Arun Gupta, Miles to go ...

NetBeans 6 M10 and Web Service Designer

NetBeans 6 Milestone 10 is now available. One of the new and noteworthy features is better Web services support. This entry is a follow up to an earlier post where Web services designer was tried on Milestone 9.

1. Uninstall NetBeans 6 M9 build from the machine.
2. Download either the Full or Standard version. Full version provides UML, SOA and Ruby support as well. I downloaded Full version and did a custom install as shown here:
   
   
3. The build number is 200706281431 as shown here:
   
   
   
   Click through Next buttons and finish installing taking defaults all the way through.
4. After the install is completed, it requires to start NetBeans IDE from the Start Menu or desktop icon as shown here:
   
   
   
   An option to start NetBeans IDE after finishing the install would be nice (issue #108809).
5. The first visible difference from NetBeans M9 and NetBeans 5.5.1 is that "Runtime" tab is now renamed to "Services". Even the content within Services tab is cleaned up and re-ordered. Here is a snapshot from NetBeans 5.5.1 and NetBeans 6 M10:
    
6. Adding Server instance is a better experience and shows GlassFish V2 as the default. Here is a snapshot from NetBeans 5.5.1 and NetBeans 6 M10:
   
    
7. A new addition to M10 is that it allows to choose a GlassFish profile as shown here:
   
   
8. I used GlassFish V2 b53 and added the server instance by taking all defaults.
9. Following the instructions #2 and #3 from here, add a new Web service to a Web project. The Web Service Designer color scheme is now much more in-lined with the existing IDE as shown here:
   
   
   
   The earlier version always used to remind of three colors in the Indian national flag :) Notice the small icons right next to "Design" button, they allow you to fit the diagram in current window size. But there is a small gotcha. Any hints ? Notice the missing letter "n" in "Policy Configuration" and "g" in "Reliable Messaging" (issue #108807).
10. Click on "Add Operation" and it allows you to add an operation by specifying the operation name and parameters. And the new thing is, it allows you to add Exceptions as well as shown here:
    
    
    
    Couple of issues here. First the parameter name specified in designer is ignored and the source code still uses the default parameter name "parameter". However little bit more investigation revealed that tabbing out of the parameter box did accept the parameter name. This is a usability issue and so I filed #108794. Secondly, the faults are still not correctly displayed in the designer as shown here:
    
    
    
    The source view of the Web service shows:
    
    public String operation(@WebParam(name = "parameter")
String parameter) throws {
//TODO write your implementation code here:
return null;
}
    
    Notice, an empty throws clause (issue #108798). An expanded view looks like:
    
    
11. Because of #108798, I had to remove the operation and add it again and this time without any faults. So I right-clicked on the project and the deploy sub-menu is changed as shown here:
    
    
    
    For the first time deployment, this menu item is confusing. I think the thought process behind this might have been that "Deploy" by itself (which was in NetBeans 5.5.1) does not give the feeling that it undeploys the previous project. But why does the user need to know it ? Another option is to change the menu item label if the project is already deployed. But this label is certainly confusing. (issue #108801).
12. Once the project was deployed, I tried "Test Web Service" contextual menu and it worked like a charm.
13. Selecting one of the boxes in "Policy Configuration" generated the appropriate WSIT configuration file. And it was also found to be in-sync with the "WSIT Configuration" tab that is reached by clicking "Edit Web Service Attributes" in the contextual menu.
14. To verify WSIT functionality, I selected "Reliable Messaging" in Policy Configuration, deployed the project again and invoked the endpoint. As expected, several WS-Addressing and WS-Reliable Messaging headers were shown in the browser window confirming that Reliable Messaging was correctly enabled.

Here is a summary of the issues filed:

1. An option to start NetBeans IDE after install is completed (#108809)
2. Parameter name specified in Designer is not propagated to the source code (#108794)
3. Faults are broken in Designer (#108798)
4. Incomplete words if Window is resized (#108807)
5. "Undeploy and Deploy" menu label is confusing (#108801)

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Posted by Arun Gupta in webservices  |  Comments[2]