Coke UI for resource retrieval from ebXML/UDDI repositories

Engineering Plan

last update 6/15/06

Design Goals

    The design goal for this feature is to provide the NetBeans developer with the ability to connect to a JAXR compatible service registry and discover and retrieve XML artifacts from the registry into the current project.

Developer Goals

    Developer use cases

Delivery Goals

Server Registry tool support will be developed as an integrated part of the NetBeans Enterprise pack (Coke).

  http://wikihome.sfbay.sun.com/wts/Wiki.jsp?page=ServiceRegistryIntegrationVision

Installation Requirements

    This feature requires the JAXR provider libraries and assumes that they have been previously installed with a Service Registry deployment. The default source of the JAXR provider libraries is the EE SDK. If the EE SDK is not installed, the use will be able to configure the location of the JAXR libraries using a system property.

Architecture 

• The Coke plugin depends on the EE SDK for the delivery of the JAXR provider packages to communicate with a Service Registry.

• The NB Registry Adapter module exports a an interface that provides a WSDL/Schema retrieval API which is registry type (UDDI or ebXML) agnostic.

• The Resource retrieval panel for registries will use the Registry Adapter interfaces

User Interface

• The Service Registry User Interface will be integrated into the Java Enterprise Studio (Coke) plugin.

  • The user will access the registry from the existing Retrieve Schema and WSDL document wizard

• A Registries node will also be visible and accessible from the runtime tab.

These registry features will be added to the Coke XML Tools dependencies resolution feature (see http://dpweb.sfbay/~cwebster/specs/xmltools/www/specs/deprez/index.html)

• Add/Connect to Registry

  • Add registry registry panel in Server manager. Runtime tab -> Servers node -> Add Server

• Runtime registry node for each connected registry

• Search from selected using metadata

  • Resource Discovery dialog - similar to windows search

• Retrieve document into current project

  • Integrated with the XML Dependency Resolution feature of Coke

• Explorer view

1. Adding a Registry / Registries Runtime Node

When the user selects the Runtime tab there will be a Node named “Registries”. This node will operate similar to the existing "Servers" node in the runtime tab. To add a registry, the user will select the “Add Registry" menu item on the Registries node which brings up the "Add Registry" dialog.

Add Registry dialog

The Add Registry dialog will contain a choice menu and two text fields. In the choice menu the user will select the registry type, either UDDI registry or ebXML registry. In the registry URL field where the user will enter the URL of the registry server to be added. In the “Web Admin” URL text field the user will enter the URL of the registry web UI.  When the enters the required values and clicks the “OK” button, a Registry node will be added to the Servers node will be added that represents the registry.

2. Selecting a Registry

    Currently an existing Retrieve Schema and WSDL document wizard allows the closure of schema and WSDL documents to be saved into the current project. "Service Registry" will be supported as a Source Type. When the user selects "Service Registry" as the source type of an XML document  from the Resource Retrieval dialog, the user will be shown the "Resource Discovery" panel in the "Source" area of the dialog.

3. Finding a resource: "Registry Search" panel

The UI consists of a Registry Search panel that will will be an integrated part of the Resource Retrieval wizard specified in the Dependency Resolution specification.

The "Registry Search" panel allows the user to specify a registry URL or select one from a list of known registries.

Connecting to a registry is accomplished by either choosing one from the drop down menu or manually typing in the URL of your registry in the Registry Location dialog box.

The Coke SR UI will have a localhost registry with default port info pre configured for the developers convenience.
The user can configure the browser to automatically connect to a specified URL on startup.

Discovery Panel: Overview

The discovery panel is split into two areas:

• Search Parameters Panel: This allows you to enter the parameters for your search. It has the following control buttons at the top:

  • Search: Initiates a Search within the registry. Cursor changes to watch cursor while query is being processed.

• Clear: Clears the fields within the Search Parameter Panel as well as the search results in the Search Results Panel (see next).

• Search Results Panel: This displays the results of your search in tree form.

Once you have performed a Search , you well likely have several objects matching your query that are displayed in the Search Results tree. You can now visually scan the objects and narrow your interest based upon the various attributes of the object displayed in the tree.

Selecting Object(s) of Interest

You can select an object of interest by clicking the left mouse button on the tree node representing the object.

Performing Action on Object(s) of Interest

Upon selecting an object of interest you can click the right mouse button to display the Actions allowed for the selected object(s).

4. Retrieving the resource into the current project

After selecting the desired artifact in the registry search results panel, the user will select OK in the retrival wizard.

Engineering Task Schedule

Development Resources

• Hans Hrasna - lead developer

• Coke team (Todd Fast, Chris Webster) - UI spec support/review, technical support, Coke integration

Open Issues/Risks

• The UDDI v2 provider has dependencies on serveral packages that are not in EE SDK but are available in the Netbeans libraries. JAXB1.0, org.apache.xmlbeans .
  
• The Netbeans jaxws20 library doesn't expose several packages as public that should be and are needed by the registry module.