RAD 7.5.5 and Web Services support

Happy New Year!

Just before the holidays, RAD 7.5.5 was introduced which includes some additions for web services.  Details can be found here.  These additions enhance some of the capabilities that we've added to WebSphere or are actively working on.   Just a few high-level points include...

• Support for JAX-RS runtimes.

There's now a preference that you can define a JAX-RS library to include the necessary runtime artifacts to pull in for JAX-RS support.  Therefore, the classes can be defined ones within this library, and a JAX-RS facet can then be utilized in order to pull in reference to those classes. 

Once this library has been defined, it's possible to define a JAX-RS facet pulling that in as part of the project.

 Additional configuration can then be done to specify some of the project-specific JAX-RS information.

This helps users not have to worry about including the libraries themselves (and can allow it to be separately managed).

• Support for SAML

There's now a SAML Facet to ensure deployment to SAML-enabled WebSphere Application Servers  (see Facet diagram above),  support for SAML modifications in PolicySets and Bindings, as well as a SAML Sample that ships as part of RAD 7.5.5

• Support for Policy Set and Binding Editors 
  

There is now XML editors for editing the Policy Sets and Bindings within RAD 7.5.5 for a number of different binding types.  An example is shown below for configuration of WS-Security for SAML.

I hope this helps bootstrap some folks to use some of the existing capabilities.

Useful JAX-RS links for testing and handling error conditions

There's some interesting articles that Dave Artus has been writing as he becomes more proficient with Apache Wink.  He has a great (in-depth) detailed article about using JMock to test JAX-RS services that he's developing with Apache Wink as well as a good article about handling error conditions.  Check it out...

Apache Wink 0.1 Goes Live!

After almost 2 months of being in the Apache Incubator, the Apache Wink team is excited to announce that we have published the first release of our JAX-RS-based REST runtime.

Wink was started as a joint project between HP and IBM in an effort to build a lightweight runtime focused only on REST. The Wink community is comprised of mostly developers from both organizations, with both teams having contributed their existing runtimes in the original proposal. That said, the project is starting to gain traction and we expect it to grow quickly. Although Wink is technically an incubator project, the code for Wink has been around for almost two years now, with some users already in production on a prior version of the runtime.

You can download the new runtime here, http://incubator.apache.org/wink/downloads.html.

Some of the features in the inital Wink release include:

A JAX-RS 1.0 compliant runtime

Wink 1.0 is fully compliant with the JAX-RS 1.0 specification.

Java Client API

Wink includes a Java client API that can be used to invoke REST-based services. The intent of the API is to model the remote resource with a local facade. This client API supports all of the data mappings that are supported on the server side by leveraging the same JAX-RS Provider classes to serialize and deserialize the data.

Simple servlet deployment

Like other JAX-RS runtimes that are available, you can package Wink as a library in your web application and add an entry for a new serlvet in your application configuration (web.xml).

Databinding support for JSON, XML (JAXB), Atom and more

JSON, XML and Atom are the standard databinding types used in REST-based applications. Wink includes support for each of these data types, and supports integrating other 3rd party libraries that handle these data types as well. Along with the standard types, Wink also includes data models for CSV data

Extensible runtime

The Wink architecture allows you to add in extensions by introducing custom handlers into the runtime. This is a perfect solution for adding in things like audit logging.

Dynamic resource registration

Need to register a new resource on the fly? Wink provides an API for doing so.


We encourage you to take a look at the runtime and tell us what you think. Feel free to join us in the community by registering and sending us a note via the mailing lists. Or, if you find an issue you'd like address or would like to make a suggestion for improvement, open an issue in our bug tracker and we will take a look.