Axis2 Integration meeting - Jan 18, 2007

Teleconference on Axis2 Integration into WTP - Jan 18, 2007

Attendance

• Chris Brealey <cbrealey@ca.ibm.com>
• Kathy Chan <kathy@ca.ibm.com>
• Lahiru Sandakith <sandakith@wso2.com>

Agenda

• Progress on adding Axis2 runtime to Web services wizards.
  • LH: Have submitted new zip including new org.apache.axis2 plugin and fixes for get workspace, Eclipse resource write and errors in generated JSP. It also contains basic scenario for top-down.
    • Skeleton class is generated.
    • Additional options are on the next page, such as skeleton interface generation.
  • KC: I'll be appending findings on the contribution directly on RFE 168762.
  • KC: Still need to fix how to get the location of axis2 plugin. Cannot rely on "USER.DIR" since it would not work in self-hosting environment where the plugin could be in the workspace or target environment (not in Eclipse/plugins directory). See CopyAxisJarsCommand for details on how we do it for Axis1.
  • KC: I'm getting errors in the generated services.xml.
  • LH: It might be because Kathy is going through the scenario a second time. I'll take a look.
• Questions about the bottom-up wizard pages.
  • Axis2 configuration page
    • KC: The title of the first Axis2 page refers to "preferences". We clarified that "preferences" is not the right term, and that the controls on this wizard page are not meant to be preferences in the Eclipse sense. A Window -> Preferences -> Web services -> Axis2 preferences page is still in the works.
  • KC:There is a checkbox for editing services.xml, which activates an extra, optional page, currently blank.
    • LH: This page is intended to let you modify the contents of services.xml.
    • CB: Concerns with this: There are no significant precedents in Eclipse for embedding editors inside wizards. Wizards are designed for ease of use and the golden path. Editors, especially XML, are contrary to this. Eclipse has a complete editor framework with code assist, colorization, quick fixes, refactoring, etc. A plain text "editor" within the wizard will conflict with this. If there are a few common choices users might want to make to the service's deployment configuration, we can use this additional page, however, the page should have simple, easy to use, totally non-XMLish controls that result in changes to the services.xml that the end user is unaware of. Are there any changes the user must be able to make to services.xml before the wizard finished that they cannot make after the wizard finishes?
    • LH: No.
    • CB:Therefore, we either keep the page with a few simple controls, or eliminate the page. Trending towards the latter.
  • The project contains both a ".aar" (under services) and an exploded form of the .aar (under webservices).
    • CB: Issues:
      • Redundancy - There are two copies of services.xml, Java files, etc. in the project.
      • Structural complexity - The project is complex to navigate.
      • Reduced ease of use - Hot deploy is defeated since changes to the .java files result in .class files being updated under webservices
    • KC: I tried deleting webservices/ and, under services/ exploding and deleting the .aar, and Axis2 / Tomcat continue to run happily.
    • KC: Updates to the .class files should be hot-loaded, but didn't go that far.
    • CB: Question: Can JDT support generation of groups of .class files into multiple, disjoint output folders? If not, a reasonable limitation will be to have all services under a single exploded aar. AAR export could potentially provide the user a way to refactor the one IDE aar into several during the export process.
    • LH: We'll investigate further.
  • KC: David Williams asked if anyone is planning to write any online documentation for the plugins?
    • All: None of us have thought about this much.
    • KC: Asked Lahiru to see if WSO2 can provide some basic documentation on this front as well.
  • KC: David also asked about tutorials for Axis2 Web services scenarios, both for basic scenarios and scenarios that highlight difference between Axis2 and Axis1.
    • LH: Yes. We intend to provide tutorials. Will document user experience in design document (already in progress) and turn them into tuturials.
  • CB: Legal
    • Each net new contribution of code from Lahiru must be captured in a new Eclipse contribution questionnaire.
    • Chris will keep submitting these.
    • For M5, we'll aim to attach the "final" contribution for this milestone no later than Wednesday, or Monday at earliest.
    • Once the code is approved and committed, Lahiru can make bug-fix scale modifications to the code and attach real CVS patches (vs. entire zipfiles) to the RFEs, and the committers can (or should) be able to review and commit these patches without legal involvement. Legal needs to get involved on substantial new code.
• Milestone schedule
  • KC: From the way things are going, I think it would be safe to say you would likely just have RFE 168762 done by 01/24 for WTP 2.0 M5 but would not have a chance to get to 168764 (preference page) and 168765 (user installed Axis2)?
  • LH: yes seems Kathy , But the initial startup was the problem, now I can proceed with pace and catch some time that I lost so get things started. RFE 16875 we can give a try. Just the adding another runtime with the jars.
  • KC: I'll update the requirement doc in the wiki to move 168764 to M6 but keep 168765 in M5 then
• Meeting schedule
  • KC: Since there's a lot to talk about, let's change the Thursday 9:00 to 10:00 EST meeting to weekly rather than every other week.
  • LH: Agreed.
  • KC: Let's meet again next week.