SasiKanth's (SOA-Everywhere)

Pentaho Reports with Liferay on Glassfish

I love to share my recent effort to make Pentaho Reports work with Liferay on Glassfish. The current scope of the work uses iFrameportlet to display Pentaho reports to display in Liferay.

 

About Pentaho/Liferay :

 

Pentaho is a leading industry open source BI product with in built reporting engine and compatible with JSR – 168 Portlet report rendering. Liferay is an open source JSR 168 portlet specification compatible portal framework providing an easy customizing environment for portlet rendering. Liferay-Pentaho integration effort is to show Liferay as a dashboard aggregation for Pentaho & Pentaho Reports based on Liferay User Activity.

 

Objectives

The goal of this project is deploy pentaho portlets that are capable of exposing Pentaho Dashboard functionality in Liferay portal environment. To achieve this objective the following are required resources

> Glassfish latest version

> MySQL 5.X

> Derby database comes bundled with Glassfish server

> Liferay resource files http://wiki.liferay.com/index.php/Liferay_with_GlassFish for Liferay 4.X

http://www.liferay.com/web/guest/downloads/additional for 5.0.1 version

> Pentaho resource files

Pentaho Business Intelligence Suite (1.6.0 Open Source GA) files from here:

J2EE Deployments

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/pentaho/pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863-a.zip

Sample data

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/pentaho/pentaho_sample_data-1.6.0.GA.863.zip

Sample solutions

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/pentaho/pentaho_solutions-1.6.0.GA.863.zip

Setup

The following set up is required to meet the scope of this project.

> Liferay deployment on Glassfish server configured against Derby database

> Pentaho deployment on Glassfish server configured against MySQL database

> Liferay portal customizing to show Pentaho reports using iFrameportlet

 

How to Deploy Liferay on Glassfish

For this scope purpose its recommended to run Liferay & Pentaho on two different Glassfish server instances. Also as pentaho deployment having dependencies to run on Glassfish server port 8080 its recommended to run Pentaho on glassfish server which is running at 8080.

Install Liferay Manually on Glassfish V2

Downloads: 
 

• Create a directory into which to store and extract the download files (e.g. C:\Liferay).

• Go to http://www.liferay.com/web/guest/downloads/additional.

• Download the Liferay Portal 4.X.Y WAR file for Servlet 2.4 to the directory (e.g. C:\Liferay).

• Download the Liferay Portal 4.X.Y Dependencies file and unzip to the dependencies subdirectory (e.g. C:\Liferay\dependencies).

   

• Download the Liferay Portal 4.X.Y SQL Scripts file and unzip to the sql subdirectory (e.g. C:\Liferay\sql).

• Download the Liferay Plugins SDK 4.X.Y file and unzip to the sdk subdirectory (e.g. C:\Liferay\sdk).

• Download the Liferay Portal 4.X.Y Web Services Client and unzip to the ws-client subdirectory (e.g. C:\Liferay\ws-client).

• Download the Liferay Portal 4.X.Y JavaDocs and unzip to the doc subdirectory (e.g. C:\Liferay\doc).

Database configuration:

• Login as the administrator to the database of your choice.

• Select either the minimal installation (scripts in the sql/create-minimal subdirectory) or the full example installation (scripts in the sql/create subdirectory) and run the script for your database server (e.g. create-mysql.sql). The default database created by the script is called lportal.

  Recommended security: Create a separate Liferay database user and grant it SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE permissions on all tables in the lportal database.

If you have downloaded Liferay 5.0.1 you can see Derby scripts at Liferay\sql\create\create-derby.sql. This is the full sample version of liferay data schema and its data.

For mysql

For mysql the script to be executed : Liferay\sql\create\create-mysql.sql

Glassfish configuration:

• Stop Glassfish if it is running.

• Copy the Liferay dependencies to the Glassfish domains/<liferay_domain>/lib subdirectory. (the Jar files from dependencies zip file of Liferay.)

• Copy the xercesImpl.jar file from the Liferay sdk/lib subdirectory to the Glassfish domains/<liferay_domain>/lib subdirectory.

• Copy any required bridges (e.g. jsf-portlet.jar) to the Glassfish domains/<liferay_domain>/lib subdirectory. To download jsf-portlet.jar refer https://jsfportletbridge.dev.java.net/public/Download.html

  NOTE: As per liferay instructions keeping jsf-portlet.jar is an important activity. But my finding is that without jsf-portlet.jar also liferay still works and it leverages Glassfish portlet/jsf frameworks to render its portal framework.

• Keeping jsf-portlet.jar makes Glassfish server Admin console not to be displayed properly and throws the following exception

• 
  [#|2008-05-15T14:44:10.578-0700|SEVERE|sun-appserver9.1|javax.enterprise.system.container.web|_ThreadID=20;_ThreadName=httpWorkerThread-4848-1;_RequestID=a82e261d-23cb-4743-a286-3595c2e09e7d;|StandardWrapperValve[FacesServlet]: PWC1406: Servlet.service() for servlet FacesServlet threw exception
  java.lang.ClassCastException: org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationContextFacade cannot be cast to javax.portlet.PortletContext
   at com.sun.faces.portlet.FacesContextFactoryImpl.getFacesContext(FacesContextFactoryImpl.java:64)
   at javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet.service(FacesServlet.java:239)
   at com.sun.enterprise.tools.admingui.servlet.DelayedInitFacesServlet.service(DelayedInitFacesServlet.java:89)
   at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.servletService(ApplicationFilterChain.java:411)
   at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:317)
   at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:198)
   at com.sun.webui.jsf.util.UploadFilter.doFilter(UploadFilter.java:240)
   at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:230)
   at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:198)
   at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:288)
   at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invokeInternal(StandardContextValve.java:271)
   at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:202)
   at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.doInvoke(StandardPipeline.java:632)
   at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.doInvoke(StandardPipeline.java:577)
   at com.sun.enterprise.web.WebPipeline.invoke(WebPipeline.java:94)
   at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:206)
   at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.doInvoke(StandardPipeline.java:632)
   at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.doInvoke(StandardPipeline.java:577)
   at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.invoke(StandardPipeline.java:571)
   at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.invoke(ContainerBase.java:1080)
   at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:150)
   at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.doInvoke(StandardPipeline.java:632)
   at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.doInvoke(StandardPipeline.java:577)
   at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.invoke(StandardPipeline.java:571)
   at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.invoke(ContainerBase.java:1080)
   at org.apache.coyote.tomcat5.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:272)
   at com.sun.enterprise.web.connector.grizzly.DefaultProcessorTask.invokeAdapter(DefaultProcessorTask.java:637)
   at com.sun.enterprise.web.connector.grizzly.DefaultProcessorTask.doProcess(DefaultProcessorTask.java:568)
   at com.sun.enterprise.web.connector.grizzly.DefaultProcessorTask.process(DefaultProcessorTask.java:813)
   at com.sun.enterprise.web.connector.grizzly.DefaultReadTask.executeProcessorTask(DefaultReadTask.java:341)
   at com.sun.enterprise.web.connector.grizzly.DefaultReadTask.doTask(DefaultReadTask.java:263)
   at com.sun.enterprise.web.connector.grizzly.DefaultReadTask.doTask(DefaultReadTask.java:214)
   at com.sun.enterprise.web.connector.grizzly.TaskBase.run(TaskBase.java:265)
   at com.sun.enterprise.web.connector.grizzly.WorkerThreadImpl.run(WorkerThreadImpl.java:116)
  |#]
  

• If you come across above exception do not use jsf-portlet.jar

 

• Copy the JDBC driver for your database to the domains/<liferay_domain>/lib directory.

Give the sample for mysql (where to download, file to copy over, etc.)

• Start Glassfish and login to the Admin Console.

Does not start with the jsf-portlet.jar file. Removed for now.

 

• Go to Resources/JDBC/Connection Pools and create a connection pool to connect to the lportal database.

Can we be more specific about what to choose. You an example like MySQL. Also, do you just accept default values?

Note: You can accept default values, just focus on Username, Password, DB Name properties only.

• Go to Resources/JDBC/JDBC Resources, create a JDBC resource with the name jdbc/LiferayPool, and associate it with the connection pool created in the previous step.

Can we be more specific about what to choose. You an example like MySQL.

Note: Its a simple JNDI Name, just create jdbc/LiferayPool

• Go to Resources/JavaMail Sessions and create a JavaMail resource with the name mail/MailSession.

What do we need to enter for New JavaMail Session values? (I just added random values, which it seem to take)

Note: Just put any random values, Liferay is dependent on this Java mail session resource in order to be deployed without errors. But I haven't come across a portlet which uses Mail session in Liferay or in our SCOPE of work. Kindly create a mail session with any values and deploy it.

• Deploy the Liferay WAR file to the server with the context root /.

Can we add the steps to do this?

Note: I am assuming the scope of this document is purely on Liferay/Pentaho. The moment I step into Glassfish deployment or any other configuration steps the document looses its flavor. I prefer to leave the document without Glassfish specific steps.

• If the application server is running locally, set the upload option to false (if using the asadmin command-line tool) or use the Local packaged file or directory that is accessible from the Application Server option in the Admin Console.

• For faster application load times, precompile the JSPs (this will take several minutes).

• Do not run the verifier, as the sun-web.xml file does not match its DTD and will cause a deployment failure.

• Liferay configuration:

Go to the Liferay portal (http://localhost:8080/ if running locally under Glassfish).

Sign in as the administrator (test@liferay.com).

Add the “Plugin Installer” portlet if not present.

Go to the “Configuration” tab of the “Plugin Installer”.

Change the “Deploy Directory” to the deployment directory of your choice.

Press “Save”.

Retrieved from "http://wiki.liferay.com/index.php/Liferay_with_GlassFish"

How to Deploy Pentaho on Glassfish

1. Download the necessary software: Pentaho Business Intelligence Suite, Glassfish, MySQL, and extra libraries.

Pentaho Business Intelligence Suite (1.6.0 Open Source GA) files from here:

J2EE Deployments http://downloads.sourceforge.net/pentaho/pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863-a.zip

Sample data http://downloads.sourceforge.net/pentaho/pentaho_sample_data-1.6.0.GA.863.zip

Sample solutions http://downloads.sourceforge.net/pentaho/pentaho_solutions-1.6.0.GA.863.zip

Unzip these files into $PENTAHO_INSTALL_DIR. You should have three folders in this directory: data, solutions, and J2EE deployments.

MySQL

Download MySQL 5.0 http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html

Windows platform:

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html#win32 download Windows ZIP/Setup.EXE (x86)

Solaris:

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html#solaris download the version that matches your OS / hardware environment

Download the following jar files:

dom4j-1.6.1.jar

jaxen-1.1.1.jar

mysql-connector-java-5.1.5-bin.jar

If the Glassfish server is not running, then start the server by entering this command: asadmin start-domain domain1

When the server has started, this message appears: *{{Domain domain1 is ready to receive client requests.Additional services are being started in the background.}}*

Install and configure MySQL for Pentaho.

Follow the installation instructions from the MySQL web site located at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/installing.html

Download and save the database sample for Pentaho, which has sample users and data, from

http://source.pentaho.org/svnroot/pentaho-data/trunk/mysql5/SampleDataDump_MySql.sql

Import the sample data

On Windows:

Open the MySQL Command Line Client from Start->MySQL->MySQL Server 5.0

Enter the root database password when prompted

At the mysql> prompt, type source $<path_to__file>/SampleDataDump_MySql.sql

On Solaris:

At the command line, run mysql -u root -p

Enter the root database password when prompted

At the mysql> prompt, type source $<path_to__file>/SampleDataDump_MySql.sql

Verify that you can login to MySQL as the necessary Pentaho users (hibuser, pentaho_user, and pentaho_admin)

At the command line, type mysql -u <user> -p

Run this command for the three Pentaho users listed above

When prompted for the password, enter password

If you are unable to login (i.e get an Access denied error), then follow these steps to grant privileges and set the password for the Pentaho users:

At the command line, type mysql -u root -p and enter your mysql root password when prompted

At the mysql prompt, type:

use mysql;

grant all privileges on *.* to hibuser;

grant all privileges on *.* to pentaho_user;

grant all privileges on *.* to pentaho_admin;

set password for 'hibuser'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('password');

set password for 'pentaho_user'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('password');

set password for 'pentaho_admin'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('password');

flush privileges;

exit

You should now be able to login as hibuser, pentaho_user, pentaho_admin with the appropriate password using mysql -u <user> -p

If you have problems with the users, try to create the users with:

create user 'pentaho_user'@'localhost';

create user 'pentaho_admin'@localhost;

create user 'hibuser'@localhost;

Build Pentaho for Glassfish

Make the following modifications to $PENTAHO_INSTALL_DIR/pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863-a/build.properties:

Add the following parameters:

rdbms=mysql5

ear.dir=${build.res.dir}/ear

tomcat5.dir=${build.wars.dir}/tomcat/${rdbms}

staging.resources=pentaho-res

Change the following parameters:

data.dir should point to $PENTAHO_INSTALL_DIR/pentaho-data

solutions.dir should point $PENTAHO_INSTALL_DIR/pentaho-solutions

Under $PENTAHO_INSTALL_DIR/pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863-a, create the directory structure build/pentaho-ears/orion.

The ant build will place the ears in this directory.

Modify $PENTAHO_INSTALL_DIR/pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863-a/pentaho-webapp/WEB-INF/web.xml.

Change the value of "solution-path" to the $PENTAHO-INSTALL-DIR/pentahosolutions Example: C:\pentaho\pentaho-solutions

In $PENTAHO_INSTALL_DIR/pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863-a/pentaho-res/ear/application.xml

Delete all the additional java modules referring *-ds.xml files. The modified application.xml file is here. These modules create datasources in JBoss and hence are needed only for a Jboss compatible ear. For glassfish though, we create connection pools and data resources manually, through the admin console or by using the asadmin command-line tool.

In $PENTAHO_INSTALL_DIR/pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863-a/pentaho-res/orion/data-sources.xml,modify all the data source's connection-driver and url values to indicate mysql, rather than hsql. Below is an example of the Hibernate data source. Replicate it for all the other data sources in the file.

{{<data-sourceclass="com.evermind.sql.DriverManagerDataSource"name="Hibernate"location="jdbc/HibernateDS"

xa-location="jdbc/xa/HibernateDS"ejb-location="jdbc/Hibernate"connection-driver="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver

"username="hibuser"password="password"url="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/hibernate"inactivity-timeout="30"/>}}

Verify that connection.username and connection.password params in $PENTAHO_INSTALL_DIR/pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863-a/pentaho-res/hibernate/mysql5/hibernate.cfg.xml reflect the username and password for the database at jdbc:mysql://:3306/hibernate. By default, the values are "hibuser" and "password".

Copy the 3 jar files (dom4j, jaxen, mysql-connector-java), which were downloaded earlier, to $PENTAHO_INSTALL_DIR/pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863-a/pentaho-third-party

Rename the file metadata_mysql5.xmi to metadata.xmi in $PENTAHO_INSTALL_DIR/pentaho-solutions/samples

Build Pentaho

To build Pentaho, you must have ant installed on the system. Ant can be downloaded from http://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi. It is also available in the Glassfish lib directory.

From $PENTAHO_INSTALL_DIR/pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863-a, run ant war-pentaho-

tomcat-mysql.

Make sure that you see "Build Successful" before continuing.

From $PENTAHO_INSTALL_DIR/pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863-a, run ant build-orion2.0.5-ear.

Make sure that you see "Build Successful" before continuing.

This command will create pentaho.ear in $PENTAHO_INSTALL_DIR/pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863-a/build/pentaho-ears/orion.

Deploy Pentaho on Glassfish

Create JDBC Connection Pools and Resources associated with the database you have created. This can be done either through the Glassfish admin console or via asadmin at the command line.

For this scenario, pools and resources were created for the Sample Database only (i.e. quartz,hibernate, sampledataAdmin, and sampledata).

Run the command $GLASSFISH_HOME/bin/asadmin add-resources glassfish-pentaho-ds.xml.

The glassfish-pentaho-ds.xml used in this scenario is at the bottom of this page.

You should see that the add resources completed successfully.

For naming the resources jdbc/Quartz, jdbc/Hibernate, jdbc/SampleDataAdmin and jdbc/SampleData, the web.xml syntax from above was used.

To verify the connection pools, ping them using the command asadmin pingconnection-pool <connection-pool-name>.

Connection pool names can be retrieved from the glassfish-pentahods.xml file.

Deploy pentaho.war from Glassfish server console from ..>Applications..>Web Applications deployment window

Command-line deployment

Deploy via asadmin using the command asadmin deploy --user=<adminuser> <path to pentaho.war>

You can configure pentaho to run with a “Context Root” as pentaho

To verify, go to http://localhost:8080/pentaho/Home and try out Pentaho

Select one of the valid users in the drop in box and login

Notes:

The above deployment only allows for access to the Pentaho application from a browser that is local to the application server instance.

To enable remote client (browser) access to the application, locate the following parameter in $PENTAHO_INSTALL_DIR/pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863-a/pentahowebapp/WEB-INF/web.xml

<param-name>base-url</param-name>

<param-value>http://localhost:8080/pentaho/</param-value>

and modify the base-url parameter vaue to the actual server name

<param-name>base-url</param-name>

<param-value>http://<servername>:8080/pentaho/</param-value>

Deployment of Style web applications:

Along with pentaho.war / pentaho.ear the following two web applications must be deployed in the same server where Pentaho is deployed

pentaho-style.war

sw-style.war

These two files are required to deploy pentaho and these two web applications provides look & feel for Pentaho web application.

Integration Scenario:

Make sure that you have the following files.

sun-iframe-portlet-5.0.0.1.war - You can download it from

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=49260&package_id=243192&release_id=591109

pentaho-style.war, pentaho-portal-layout.war, sw-style.war, pentaho-style.war from Pentaho deployment resources. You can see them deployed incase you deploy pentaho.war from “Pentaho\pentaho_j2ee_deployments\build\pentaho-ears” directory or if you have deployed pentaho.war then you can see these from “Pentaho\pentaho_j2ee_deployments\build\pentaho-wars”

Run glassfish instance which has Pentaho deployment and ensure that Pentaho runs on 8080 port like this http://localhost:8080/pentaho

Run glassfish instance which has liferay deployment and ensure that Liferay runs on someother port like this http://localhost:8888\ or if Liferay is also deployed on same server where Pentaho is running then http://localhost:8080 – that means as a default web-application.

Go to Liferay portal URL and log as per the instruction given by Liferay. Go to Liferay portlets welcome Menu option and click “Add Application”. You will see an Application docking window containing collection of portlets.

Under User_Portlets you can see all directly deployed portlets (.war) in the listing. You can drag / drop these portlets on the right hand side of the application window. These portlets should be uploaded into the same instance of glassfish where Liferay is running. If Pentaho is running remotely the only way to show Pentaho screens under liferay portlet window is through Iframeportlet.

 

To display any of the Pentaho xaction based Reports, all you need to do is to configure the iFramePortlet to contain the xaction URL within Liferay and Liferay is all set to display the pentaho xaction reports (html, pie, bar etc)

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liferay

http://wiki.pentaho.org/display/PentahoDoc/Pentaho+Glassfish+Deployment

http://wiki.liferay.com/index.php/Pentaho_Portlets

http://forums.pentaho.org/showthread.php?t=60469

https://jsfportletbridge.dev.java.net/public/Download.html

 

 

Posted at 08:44AM May 23, 2008 by Sasikanth Tenneti in Personal  |  Comments[3]

SOA Governance & its importance

While most of the enterprises are mastering the art of SOA compliance, and some of the enterprises which are in early stages of adoption realizing the ROI and the way it is impacting their Business bottom line. Well its a positive direction in which enterprise business is growing by leveraging SOA Foundation principles, but to what degree of SOA Governance models are adopted in practice is still a question & its a key factor to measure successful SOA Transformation. Moreover the SOA Tools that these enterprises are using drives the SOA adoption for enterprises. In this blog I would like to discuss "SOA Governance & its importance" which I personally feel as neglected aspect of SOA in most enterprises. Also I would like to define some of the best practices of SOA Governance.

Defined -

Governance: Governance is an act of dealing, observing, controlling a System execution & evolution (with actors/people, process/procedures) by protecting long term strategies to achieve Goals.

SOA Governance – Its a software IT management practice in which various individual governing policies viz., “Architectural governance policies,, Service design, creation, life-cycle governance policies” can be defined and enforced and acts like crux of IT Governance to deliver a better IT management.

Why SOA governance is important

A proper SOA governance facilitates enterprises to create more re-usable business service components across various other individual business units. The major intricacy here is “creation of a software service which is usable across enterprise/organization”. Remember that in typical enterprise business each individual business unit can have several tens of applications running, and for these applications to work with newly created services is not straight forward unless the new Creation happens with certain standards, certain interoperable rules & regulations. The complexity here is not the existing applications which are deployed and making the business to run, but it lies in how new services are getting created and what are the standards that services are offering to be 100% interoperable & reusable.

Once a service is created and comes into existence the next biggest challenge is how to enforce that these services are not duplicated across business organizations. Considering the size of bigger enterprises and the way in which they communicate with each other – unless individual business units works with a governance body which takes care of defining standards, enforces policies for not promoting duplicate redundant services.

The need of SOA governance is limited at a creation level but it can be spanned at several other service management life cycle aspects viz,. Service registry, service delivery, service change management during deployment, service standards interoperability, service compliance at business level. It is highly required for enterprises to enforce governing policies around each and every aspect of service life cycle as mentioned above. The best way of enforcing is by comparing all incumbent services, existing services against a standards checklist at each phase of service life cycle management. Here is a snapshot of where SOA Governance can play a role

> Service Incubation: The process in which a functional requirement can be identified as a “Enterprise level business service” than at an application level service.

> Service Architecture & Design: Principles used to definite the architecture, design to ensure services will fit to run at an enterprise level to be in compliance.

> Service Publishing, Interoperability, Accessibility – The mechanism through which enterprise can publish services for readiness, technology choices to make them interoperable, provide rules of accessibility along with service delivery, security definitions.

Unless enterprises stipulates required regulations around above said areas it is very difficult to bring the predictability of service behavior to be managed at IT teams. An enterprise is successful on SOA foundation only when it creates and deploys more and more reusable software services with minimal requirements to customize, providing maximum benefit from the standards it supports, level of interoperability it offers and business compliances it achieves. Simply making a fragile SOA applications across business functional areas with technology integration compliance is not enough to get the maximum ROI from SOA, in order to get the maximum ROI from SOA enterprises imperatively adopt SOA Governance policies, SOA Govering solutions facilitating policy enforcement and management.

  Best Practices

• Create SOA Governance dedicated team which can function as a subset of IT Policy management team.

• Define Governing principles in enterprises SDLC policy, this is very useful for technology teams to understand the bigger expectations of services being developed and deployed.

• Compose a service with emphasis on separating Operations/functionality of service with manageability,administration by providing Standards based meta-data about services.

• Understand the need of having a specific function of business to be demarcated as SOA Level reusable service component accessible across other applications. Simply do not demarcate all functions as services just for the sake of it. Unless a business function is well qualified with justification one should not develop and manage functions as SOA services.

•   Separate Governance policies for Development, Publishing and management of services. This will help to federate governing policies and enforce them with different teams responsible for service development, deployment and using.

Posted at 01:21PM Oct 03, 2007 by Sasikanth Tenneti in Personal  |  Comments[0]

JBI ? SCA

Posted at 02:22PM May 23, 2007 by Sasikanth Tenneti in Sun  |  Comments[2]

Is That All (SOA = Webservices?)

Posted at 11:28AM Mar 14, 2007 by Sasikanth Tenneti in Sun  |  Comments[0]

Shaping Future of the Web with "Web 2.0 & SOA"

 I am trying to put my thoughts around SOA & Web 2.0 where certain boundaries are not crispy yet, mixing them with decent boundaries requires lot of harnessing on complementary features. While SOA embrassing richer architectural principles emphasising on Interoperability, Federation & Discovery, Governance, Reusability of Services etc - Web 2.0 taking a shape as a de-facto standard to change web-based user experiences. As these two well accepted Concepts in the current IT era, I would like to put on my thoughts around how these two are aligned?
 
  Are they complementing each other on any key features?
  Are they addressing any common challenges?

Here is a diagram that can be extended a lot - I tried to capture most minimal things of commanalities and differences.

   
 I feel right usage of Web 2.0 standards and SOA is really matters and makes lifes easy to understand if and only if there is a compelling need to leverage on the comman features that "SoaWeb" can offer. Simply trying to put everything together may or maynot fit 100% well to anyones requirements. But certain definite features of AJAX user experience in SOA based enterprise systems will be of great value as it gives a great face lifting to the current days GUI strategies that are going with enterprise systems.

Posted at 12:26PM Mar 12, 2007 by Sasikanth Tenneti in Sun  |  Comments[0]

Webservices Orchestration Vs Choreography

 

                                                 Orchestration Vs Choreography

While doing service composition in typical SOA-based applications using Webservices standards - Orchestration & Choreography comes into picture very commonly on most of the tutorials, articles etc. Whats the difference between these two words? in the context of Webservices usage in SOA?

 
Webservice's Orchestration -   Leveraging Webservices open-standards & collaborating different webservices functionality to compose an "Executable Business Process is called as Webservices Orchestration". It is easy to define Service Orchestration also in the same lines without using the Web-open-standards.  To tailor made the flow of webservices and to compose a service we need to tie-in all the different webserivces at a Message Level, meaning that at a raw exposed method level by defining the order of execution of the business logic exposed methods. Here Orchestration deals primarily with

 * Message Level business logic exection

* Order of business logic execution - that generally resides at exposed business methods of the webserivce participating in the whole orchestration of the service.

These webservices may or may not run in the same localized environment relating to one enterprise, in some cases these services may be running outside the enterprise network in some other enterprise business / Organization level.

Coming to some of the open standards -

WSDL - of a webservice describes  specific operations allowed on a webserivce component,

BPEL4WS(Business Process Execution Language for WebServices) is an XML based language which describes grammer, process flow of webserivces. BPEL works on top of WSDL on sequencing the operations defined in WSDL and facilitates to define a process flow. Once the Business Process is defined it can be exposed as a webservice again using WSDL. Also BPEL defines exception handling mechanism of operations, transactions on operations. Overall BPEL standard helps to define the webserivces message flow in the Business Process Orchestration.

Webservices Choreography - this typically deals with messaging between various stakeholders of a business process viz., Customers, Suppliers, Retailers, Partners etc. not like Orchstration responsibilities which mainly focuses on Webservices level message flow. Like BPEL(for Orchestration) works on top of WSDL, Choreography standards like WSCI(Webservices Choreography Interface) also works on WSDL but mainly focuses on the public interactions. WSCI also supports Transactions and Exception handling like BPEL. WSCI focuses more on public interaction with the webservices end-point (which is offering a service), and if the end-point uses more and other webservices interaction using private interfaces then BPEL can be used to define that.

 Conclusion - The business level collaboration can be easily found in Choreography / WSCI. The glitch here is BPEL4WS can also be used for external public interaction across all stakeholders, but BPEL4WS was never gained that promotion in the context. It is upto product vendors how they would like to shape their products based on these existing Open-Standards.
 

Posted at 11:51AM Mar 09, 2007 by Sasikanth Tenneti in Sun  |  Comments[0]

Will SOA Die?

                                                            Will SOA Die

              Its difficult to predict "Will or When is SOA going to die" instead, what makes SOA to die is a better way to arrive at When/How...   Year 2005 is considered to be a year of SOA getting into limelight, almost entire industry realized to take this as a momentum. Depending on Enterprise applications size, complexity, number of applications, number of integration challenges etc are to be considered to determine SOA effort estimation. To provide complete SOA to an enterprise it may take any number of man months/years. Buzz in the industry tells that bigger System Integrators even signed for a 10 year contract with enterprises to unify their applications under the umbrella of SOA.

            In the midst of the architectural concept acceptance to the industry, some product companies started building SOA Development tools mainly to ease Integration challenges( like - software gateways, webservices build tools, ESB etc) and Development Challenges(like - easy way of writing Webservices Description languages, Business Process languages BPEL, BPMN etc). These tools are assisting Integration developers to achieve SOA results in the most fastest way by reducing the custom programming time and cost, de-linking developer from certain low level intricacies of programming to the development platforms.  Considering the strategic acceptance, maturity of industry towards SOA I still feel this concept is just evolved out of Incubation Phase. Enterprises are really doing it now rather than doing Proof Of Concepts which are generally helpful to make a decision on incubating a new methodology or new software.

         Definitely during the current phase of implementation of SOA based systems enterprise IT teams will start realizing the pain points of doing SOA, and much better way of doing SOA, or even a different way of doing SOA. One such methodology which is gaining momentum is EDA - Event Driven Architecture. Is it next generation SOA or SOA Version 2.0? Probably Yes or no. But during this evolution phase definitely improvement areas will be much more visible based on the missing flavours in SOA - that lays out a foundation for New Generation of architectures like EDA etc. This transformation from SOA to some other architectural practice WILL CARRY ALL THE FLAVOURS OF SOA + Enhancements on architectural/development practices - with this I feel SOA will never die, it will be carried with greater momentum, better way of carrying the things. In such a world of IT scenario SOA still be alive in a larger context of doing software architecture..... Long live SOA.

Posted at 11:29AM Mar 08, 2007 by Sasikanth Tenneti in Sun  |  Comments[0]

SOA & Java Composite Application Product Suite

Posted at 03:56PM Dec 01, 2006 by Sasikanth Tenneti in Sun  |  Comments[0]