RESTful PHP web services by Samisa Abeysinghe

Samisa has authored a book named "RESTful PHP web services". It has a dedicated chapter for WSF/PHP, the enteprise grade open source PHP web service framework from WSO2.

IITC Poster

This is the poster which was displayed at IITC on behalf of my project. I had this idea about the logo and Harshan & Pandula helped me to make my idea a reality. Mr Dulan Wathugala's constructive criticism helped me to improve the poster's appearance.

Internship @ WSO2

I worked as an intern at WSO2 Inc during the last 7 months ( i.e. from February to August). I enjoyed my internship very much. First 2 weeks was the hardest time for me. It was mainly due to the fact that I did not understand a single technical discussion the guys were having with each other. But after some time I was able to get the hang of things and understand what they were talking about.

I worked as a Trainee Software Developer at IFS R & D before I came to do my undergrad studies at UCSC. Therefore I had a bit of an exposure to working environments of IT companies. But when I came to WSO2, it was a completely new experience for me. The guys come to the company to relax themselves. :) Oh yeah. They do not code much during the day. They enjoy playing Foo's ball, table tennis, carom, vii, swimming, basketball. The guys enjoy themselves during the day at Office and do the coding at home during night. Yep that's the kind of night life that they are spending :D. One day a guy was telling me that his mother told him "son you work at office during day and work during night at home. Go and enjoy your life. Do not spend too much time in front of the computer". Sadly his mother did not know that he was spending his day in a "Sports Club". :)Although they were engaged in many sports activities, guys completed the work assigned to them very well. I think this is the main reason behind the success of WSO2.

We had a Basketball Tournament within the company and our house (Wild Boars) won the tournament. We were the unbeaten side in the tournamnt. Our BB team members were Samisa, Asanka, me, Keith, Amila, Udeshika, Dimuthu, DimuthuG, Deep, Chathura, Rajika, Janapriya, Milinda, SanjayaK.

WSO2 released the project I did during my internship last month. I was soooo happy when the release was done. I got a lot of personal emails from the community regarding the project and praising me :) . Deepal ayya was my mentor during my internship. When he left for higher studies, Keith ayya became my mentor. Both these guys helped me during my internship. Specially Keith. I used to bug him a lot with Axis2 questions. He was very patient and never said that he is too busy to answer a question. It's because of their help and guidance that I could successfully complete my internship.

I would like to thank Dr. Sanjiva for giving me this opportunity and Amila, Sandakith, Charitha for selecting me from the interview. Finally I would like to tell all the WSO2 guys that " I'll be back ;) "

Following are some interesting moments from the BB final!

[Winners - Wild Boars!!!]

[Wild Boars enjoying the moment!!]

[ Me having the championship trophy in hand. Samisa (WB captain) congratulating me. Dimuthu and Milinda are in the background]

Venue: WSO2 car-park/BB-court

My paper got selected to IITC

Last week I found out that my paper has been accepted by International Information Technology Conference (IITC). The IITC conference will be held on 28^th and 29^th of October 2008 at B.M.I.C.H. - Colombo.

Google Summer of Code Intro

Last Wednesday I did an introductory presentation to our First Year undergrads on Google Summer of Code (GSoC).This event was organized by Dr. Hewagamage and Mr. Dulan Wathugala. Some other students introduced MS Imagine Cup competition. The First year students' were very enthusiastic about GSoC and they had a lot of questions about it. None of them asked a single question during the Q&A session. :) But after the whole thing was finished, one by one came and asked questions.

WSO2 WSF/Jython 1.0-alpha

WSO2 WSF/Jython provides an amazingly simple approach to create (Code First) and consume Web Services in Jython. This framework integrates the Apache Axis2 web services engine into Jython. Thus, providing all the power and versatility of the Axis2 engine to the Jython user. Now, with just a few lines of code, Jython users can enjoy the benefits of Service Oriented Architecture using Web Services in their applications.

Web Service clients written using WSF/Jython framework could invoke enterprise web services which require WS-Security. Sending binary attachments as MTOM is also supported.

WSO2 WSF/Jython is released under the Apache License v2.0.

There are two packages that comes with this release, the server side and the client side.

Client Side Features

• Support for invoking Web Services in a simple clean manner

• Ability to use WS-Addressing when invoking services

• Ability to invoke services which require WS-Security

• Ability to send binary attachments using MTOM

Server side Features

• Support for exposing services written in Jython

• DataBinding support using a simple annotation mechanism

• Automated WSDL generation

• Ability to expose all enterprise features of Axis2 to services written in Jython

Articles

http://wso2.org/library/invoking-enterprise-web-services-using-jython

http://wso2.org/library/articles/deploying-python-service-axis2

Reporting Problems

Issues can be reported using the public JIRA at http://wso2.org/jira/browse/WSFJython

Contact us

WSO2 WSF/Jython developers can be contacted via the mailing list wsf-java-dev@wso2.org
To subscribe please send a message to wsf-java-dev-request@wso2.org

WSO2 WSF/Jython user mailing list is wsf-jython-user@wso2.org
To subscribe please send a message to wsf-jython-user-request@wso2.org

Alternatively, questions can also be raised in the forums: http://wso2.org/forum/797

Thank you for your interest in WSO2 WSF/Jython

Deploying a Python Service on Axis2

Apache Axis2/Java, is a popular open source Web service engine. It currently supports exposing services written in Java, Javascript and Ruby as Web services. This article discusses the Python data Binding that enable exposing Web services written in Python.

Axis2/Java is now able to expose a service written Python as a Web service. The underlying deployer will read the annotations and perform data-binding, schema generation. Schema generated will be passed on to the Axis2 engine, which will then perform the WSDL generation. Thereafter, a client is able to invoke the service using the WSDL generated.

Invoking Enterprise Web Services using Jython

This article discusses the usage of WSO2 WSF/Jython API to write Web service clients in Jython. WSF/Jython's Jython-Client API can be used to write a Jython service clients. It supports attachments with MTOM, SOAP, REST and WS-* standards such as WS-Addressing, WS-Security.

Jython Web Services with Axis2 - WSO2 WSF/Jython 1.0 alpha release

WSO2 Web Services Framework for Jython (WSO2 WSF/Jython), is an open source framework for exposing and consuming enterprise level Web Services in Jython.

You can download the source and binary distributions from the following URL.
http://wso2.org/projects/wsf/jython

You can read the following articles.
http://wso2.org/library/articles/deploying-python-service-axis2
http://wso2.org/library/invoking-enterprise-web-services-using-jython

Pleas feel free to send any feedback to our forum.
http://wso2.org/forum/797

For further details please visit our project's website at:
http://wso2.org/projects/wsf/jython

Tool for writing TeX/LaTeX documents in Windows and Linux

I came across this tool a few months back when I had to write my literature survey. LyX combines the power and flexibility of TeX/LaTeX with the ease of use.Using this tool is like using MS Office or OpenOffice. It is a GUI based tool and you do not have to write a single line of code to make a LaTex document. It is having an installer for windows and Linux distributions.

My Presentation @ WSO2 - WSF/Jython

Every week we are having an Internal Presentation at WSO2. This week I did a presentation on the project I worked on during my internship with WSO2 - WSF/Jython.This framework helps to expose python scripts as web services through the Python Deployer and write service clients using the WSF/Jython API. I am planning to do a WSO2 WSF/Jython release by next week. I have written some articles to OT on using this API. The articles will be published with the release as well. Therefore I am looking foreward to next week. :)

WSO2 WSF/Jython

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

GSoC Final Evaluations

Google will announce the students who passed the final evaluations on 1st of September. Therefore I am eagerly waiting till they publish it :) . During past 3 months I learned a lot of things. I discussed these in an earlier post. In a nutshell , I learned

1) How open source projects operate.

2) How we can contribute towards these projects.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my mentor Nandana and Rampart community for helping me to make my project a success. I would like to state that it was a privilege and a honor to be selected as a gsoc student and thank Google for organizing a program like this. I am looking forward to participating in next year's gsoc. :)

"SUN Setting" their eyes on Python

SUN is planning to support Jython and Python languages. This will be done in their future Netbeans IDE releases. It will support Syntax highlighting with version support, Code Completion, Python/Jython support, PyUnit support, Debugger support, Python library manager, Bundled Jython Package and Execution of python scripts. Earlier this year SUN hired Frank Wierzbicki (who is leading the Jython project). I think he might be one of the forces behind this decision. So it is a good news that SUN opted to support Jython and Python.

What is Jython?

JPython was the first implementation of Python programming language in java. Then the project was moved to SourceForge and renamed Jython. Jython is a programming hybrid. It exhibits the strengths of both its parents, namely Java and Python. Since Jython is written in 100% pure java , scripts written using jython will run on top of any compliant Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Jython interpreter will support existing java libraries as if they were your own python modules.
I have been playing around with Jython for about 6 months now. I have an idea to start a mini-tutorial series out of the knowledge I gathered upto now. So stay tuned in to my blog ;)

Busy Days

It has been a tiresome week for me. I worked on the BSP (Basic Security Profile) 1.0 Validation Handler, which I am doing for GSoC 2008. Over the past few weeks I went through the pain of understanding two specifications, namely WS-Security 1.0 and BSP 1.0 .:( Finally I managed to get an overall picture of them. :) . While doing this project, the main difficulties that I came across were

1. The lack of documentation of Open Source projects.
2. Even though there are some documentation and code samples, some important points are left out of the documentation process. Mostly the programmer who did the project, is the one who is doing the documentation as well. Sometimes he may miss out some key factors. This is not done on purpose but it is attributed to human error. :)
3. Therefore the people who use those software should adopt the trial and error method, to find out those points which were missed in the documenting process.

Though I had the above problems, I had the self-satisfaction that when I finish this project people will use it (Free of Charge) and I will be part of a good deed. Of course that's the whole point of FOSS. :) The other point to note here was the roles played by the various open source communities in promoting FOSS [including google $$$ :) $$$]. I would like to thank the Apache Rampart, Apache Axis2, Apache AXIOM communities for being very supportive. Plus I would like to thank all the guys who wrote articles, tutorials about those open source projects which made my life easier. I must thank my mentor, Nandana as well. He was good enough to allocate some time for me, out of his busy schedule. He really helped me to jump across obstacles which came up while doing the development.
Ah forgot to mention some other thing. I will blog those things which I had to learn through trial and error, so you guys could benefit from it. I will blog about those things when I get a free time. :)

ANT Attack

My Dell Inspiron 1520 was attacked by ants.On last saturday I was at home watching a movie on my laptop. Suddenly I saw an ant coming out of my keyboard. I removed it and continued watching the rest of the movie. Then I was shocked to see some more ants coming out. I was thinking like "Has my laptop become an ant farm? #?@?".I managed to remove all the ants from my laptop using a blower. I searched the web and found many people who had faced the same problem. It seems like ants love the inner "plastic" parts but luckily, no harm was done to my machine. Probably some well mannered ants did take an inspection tour around my lap ;). A pal of mine(Saliya) had the same issue and he had to go through severe hardships to replace some of his keys. In the end he became proficient in repairing laptop keys. If the Sony VAIO guys saw the work he did, he would probably end up in SONY.

Quickstart Apache Axis2 by Deepal Jayasinghe

Deepal Jayasinghe has published a book on Apache Axis2.I think this is the first book, dedicated to Apache Axis2. Deepal has been a contributing member of the Apache Axis2 project since it's origin. He is an architect and a developer of Apache Axis2 Web Service project. In addition to Axis2, he has made major contributions to Apache Synapse, Apache Axiom, and Apache XMLSchema projects. Deepal has written more than 30 technical magazine articles, research papers and has delivered speeches in various SOA and Web Services conferences. He is a Apache Web Services PMC member as well.

You can check out his book here.

WSO2 Among SD Times 100

June 2, 2008 — When the pages of history are rolled on top of one another, and the leaf marked “2007” is long buried beneath the folds, what ink will soak through to the pages beyond? The year that was may be remembered for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the final gasps of the housing bubble. Hardly a year of nobility.

However, for software developers, progress carried the day. Mobile developers finally understood the potential they held in their hands, thanks to the iPhone and Google's Android specification. BEA and Oracle agreed to make sweet love down by the San Francisco Bay. And GPL began to show its teeth, as the boys behind BusyBox defended their property rights.

As for project managers, they pushed forward, with forethought and purpose, into open-source projects, agile practices and distributed application life-cycle management. It was all about collaboration: social modeling, adaptive service-level agreements, dynamic service creation and everything—yes, everything—on the Web.

It was a year that went particularly meta. Meta tags were everywhere—on source code, appended to documents, pasted onto media assets and code snippets—all of them slowly funneling into the giant repositories from which enterprises increasingly live. Further meta came at the hands of virtualized test centers and virtualized deployment environments dynamically allocating resources.

In a year when most major IDEs saw significant updates, and the Mylyn project brought developers a new way of looking at their work, the individual coder was the real winner. And new managerial tools in source code systems and ALM suites made mastering the workflows and individual dynamics of coding teams more manageable.

Here then are the companies, tools and open-source projects that made December 2007 a far more productive and efficient time to code than January 2007:


Click here to view the full article.

WSO2 extends interoperability across .NET, Java

ORLANDO, USA: WSO2, the open source SOA company, demonstrated several technical collaboration initiatives to extend interoperability across Microsoft .NET Framework, Java, and other Web services platforms.

Through these initiatives, the company will link .NET with WSO2's service-oriented architecture (SOA) middleware leveraging open source projects from the Apache Software Foundation. WSO2 will also enhance the performance of its software running on Microsoft platforms. With this collaboration, enterprise customers will have more choices than ever for addressing the demands of today's heterogeneous SOAs.

The initiatives were showcased as part of the ongoing Microsoft Tech•Ed North America 2008 IT Professionals conference -- June 10-13, 2008.

The first initiative, demonstrating the breadth of interoperability across standard Web services—.NET, Java, and C-based platforms such as PHP—was highlighted at a keynote presentation by Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft. During the keynote, the StockTrader 2.0 demo composite application service, based on the .NET Configuration Service 2.0 and distributed Apache/WSO2 middleware components, showed how interoperable implementations of Web service protocols allow a seamless mix-and-match of the application's components, including the:

* User interface: .NET smart client and PHP Web application
* Business processing service layer: .NET and PHP
* Order processing service: .NET, Java and PHP

WSO2's support for the full WS-Security stacks in both the WSO2 Web Services Application Server, based on Apache Axis2/Java, and the WSO2 Web Services Framework for PHP, based on Apache Axis2/C, ensured enterprise-class protection throughout the process.

Click here to view the full article.

Click here to view the earthtimes.org article

How to view a .chm in Ubuntu 8.04

As you may already know there are many computer books that come in the form of .chm file format. You can use Gnochm to view CHM files. It can be installed via Synaptic Package Manager in your Ubuntu Distribution or simply you can apt-get it.

sudo apt-get install gnochm

Paul Fremantle among InfoWorld's TOP-25 CTOs

WSO2's co-founder and overall visionary Paul Fremantle has been recognized as one of 2008 InfoWorld Top 25 CTOs. You can checkout the infoWorld article here .

Congratulations Paul!

Basic Security Profile (BSP) 1.0 Validation for Apache Rampart

My project proposal for GSoC 2008 got selected. I started working on my project. You can see my project proposal here.

Project Proposal

Selected Apache Software Foundation (ASF) projects

Google Summer of Code 2008 application deadline extended !

The new deadline for student applications is Monday, April 7, 2008.

http://code.google.com/soc/2008/