifierService.jws";
	    
	    Service  service = new Service();
	    Call     call    = (Call) service.createCall();
	    
	    call.setTargetEndpointAddress( new java.net.URL(endpoint) );
	    call.setOperationName(new QName("http://soapinterop.org/", "getMIMEType"));
	    
	    String ret = (String) call.invoke( new Object[] { "file.txt" } );
	    
	    System.out.println("Type of file 'file.txt' is " + ret);
	} catch (Exception e) {
	    System.err.println(e.toString());
	}
    }
}
      

We can write a bridge that acts as a Jini service for the common.FileClassifier specification used throughout this book. It will also act as a Web Service client by essentially taking all of the client code above and using this in the Jini service implementation. The bridge is a normal Jini server advertising the following Jini service implementation:

	
package ws;

import common.MIMEType;
import common.FileClassifier;

import org.apache.axis.client.Call;
import org.apache.axis.client.Service;
import javax.xml.namespace.QName;

/**
 * FileClassifierImpl.java
 */

public class FileClassifierImpl implements RemoteFileClassifier {
    
    public MIMEType getMIMEType(String fileName) 
	throws java.rmi.RemoteException {

	try {
	    String endpoint =
		"http://localhost:8080/axis/FileClassifierService.jws";
	    
	    Service  service = new Service();
	    Call     call    = (Call) service.createCall();
	    
	    call.setTargetEndpointAddress( new java.net.URL(endpoint) );
	    call.setOperationName(new QName("http://soapinterop.org/", "getMIMEType"));
	    
	    String ret = (String) call.invoke( new Object[] { fileName } );
	    return new MIMEType(ret);
	} catch (Exception e) {
	    throw new RemoteException("SOAP failure", e);
	}
    }


    public FileClassifierImpl() throws java.rmi.RemoteException {
	// empty constructor required by RMI
    }
    
} // FileClassifierImpl

      

This service can export a Jeri or RMI proxy to a Jini client as we have seen before. Client calls on the proxy are sent to this service which acts as a Web Service client using the model of figure 2. When this implementation is built and run, it will need the Axis libraries on the Jini service side.

A service can be written that follows the second pattern in figure 3, simply by changing the inheritance from RemoteFileClassifier to FileClassifier and Serializable. A client then gets a copy of this service and all calls are made locally in the client.

	
package ws;

import common.MIMEType;
import common.FileClassifier;

import org.apache.axis.client.Call;
import org.apache.axis.client.Service;
import javax.xml.namespace.QName;

/**
 * FileClassifierImpl.java
 */

public class FileClassifierSerializableImpl implements FileClassifier, java.io.Serializable {
    
    public MIMEType getMIMEType(String fileName) 
	throws java.rmi.RemoteException {

	try {
	    String endpoint =
		"http://localhost:8080/axis/FileClassifierService.jws";
	    
	    Service  service = new Service();
	    Call     call    = (Call) service.createCall();
	    
	    call.setTargetEndpointAddress( new java.net.URL(endpoint) );
	    call.setOperationName(new QName("http://soapinterop.org/", "getMIMEType"));
	    
	    String ret = (String) call.invoke( new Object[] { fileName } );
	    return new MIMEType(ret);
	} catch (Exception e) {
	    throw new RemoteException(e);
	}
    }


    public FileClassifierImpl() throws java.rmi.RemoteException {
	// empty constructor required by RMI
    }
    
} // FileClassifierImpl

      

This has major implications for the classes downloaded to the client! In order to run this service on the client side, it need access to the class files for the Axis classes Call, Service and QName. The client cannot be expected to have these, since it doesn't need to know any details of the implementation. So the Axis libraries have to be placed on an HTTP server and listed in the Jini server's codebase. The libraries are over one megabyte in size, and so this can result in a substantial download to the Jini client.

Forming bridge between Web Service clients and Jini services follows the same general structure, as

There are a couple of wrinkles in getting this to work properly. With Apache Axis and the Tomcat server, these are

1. Jini class files
2. Security policy

The Jini class files are not in the classpath for Tomcat. However, Tomcat and Apache allow any extra jar files required by a Web Service to be placed in special lib directories under the service's WEB-INF directory. Copying the Jini files jsk-lib.jar and jsk-platform.jar to this directory will make them available to the Web Service. This will be part of the deployment mechanisms for the Web Service

The issues of a security policy is potentially more difficult. A server such as Tomcat can be started either with or without a security manager. If it uses a security manager, then the default security policy does not allow a new security manager to be put in place. This blocks a Jini client from installing an RMISecurityManager and so it cannot download a Jini registrar and find Jini services. Negotiation would then be required with the Tomcat administrator to add in sufficient permissions to the security policy to allow a Jini client to run.

If Tomcat is run without a security manager then it is possible for the Web Service to install one. But it will then need to use a security policy. Up to now we have specified such a policy as a command line argument, but the command line is not accessible to an Axis Web Service. The workaround is to use System.setProperty() to set the security policy file before installing a security manager.

All I/O to the console has to be cleaned up and put into remote exceptions. With these factors, the Web Service to bridge to a Jini service looks like

	

/**
 * FileClassifierJiniService.java
 */

import common.FileClassifier;
import common.MIMEType;

import java.rmi.RMISecurityManager;
import net.jini.discovery.LookupDiscovery;
import net.jini.core.lookup.ServiceTemplate;
import net.jini.discovery.LookupDiscoveryManager;
import net.jini.lookup.ServiceDiscoveryManager;
import net.jini.core.lookup.ServiceItem;
import net.jini.lease.LeaseRenewalManager;
import java.rmi.RemoteException;

public class FileClassifierJiniService {

    private final static long WAITFOR = 10000;

    public String getMIMEType(String fileName)  throws RemoteException {
	
	ServiceDiscoveryManager clientMgr = null;

	// set a security policy file here since we don't have command line access
	System.setProperty("java.security.policy", 
			  "/home/httpd/html/java/jini/tutorial/policy.all");

	System.setSecurityManager(new RMISecurityManager());

        try {
            LookupDiscoveryManager mgr =
                new LookupDiscoveryManager(LookupDiscovery.ALL_GROUPS,
                                           null, // unicast locators
                                           null); // DiscoveryListener
	    clientMgr = new ServiceDiscoveryManager(mgr, 
						new LeaseRenewalManager());
	} catch(Exception e) {
	    throw new RemoteException("Lookup failed", e);
	}
	
  
	Class [] classes = new Class[] {FileClassifier.class};
	ServiceTemplate template = new ServiceTemplate(null, classes, 
						       null);

	ServiceItem item = null;
	// Try to find the service, blocking till timeout if necessary
	try {
	    item = clientMgr.lookup(template, 
				    null, // no filter 
				    WAITFOR); // timeout
	} catch(Exception e) {
            throw new RemoteException("Discovery failed", e);
	}
	if (item == null) {
	    // couldn't find a service in time
	    return "";
	}

	// Get the service
	FileClassifier classifier = (FileClassifier) item.service;

	if (classifier == null) {
	    throw new RemoteException("Classifier null");
	}

	// Now we have a suitable service, use it
	MIMEType type;
	try {
	    type = classifier.getMIMEType(fileName);
	    return type.toString();
	} catch(java.rmi.RemoteException e) {
	    throw e;
	}
    }

    public FileClassifierJiniService() {
	// empty
    }
    
} // FileClassifierJiniService

      

The steps to get all this running are

1. Download and install Apache Tomcat and Axis
2. Edit the file FileClassifierJiniService.java to point to a valid security policy file on your system
3. Copy the file FileClassifierJiniService.java to the Tomcat webapps/axis directory as FileClassifierJiniService.jws, changing the file extension
4. Copy the Jini libraries jsk-lib.jar and jsk-platform.jar to the Tomcat webapps/axis/WEB-INF/lib directory
5. Start Tomcat without a security manager (by default it starts without one)
6. Start a Jini lookup service and any Jini implementation of the FileClassifier interface that has been given in this tutorial
7. Run the Web Service client ws.TestWS2JiniClient

Bridging between different types of services is not an easy matter as there are many complex issues to be considered. Nevertheless, it is possible to build upon work performed to build Java Web Services and their Java clients. This allows us to use Jini services and clients in a relatively simple manner.

If you found this chapter of value, the full book "Foundations of Jini 2 Programming" is available from APress or Amazon .

This file is Copyright (©) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005 by Jan Newmarch (http://jan.newmarch.name) jan@newmarch.name.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License, the replacement for the earlier Open Content License.