Bits and Pieces

WSO2 WSF/C 1.0.0 released

2007-07-13T12:16:00.000-04:00

WSO2 recently released the version 1.0.0 of Web Services framework in C. This is the most comprehensive web services stack available in C and is based on Apache Axis2/C (web service core), Apache Sandesha2/C (WSRM), Apache Rampart/C (WS-Sec), and Apache Savan/C (WS-Eventing) ...etc. This bundle includes other tools such as "wsclient" command line tool to invoke Web Services. You can check it out here

Axis2/C on Solaris and MacOS

2007-06-10T10:59:00.000-04:00

Axis2/C now works on two more platforms. I was able to port core Axis2/C and Rampart/C to Solaris and Mac OS X. It was successfully compiled and tested on Mac OS 10.4.9 (both Intel and PPC) as well as Solaris 10 (Intel). Unavailability of a Solaris 10 SPARC box prevents me from testing it on that platform. If someone has access to such a box, you're welcome to share your experience on Axis2/C mailing lists.

Apache Axis2/C 1.0.0 Released

2007-05-06T12:40:00.000-04:00

I am happy that Axis2/C project that I was a member sometime back was able to do its 1.0 release. Here is the release note:

Apache Axis2/C Team is pleased to announce the release of Apache Axis2/C version 1.0.0
You can download this release from
http://ws.apache.org/axis2/c/download.cgi

Key Features

1. Support for one-way messaging (In-Only) and request response messaging (In-Out)
2. Client APIs: Easy to use service client API and more advanced operation client API
3. Transports supported: HTTP
a. Inbuilt HTTP server called simple axis server
b. Apache2 httpd module called mod_axis2 for server side
c. IIS module for server side
d. Client transport with ability to enable SSL support
e. libcurl based client transport
4. Module architecture, mechanism to extend the SOAP processing model
5. WS-Addressing support, both the submission (2004/08) and final (2005/08) versions, implemented as a module
6. MTOM/XOP support
7. AXIOM, an XML object model optimized for SOAP 1.1/1.2 messages; This has complete XML infoset support
8. XML parser abstraction
a. Libxml2 wrapper
b. Guththila pull parser support
9. Both directory based and archive based deployment models for deploying services and modules
10. Description hierarchy providing access to static data of Axis2/C runtime (configuration, service groups, services, operations and messages)
11. Context hierarchy providing access to dynamic Axis2/C runtime information(corresponding contexts to map to each level of description hierarchy)
12. Message receiver abstraction
a. Inbuilt raw XML message receiver
13. Code generation tool for stub and skeleton generation for a given WSDL (based on Java tool)
a. Axis Data Binding (ADB) support
14. Transport proxy support
15. REST support (more POX like) using both HTTP POST and GET
16. Comprehensive documentation
a. Axis2/C Manual

Major Changes Since Last Release

1. Many Bug Fixes
2. IIS module for server side
3. libcurl based client transport
4. Improvements to overall API to make it more user friendly, stable and binary compatible
5. Transport proxy support
6. Memory leak fixes
We welcome your early feedback on this implementation.
Thank you for your interest in Axis2/C.

-- Apache Axis2/C Team --

Sri Lanka Advances to Cricket World Cup Finals

2007-04-25T04:37:00.000-04:00

Wow .. what a performance by the Sri Lankans today in the semi finals to beat New Zealand. Even though it is not the usual Sri Lankan way of scoring, 289 was a good score after the initial wickets.
BTW ... I was dare enough to watch the final 10 overs, risking my finals (next week) and couple of research projects.

How to be an expert

2007-04-16T13:28:00.000-04:00

Recently I found this Creating Passionate Users blog. One of the interesting posts is "how to be an expert". The image below is courtesy of CPU blog.

Happy Sinhala and Tamil New Year

2007-04-14T11:29:00.000-04:00

I wish you all the Sri Lankans a very happy new year (Subha aluth awuruddak wewa !!!)

Along with the happiness of the new year, I feel somewhat sad, because this is the first new year day I am spending away from my home. In the past even with lot of work (in my undergrad days, exams used to follow immediately after new year holidays) I somehow managed to go home and spend the new year with my parents, which seems impossible for me now. But I should get used to it since at least 4 more years, I have to stay in US to complete my degree (unless I decide to drop out :) )

More Snow

2007-02-11T20:03:00.000-05:00

We had a somewhat heavy snowfall and I thought capturing some interesting moments with my camera. After spending so much time in subzero temperatures with bare hands (I realized that operating the camera with gloves on is impossible - at least for me) I couldn't feel my hands till half an hour (and still paining) - but the images are worthwhile that pain.

CS Department
Trees near the old CS building

Light post in Centennal Mall

Engineering fountain and HOVDE hall
State Street

How long can you keep it up ? (contd ...)

2006-12-22T22:42:00.000-05:00

If you want the history of this one follow this link:
This time it's 61 days. System specs (since I changed my notebook from IBM to Apple) : Ubuntu Dapper running on MacBook. Like the previous time no X problems. This time I didn't do hibernation, it's purely power on -> sleep cycles. Here's the output of "uptime"
22:46:33 up 61 days, 3:05, 2 users, load average: 0.38, 0.29, 0.20

Unfortunately I have to restart the machine now to do some system updates.

Chicago Trip

2006-12-21T22:50:00.000-05:00

After a boring week since final exams, today I did some fun stuff and some city exploration. There were not many people going the trip, since most people has gone home for vacation and the organizer has only got a van for the transportation.
The original plan was to see some museums and then go the city tour. But because of the pouring rain we had to stick to the museums. We were able to cover the aquarium, planetarium and the field museum - not completely. At the evening we had a small tour in the city - but we hardly could see the nice Chicago skyline and the skyscrapers due to the heavy fog. After some time we hit for a Chinese restaurant in the China town for dinner, ate too much so we cannot do anything anymore and then headed for home.

At the Shedd Aquarium

World's Largest, most complete and best preserved TRex at Field Museum

Crowd at the Chinese Restaurant

Finals are over

2006-12-16T19:55:00.000-05:00

Last week I had two final exams and two qualifier exams. Despite of the little time I had to study (I was doing my homework till last Friday), I think I did the final exams well, but I think I did my first qualifier on Crypto pretty bad. May be I have to repeat that one - have to wait till results come in two weeks. Anyway now the exams are over, nothing to study - so time to enjoy !

Reducing disruptiveness in OS updating

2006-12-13T00:31:00.000-05:00

The last project in OS class was to come up with a solution to the disruptiveness caused by the system updating. The first task was to identify what causes disruptiveness. There were 5 groups (3 members each) and all of the groups agreed in their presentation that following is the most common 3 problems caused by system update

1. Restarting (either the entire system or the some of the services)
2. Reinstall of old applications
3. Recompilations of some custom applications

In our survey we found that the 1st one is the common reason that the application of patches get delayed in most systems, surprisingly even for critical security updates. People simply don't want to restart their system/service because of a patch which will introduce a very small change in the system behaviour. For a standard PC user this is because they don't want to close all their applications and start from beginning. System administrators don't do this because they don't want to interrupt the system services they are hosting in the system.
Other two issuse are directly related to legacy compatibility of the system. If the patch changes the API of the system then the apps which used these changed API calls are busted - reinstall of new version or recompilation is required.
Among the solutions proposed, there was a kind of a common notion - Least Patchable Unit. Some people suggested a total object oriented OS - in that case the LPU is at object level. Some groups suggested more modular approaches - LPU is a single module. For the people who suggested function indirection the that unit was a single function. The common agreement from the above is that the modular the OS easy to handle the patching process causing least disruption.
I think I need to study now, since tomorrow is the OS exam :)

First Snow

2006-12-01T23:43:00.000-05:00

West Lafayette experienced the first snow for the season and I experienced snow for the first time in my life. I tried my best to capture the moment by opening my window (12 stories up and in the heavy wind) and getting some photos. But the snowflakes were so small that they are hardly visible in the photos. Anyway here goes them ....

Apache Axis2/C 0.93 release

2006-09-04T12:51:00.000-04:00

Apache Axis2/C team has released 0.93 version. This time it has a lot of improvements and the client API is user friendly than ever.
Congrats team !!
Here's the release note :

We are pleased to announce the release of Apache Axis2/C version 0.93.
You can download this release from
http://ws.apache.org/axis2/c/download.cgi

Key Features

1. AXIOM, an XML object model optimized for SOAP 1.1/1.2 Messages.
This has complete XML infoset support.
2. Support for one-way messaging (In-Only) and request response
messaging (In-Out)
3. Description hierarchy (configuration, service groups, services,
operations and messages)
4. Directory based deployment model
5. Archive based deployment model
6. Context hierarchy (corresponding contexts to map to each level of description hierarchy)
7. Raw XML message receiver
8. Module architecture, mechanism to extend the SOAP processing model
9. Module version support
10. Transports supports: HTTP
o Both simple axis server and Apache2 httpd module for server side
o Client transport with ability to enable SSL support
11. Service client and operation client APIs
12. REST support (HTTP POST case)
13. WS-Addressing, both the submission (2004/08) and final(2005/08)
versions
14. MTOM/XOP support
15. Code generation tool for stub and skeleton generation for a given WSDL (based on Java tool)
o Axis Data Binding (ADB) support
16. Security module with UsernameToken support
17. REST support (HTTP GET case) - New
18. Dynamic invocation support (based on XML schema and WSDL implementations) - New

Major Changes Since Last Release

1. REST support for HTTP GET case
2. XML Schema implementation
3. Woden/C implementation that supports both WSDL 1.1 and WSDL 2.0
4. Dynamic client invocation (given a WSDL, consume services dynamically)
5. Numerous improvements to API and API documentation
6. Many bug fixes, especially, many paths of execution previously untouched were tested along with Sandesha2/C implementation

TODOs Remaining for 1.0

1. Complete API documentation and API improvements
2. Fix major memory leaks
3. Test codegen for both ADB and none cases
4. Put in place a comprehensive functional test framework
5. WSDL2C tool

We welcome your early feedback on this implementation.
Thanks for your interest in Axis2C

-- Apache Axis2C Team --

I am in US

2006-08-10T19:58:00.000-04:00

After much of hassle I am now in US (but without a notebook :( ). My visa interview was scheduled on 2nd August and I was supposed to fly to US on 4th August. Luckily I didn't face any problems in my visa interview because I did my home work. But the queue at the embassy was so long that it took (more than) 4 hours for the visa issuing process.
The week was full of dinners and lunch's given by various people as farewells to me. On Saturday night there was a small party at my boarding place. On Sunday I went to my brother's place and I had lunch there. On Monday night I went out with several my old uni friends to celebrate (?) my leaving. On Tuesday WSO2 gave us (Ajith and myself) a grand lunch at Cinnamon Grand. Wednesday lunch was from us (Ajith and me) to the ppl at WSO2 at Crescat. And on Friday I was invited to my aunt's place for lunch.
Thursday was a very hectic day for me. The plan was to go to travel agent, get tickets and get traveler's checks and US dollars from bank. But when I went to the travel agent I had to change my travel route since one of the flights in my original schedule has not confirmed yet. So I selected a different path (this time Colombo, Tokyo, Chicago, Indianapolis) rather than waiting for the other flight to confirm. When I finished my work for the day it was almost 4pm and I forgot to eat the lunch. Thursday night was again a busy night. I had to pack everything and had to be careful about the weight limits of each bag. It was around 3 am in the morning when I slept.
Friday morning was little bit busy since I had to backup my notebook, cancel my mobile connection and cancel my credit card. Also I had to be at my aunt's place at 12.30. But fortunately everything happened as planned.
My brother sent a vehicle for me to get to the airport and my mother and father came along with me to the airport, and we picked up my brother at his place on the way. We were able to get to the airport on time even though the traffic was littlbit high.
Checking in and the flying to Japan went very smoothly. And at the Narita airport I met one of my old school friends - Naveen going to US with his wife. The transit at Narita was about 6 hours, which was a clean pain.
Narita - Chicago flight took abt 12hrs, but was a hassle free smooth one. I was scared that I might have to explain some of the foods and spices I have been carrying to the US customs officers. But luckily they didn't even bothered to open my bag.
So after a boring wait for the check-in and my connecting flight and abt 1 hour flying I arrived at Indianapolis abt 10.50 p.m. Maven picked me up from the Indianapolis airport and dropped me at Hawkins and the check-in was very simple.
On Sunday I went to a party (rather a farewell) at one of the members' in the Sri Lankan community. I had the chance to meet most of the ppl in the Sri Lankan community and got lot of advice on "how to live in US".
The week passed like a rocket and I was very busy doing my registration stuff (oh yes - without a Purdue ID it is impossible to do anything here) and attending English classes.
Oh by the way, my article "Memory Management with Apache Axis2/C" is published in WSO2 Oxygen Tank

Power crisis

2006-07-16T14:57:00.000-04:00

These days I am extremely busy in a project called sandesha2 and I have to finish it before I leave SL - which makes me to work round the clock.
This morning I woke up to finish the major coding part and worked happily until 8.30 a.m. Suddenly the fan went off along with my ADSL router - a power cut !!!!. At that moment it was actually a good thing because I could take some rest.
So I went downstirs and started washing some of the clothes. I took a little nap, read a little bit of book ... but no sign of power ... So finally about 1 p.m (yes, I waited that long) I called the local electricity branch. Answer was simple - you won't get power till 5 p.m. Okay .....
So I packed up the laptop and headed for my office hoping there won't be any power cuts at the office. The travel took around 45 mins .. and it was around 2.30 p.m when I reached there. So I worked till 7 p.m and came home ... luckily electricity was there .. But overall waste of time is more than 3 hrs. So my question is: Aren't they polite enought to give prior notice about the power cut (mind you .. this is a highly industrial area and a power cut means a total loss and the power cut lasted almost 10 hrs) ?

Here comes my blog

2006-07-13T11:37:00.000-04:00

Moved from bloglines to here. Previous blogs can be found at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/sahans.

We have a Firefox extension which enables web service calls thru the browser by adding a JavaScript object (namely SOAPHTTPRequest). Dimuthu is the author of this extension and the name of the extension is WSO2 Tungsten XPI. It is based on the Apache Axis2C and this is the first product based on Axis2C.
You can download the extension from here
Well done Dimuthu!!