Securing Axis2/C Web Services with SSL

Axis2/C has strong support for message level web services security. It also provides wire level protection between web services and its clients. In this guide I do not detail basics of Axis2/C web services. You can refer for them else where. WSO2 Oxygen Tank is a good place for you to refer. Here are the [...]

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Logic

Of all Mathematics I learned at my undergraduate courses I value most the simple but powerful two logics which I consider are very useful in understanding the world.
They are,
1. x ⇒ y (x implies y or if x then y)
2. x ⇔ y ( x if and only if y)
These two logics apply in most [...]

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Plot diagrams with gnuplot

I needed a good tool to easily map the results from my performance tests into human readable graphs. After much R&D I finally settled with the tool called gnuplot. Earlier I used openoffice chart tool for drawing simple charts. But it has limited capabilities and not so easy to customize. With gnuplot I could easily [...]

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WSO2 Web Services Framework for C++ (WSO2 WSF/C++) 2.0.0 Released

I’m very much pleased to acknowledge the WSF/C++ release from WSO2. This is a long felt need for the WSO2 web services stacks in C/C++. As I have pointed out in my article comparing WSF/C and gSOAP as well as article compaing WSF/C and RogueWave’s HydraExpress the main minus point for WSF/C stack was [...]

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When faced with flat tire

How many of you like to have your tire completely flat at an isolated area with 15km back to the previous town and 15km to the next town?. Well it happened to me yesterday on my bike where there is no spare wheel for rescue. I inspected the flat tire but could not find any [...]

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Benchmark testing with httperf

In a previous blog I discussed benchmark testing tools I used for some benchmark perposes. At that time I really used Apache Bench(ab) for the purpose. However when I am again doing some bench mark testing I stumbled upon a new tool(at least for me) httperf which seems to be more advanced and reliable than [...]

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What is good for Axis2/C pthreads or cbthreads?

Dinesh Premalal in his blog post on Axis2/C with cbthread explain that using cbthreads he ran about 100,000 concurrent requests using Axis2/C client. The reason for this achievement is because of the non-preemptive and continuation-based threads implemented with cbthreads. However in his next blog Axis2/C with pthreads he goes on explaining how he used similer [...]

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Memory Handling conventions in Axis2/C

I found no documentation on basic memory handling conventions in Axis2/C. Until this content appear under a developer guide for Axis2/C, here are some facts that could be useful in preparing such document. Here I don’t talk about advance facilities provided regarding memory management in Axis2/C. However I’ll provide links below for such documents. I [...]

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Writing robust programs in C

The draft named Robust design techniques for C Programs by David Turner introduce a modern languages like approach for exception handling in C. It speaks about four approaches for error handling in C.
1. Being extremely paranoid.
2. Implementing transactions which in concept similer to commit/rollback approach in databases.
3. Structured Exception Handling(SEH)
4. Cleanup stack exception handling(CSEH)
Of the [...]

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Jeep Trek through Bambarakanda

This time we decided to go on a trip on jeeps. Sanjaya and I prepared our jeeps for the journey. The route was decided to be the well known jeep trek from Kalupahana(On Colombo-Haputale road) to Ohiya through Bambarakanda falls. Participants were Sanjaya, Janapriya, Amila, Nandika, Dumindu, Dushyantha and his wife, Diluka, Me and my [...]

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Try Open Source SOA!

Good read, Mike Kavis explains the strength of open source SOA. In this article he also explain the WSO2 SOA stack.
http://www.cio.com/article/440370/Tight_Budgets_Try_Open_Source_SOA_
You can find news release for the case study which is mentioned in Mike’s article here.  You can download the case study here.

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Configuring Apache2 to produce core dumps

Even after setting
ulimit -c unlimited in the shell I could not find a core dump file when my apache2 server crashed.  In my Ubuntu system I enabled core dump in /etc/default/apport. Still I could not see core dumps. But I could produce a core dump for a simple C program. But still not for Apache2. [...]

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Restful PHP web services

I finished reading Samisa’s recently published Restful PHP Web services book. Normally when it comes to technical books I don’t read every bit of it. My understanding is it is not necessary to do so.  Because you have the book you can always refer to it whenever necessary. However my initial reading aim at fulfilling [...]

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Deepal’s Axis2 Book

After delaying for several months after purchasing the book I finally found time to read Deepal’s new Axis2 book. But once I started to read it is one go read.
Nice thing about the book is that for a person who has fair knowledge of web services concepts the book immediately make him familier with Axis2 [...]

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Access secure enabled web services from command line

In my article on WSF/C wsclient command line tool I have explained briefly on how Rampart/C is used to provide security for messages sent using wsclient. Here I would like to explain in detail some examples.
I assume you have installed Rampart/C and wsclient as explained in respective documentations. When you install WSF/C both of them [...]

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Beautiful Anjuta

Anjuta is now wonderful. Those of you seeking a modern C/C++ ide environment Anjuta could be the best choice. Although vi/gdb/valgrind trio is still  my favourite development environment, now and then I look at ide’s whether they are matured enough for my taste. About 3 years back when I had a look at Anjuta I [...]

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Building Axis2/C from source

If you need to use Axis2/C and related project for serious work then you might need to understand the internals of its build system. Axis2/C uses GNU auto build tools to build the project libraries. A simple and good reading on the subject can be found here.
If the usual configure, make, make install does not [...]

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Indigenous Music

Senanayaka Weraliyadda’s creation ‘Mal Paba’ is really interesting piece of music(youtube contain a sunflower version which is totally ridiculus). I love to hear this song so much. To me the music in that song is what I can call is real indigenous music. I can cleary understand the music emanated from real indeginous music instruments [...]

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Installing WSF/PHP on Linux

To build apache2 with debug and apr support
./configure –enable-modules=all –enable-so –enable-maintainer-mode –with-included-apr
This will install apache2 in /usr/local/apache2 (You may use export CFLAGS=”-O0 -g -ggdb3″ before configuring)

To install php with apache2
After installing apache2 as above then download and install php as below.
./configure –with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs
sudo make install

This will add the following entry to httpd.conf
LoadModule php5_module [...]

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Using valgrind to debug/profile Axis2/C

For Axis2/C developers in linux platform valgrind is a indispensable tool. It helps you debug and profile your services and modules.
The gdb/valgrind is very powerful combination for debugging your applications in linux.
Before you use these tools make sure that you have built your applications and Axis2/C with debugging enabled. This is a simple check on [...]

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Axis2/C Performance

Axis2/C benchmark performance test results are published here

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lighttpd module for Axis2/C

Dinesh has developed an Axis2/C module for lighttpd (pron. lighty) a light weight web server is designed and optimized for high performance environments. It claims to power Youtube. Also see.
I mentioned that Axis2/C version 1.5 reached 25K tps performance margin running on Apache2. I hope Axis2/C running as a lighttpd module will further extend [...]

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Axis2/C and Rampart/C is used in Eucaplyptus

Axis2/C and Rampart/C is used as main technologies in an open source EC2 cloud computing implementation. See the main technologies used in this document and this. See this infoQ vidio for a presentation of Eucaplytus by its lead.

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Apache Axis2/C Programming Model

I would like to talk about our programming model when it comes to Axis2/C Apache2 module. As discussed in a earlier blog suppose two requests come to Axis2/C sequentially. Say the first request is served by one apache process and the next request is served by another process. Then problem is you cannot access the [...]

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Another XT225 journey

Interesting bike journey, again using XT225 serow

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Axis2/C Apache2 Module. Can it be further improved?

According to my performance testing on Axis2/C 1.5(Soon to be released) I could reach 25K tps with keep alive on. When tested with a empty module instead of Axis2/C where no handling of soap data is done but just set a HTTP_OK and return it, reached 40Ktps mark(This is also similar to index page request [...]

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Profiling tools that I used to profile Axis2/C

Now that I have done some performance tests(Results will be published soon. In summary Axis2/C 1.5 which will be released within next week achieved 25K tps benchmark) I thought of using a profiler to see which part of codebase need further attention for improvement. I profiled with google proftools and valgrind profile tools.
perftools
proftools has a [...]

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If you are new to web services world

One of the best way to get you immediately get aware of the concepts

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Ubuntu Story

My wife was asking me for some time to install linux on her machine. I thought of this. Well it take some time, not to install ubuntu. But to answer her non-stop questions on how to do this, how to do that. Last week. Behold she has installed ubuntu on her machine herself. She says, [...]

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Bike trip

Nice account of a bike trip. XT225 is very nice bike. I know this cause I have one.
http://www.xt225.com/trips/t1/trip.htm

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Benchmark testing tools for Web Services

These days I am working on some benchmark testing of Axis2/C. While looking for good tools for the purpose I came across several good candidates. I would like to discuss about some of these tools.
Tools that impressed me and disscussing here are
ab(apache workbench), siege, hammerhead and javabench and http_load. I also tried tsung and curl-loader [...]

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Axis2/C 1.4 Version 1.4.0 Released.

It is great to see that Axis2/C “The C web services stack” has it’s 1.4.0 version released. Thanks Dinesh for the great effort.
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. [...]

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C Web Services Demo Site

See here

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Reliable Messaging with Mercury

There is this new implementation of Reliable Messaging from WSO2 called Mercury. You can download it from here. There is discussion going on as to whether Mercury should be sequal to Sandesha2 as Sandesha3 or not. Ppl who argue against it has basically following points
1. When adding features to current Mercury it will ultimately become [...]

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WSF/C Hackathon

For the past two and half years we developers at WSO2 were busy working on to add more and more features to WSF/C framework with the help of the community. After two years we can be happy with what we have acheived so far. WSF/C is now a feature rich, stable web services framework which [...]

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wsclient and amazoneclient

As I have promised earlier I have written two articles on wso2 wsclient and amazoneclient. wsclient is a wget like command line tool which is designed to consume web services from command line. Today I added the capability to add custom soap headers by using the new option –soap-header LINE. This new option makes wsclient [...]

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Developer Guide needed for Axis2/C internals Revisited

In an earlier blog I emphasized the importance of having a developer guide for Axis2/C internals. I think a new article Overcoming Memory Related Issues in Axis2/C published in Wso2 Oxygen Tank by Manjula Peiris is a step towards that direction.

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Useful Axis2/C Web Services Links

Useful Axis2/C web services links

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Developer Guide needed about Axis2/C internals

See my post on the topic

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Reliable Messaging with Sandesha2/C

See my post here

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Karate Do and Self Defence

Nowadays there I have heard that as Self Defence there is no use of learning Karate. They say it is only a sport or a way of creating a healthy body and mind. But for me it can never be a good sport and it is the best form of self defence. With [...]

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Amazon web services client using wsclient

These days I’m working on a command line web services client to consume Amazon AWS Web services.
The idea is to use this tool from command line easily to do transactions with amazon. It can search for items, then lookup for searched items for details and review the details of items and when finally decide to [...]

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Be Humble, Be Honest

I read this article about the life style of Iranian President. This is unbelievable cosidering the fact that Iran is much more wealthier country compared to Sri Lanka. Whatever their political view every politician in Sri Lanka should consider the facts in this article seriously provided they claim themselves as volunteers dedicated for the benefit [...]

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Soap Action and Addressing action

For me it has alway been a headache to understand and remember the complexity behind soap action and web services addressing action. As I have again started working on WSFC/wsclient a wget like command line tool specifically designed for consuming web services, I thought of writing down the facts from the corresponding authentic sources [...]

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Making Logging with Axis2 C Fun !!!

I have this problem with Axis2 C logging system where I work with a branch of Axis2 C for the project I’m currently working on. In this project I have several services deployed in Axis2C. While developing these complex services I put whole lot of debugging log messages to track the development process. My problem [...]

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About Apache Savan/C First Release

Last week I released Apache Savan/C version 0.90 version.
It can be downloaded from
http://ws.apache.org/savan/c/download.cgi
This release is supposed to be used with the Axis2C 1.1.0 distribution which is released recently.
Key Features:
1 Support for WS-Eventing Specification August 2004.
2 Support for Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Renew and GetStatus operations.
3 Support for subscription management endpoint which could be the
Event Source itself or [...]

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The First Impression

I’m using WSF/C in a project and here is some useful tips that we used in out project that may help WSF/ C more attractive to the linux user.
There is a standard body for File System Hierarchy Standard for Unix-like operating systems. We followed that standard and make our components install to these standard places. [...]

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Great Team Work

I had the greatest teamwork experience during our off-season journey to Sri Pada couple of weeks back. Our team consisted of Kaushalya, Nandika, SanjayaR, Dinesh, Dushshantha, Amila, My brother in law(Upul) and Me. We choose the route along Kuruwita which is the longest(11.5km) and the most difficult of the three main roads leading [...]

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An Axis2 C design issue?

There was this discussion between Sanjaya Karunasena, Samisa and me regarding the application/session scope supported by Axis2 C engine when it is deployed as an Apache module.
The problem that initiated the discussion is as following. In Savan C(The WS Eventing Specification implementation of Axis2 C web services Frame Work) when a subscriber send a subscription [...]

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Subscription manager for savan C

I have written a subscription manager for savan C implementation. According to the Ws eventing specification the subscription clients subscribe for a eventing topic which is a web service hosted somewhere. It can handle it’s own subscriptions or it can delegate the subscription management to another web service(subscription manager service).
In implementing this I used the [...]

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