Weblog for the AMIS Technology corner
Archive for March, 2008
Wicket – It can do Ajax without writing any line of Javascript!
Mar 29th
Wicket is around for a while, but lately it is getting more and more attention. A few years ago I attended a presentation about Wicket. It looked like a nice framework, but at that time I didn’t see much differences with Tapestry and put it on my list of nice frameworks. A few weeks ago a colleague told me some site was comparing Wicket with GWT. We both found that a bit strange, so I took a look at Wicket to see what became of it. It seems like Wicket can create Ajax-things for you without writing any Javascript (just like GWT, but that’s probably one of the few similarities). That’s what this blog is about. It gives a short introduction to Wicket and shows you how to create your first Ajax-call. This isn’t a getting started guide, there are many guides around (which can be found in the conclusion), I just focus on the Ajax-functionality here.
Read the rest of this entry »
Automated SOAP testing with maven and the SoapUI plugin
Mar 26th
Currently there are few tools that can support testing SOAP interfaces. Both Jmeter and SoapUI are suited for testing soap interfaces. SoapUI is explicitly created for testing SOAP interfaces and Jmeter has a SOAP support since version 2.3.x. I have worked with both tools and I prefer SoapUI. It has an intuitive user interface and is flexible. (Please also have a look at the blog of Jeroen)
You can run SoapUI stand alone but I prefer to integrate these kinds of tools with an automated process. Below you will find instructions for running SoapUI as a part of a maven build. This makes it possible to run your automated SOAP tests in Maven with a build process like continuum. Combined with automatic deployment it is possible to support an agile software development process that supports frequent delivery of versions and continuous testing.
Maven supports SoapUI with the Maven SoapUI plugin. Read the rest of this entry »
Oracle 11g SOA Suite – The Event Delivery Network – part 2- Subscribing to and Consuming Business Events
Mar 25th
Events are an important element of SOA infrastructures. Events carry information between SCA Components – without direct dependencies or interaction between these components. Events are published by components in a fire-and-forget style into the Event Delivery Network. This EDN will make the events available to any subscribers to the event. These subscribers for now are all Mediator components. If no subscribers are found, the event goes nowhere from the EDN. That’s life in an Event Driven Architecture.
The Event Type NewEmployee was introduced in the article Oracle 11g SOA Suite – The Event Delivery Network – Publishing Business Events. This event is published by the ReadNewEmployees Mediator Component:
Using SoapUI on Apache ODE to test your BPEL processes more quickly
Mar 24th
On the SOA-training I’m following we’re using the Oracle SOA Suite, a very nice product, but the time needed between saving changes and deploying the process takes way too long. I also want to know exactly what’s happening and have control over the external web services. In this blog I will show you how you to deploy a process on ODE and how to use SoapUI to test a BPEL process. Read the rest of this entry »
Oracle 11g SOA Suite – The Event Delivery Network – Publishing Business Events
Mar 24th
In a previous post – Oracle 11g SOA Suite – Straightforward Mediator example (employees from file to database) – I demonstrated how we can quickly implemented a Service Composite that reads files with Employee data and turns them into new HR database records (well, simply creates records in the SCOTT.EMP table). In this article, we will start with that Composite and have it Publish Business Events. The Business Event of course is the arrival of a new employee. This composite that reads the initial ‘ new employee document’ is the first outpost in the enterprise to witness the event. And as such has the ability and responsibility to make that fact known to every interested party in the organization, without even knowing what the interested parties are. That is what the EDN is for and what Business Events help do: in a very loosely coupled way can one process inform others.
The ReadNewEmployees Mediator Component will be extended in this article to do one additional thing: it will publish an event whenever it reads a new employee file. The event is handed over to the EDN and is no longer the responsibility of the Mediator component. Whether anyone consumes the event – it does not know or care. Note: previously we could achieve something very similar using JMS Topics that ESB Services of BPEL Processes published to and other ESB Services or BPEL processes could be started from. Read the rest of this entry »
Oracle 11g SOA Suite – Straightforward Mediator example (employees from file to database)
Mar 24th
It’s SCA based, it has the Event Driven Network (EDN), a much better integration between the components, an AJAX powered console and a better design time. It’s the all new – yet on many accounts familiar – Oracle 11g SOA Suite. During the Christmas break I started work with the Technology Preview for the 11g release. In the last few months I have not had as much time with the 11g edition – I had to focus on the 10g that is actually used in the real world. Thanks to this early Easter-weekend and the accompanying bleak weather, I have found some more time to look into it. I installed a Virtual Machine with Oracle 10gR2 EE (10.2.0.4), JDeveloper 11gTP3 with the SOA Suite preview and the February upgrade. After configuring SOA on the Integrated OC4J I could quickly get the HelloWorld of SOA running (synchronous BPEL process, input is a simple String, output is that same string, concatenated with Hello. I then tried the somewhat more ambitious PO Processing sample (#105) and almost got it to work.
Then, after having concluded that the stuff was – by and large – working, including the Worklist Application and the Human Workflow service, I was ready to start some free format trials. One of things I wanted to look into was the EDN – the Event Delivery Network that allows an EDA-style loose coupling of processes: an event occurring in one process can be published (in a fire-and-forget manner, as the publisher does not care who consumes the event, if anyone at all) and can be consumed by any interested party listening in on the EDN. Such parties will typically be Medidator services – as we will see in a subsequent blog article. Read the rest of this entry »
RuleGen – the next generation framework for Data Logic (aka Data oriented business rules)?!
Mar 22nd
RuleGen is a framework that aids in implementing data integrity rules inside the Oracle RDBMS. That’s what it says on the website – www.rulegen.com – and that was the story told by Toon Koppelaars, architect of the RuleGen product and co-founder of the RuleGen company, at the AMIS KC Business Rules session two days ago. For an audience of some 25 Oracle specialists, Toon made it very clear where he stands, what RuleGen does – and what it does not – and what is in it for us. In this article I will discuss RuleGen as well as the question if RuleGen is the next generation framework for implementing Data Logic – and as such perhaps the successor of the CDM RuleFrame framework that I laid the foundation for in the late 1990s (while working at Oracle).
11g Technology Preview: XML Data Retrieval via Equi Partitioning by Reference
Mar 18th
The success or downfall of your application is determined by proper logical and physical design, especially if it is based on stored XML data in an Oracle database. The correct physical design of your XML data storage is vital for the flexibility and overall performance of your XML driven application architecture. Some key factors concerning performance are issues like data selectivity, retrieval of data via optimized execution paths and the total amount of data fetched.
Equipartitioning by Reference is one of those new 11gR1 XMLDB database partitioning features, which can help you achieve performance improvement via optimized data storage. Oracle XMLDB Equi-Partitioning will be available in the next database 11.1.0.7.0 patch release this year.
Equi-Partitioning by Reference can be used in situations like the "Orders" and "Line Items" problem. A master-detail situation where you can partition the master table by a reference of you liking that, will cause the detail table to be partitioned as defined by its keys in the master table. This can be done, because of the primary key, foreign key relationship between both tables. Like this can be achieved in 11g for "standard" tables, this can also be applied based on nested table structures during the design of XML instance storage planning.
Structured Object Relational (aka shredded) stored XML data can be made more selective in nature, splitting XML parts up in out of line storage, so called nested table structures. Normally partitioning would only add functionality regarding maintenance, but in this case it can be used to speed up more selective data retrieval, because this opens up the availability for the Oracle query Optimizer Engine to re-write queries when appropriate.
Have a look at the following XML Schema.
Oracle announces XQuilla / XQilla XQuery engine available under the open source Apache 2.0 license
Mar 18th
In the year that XML celebrates his 10th anniversary, Oracle announces to make the XQuilla XQuery engine available under the open source Apache 2.0 license. Via official sources, the following was stated:
- Oracle is making the XQuilla XQuery engine available under the open source Apache 2.0 license – furthering the adoption of XQuery and XML for application areas including Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Enterprise Content Management.
- The XQilla XQuery engine, an implementation of the XQuery 1.0 standard published by the W3C, enables developers to query XML data, similar to SQL for relational data.
- The XQilla project is hosted on SourceForge, where an active community collaborates to further the technology.
Oracle is one of the contributors, developers, of the XQilla source base. Although XQilla has its source foundation in Pathan, XQilla has been developed and improved considerably from the Pathan code base. The XQuilla Engine 2.0 (and higher) will be available under the Apache license; XQuilla 1.1 is still under SleepyCat license.
What is XQilla? As stated here:
XQilla is an XQuery and XPath 2.0 implementation written in C++ and based on Xerces-C. It implements the DOM 3 XPath API, as well as having it’s own more powerful API. It conforms to the both the XQuery and Path 2.0 W3C recommendations. Read the rest of this entry »
AMIS Query 20/3: Toon Koppelaars, Gerwin Timmermans & RuleGen
Mar 18th
Nog drie dagen te gaan, voor je laatste kans in een verfrissende, ouderwetse, gezellige en enerverende kennisavond met Gerwin Timmermans (AMIS) en Toon Koppelaars (RuleGen).
Meld je aan, click hier: "Business rules met Toon Koppelaars en Gerwin Timmerman".
Over de sprekers
Toon Koppelaars is de
ontwikkelaar van Rulegen, een framework voor de implementatie van
bedrijfsregels in de Oracle database en oprichter van het gelijknamige
bedrijf Rulegen. Hij werkt al sinds 1987 met producten van Oracle en is
een van de auteurs van het boek Applied Mathematics for Database
Professionals.
Gerwin Timmerman is Expertise Manager
Business Consultancy bij AMIS. Gerwin is ruim 18 jaren als consultant
in de ICT werkzaam, waarvan de laatste 12 op het snijvlak tussen
business en ICT. Op dit snijvlak houdt hij zich bezig met
voortrajecten, informatieanalyses, functionele architectuur en
pakketselecties.
Mocht je een aanbeveling nodig hebben, lees dan hier bijvoorbeeld de review van Jonathan Lewis met betrekking tot Toon’s en Lex boek "Applied Mathematics for Database Professionals"
