Bayes Blog

xml

So there it is, I needed an xml highlighter and being a fan of jQuery I decided to extend chili.

Currently this little library supports cdata, namespaces in tags and recognising the header.

So I have extended Chili to enable syntax highlighting using jQuery and Chili.

This is very easy to setup:

1. Download the above xml recipe xml.
2. Add it to the folder containing your chili recipes.
3. Now that you have that sorted out you can start using it as described by the chili notes.

In todays software world we have individuals who are given the role of software architects. But are they really “architects” or modern days answer to the lack of individuals capable of being a chief programmer?

In the past people with the higher than average skill in leadership, development and design, where considered good enough to look after all the technical aspects of development. They would also be held responsible for every line of code and hence every project. In the modern chief programmer model a project manager would handle all the non technical aspects of running a project and team. And when I refer to chief programmer I refer to the moder chief programmer model.

Introducing the Software Architect who essentially needs the same skill set as a chief programmer. This change of name baffles me. Lets take a minute to think about this.

Okay, here it goes. I work with a highly intelligent person… hmm lets call him Loubser. He fits the bill of a chief programmer, he designs before he does and produces highly maintainable, robust and documented software. Lets take a sample of any Software Architect I have encountered. The use of the code-and-fix SDLC is the main choice here, where no thought or design ever goes into the solution, yet they are constantly supported because they get the job done, even sometimes in the most inefficient way possible. Obviously I am saying this on personal experience of my current position and welcome any comments from other sources.

Now don’t get me wrong I am not saying that I could do a better job than any of these Architects I have met, I would just like a little thought to go into solutions, instead of highly skilled Development Managers having to design the system and adding an extra load onto their plate.

So in conclusion, are we heading from a software crisis of unmanageable code and time and budget overruns into an era where we have unmanageable code and time and budget overruns? Yes this is not a spelling error but merely a thought about whether we believe we are progressing when in actual fact we are staying in the same spot!

Please comment and share your experiences, I would love to be see the light at the end of the tunnel or be able to shoot the SDLC with a silver bullet.

Download

Sample Ejb project

Introduction

So I recently tried to create a EJB3 (no annotations, but rather descripter files) message driven bean that runs on weblogic 10.1 and processing messages from a TIBCO ems server. Having experienced how easy it is to implement I though I would share my experience. I will not go into how to setup a queue and will start with the weblogic config and java implementation.

Weblogic Config

In order for weblogic to connect to the TIBCO ems server you need to place the TIBCOjms.jar (or similarly named file) in your user_project/lib directory. Next you should start weblogic.

Now, go to the console -> Services -> Messaging -> JMS Module. Here we will setup a foreign connection to the TIBCO ems server.

Add a new foreign server  I called mine emsForeignServer.

In the initial context factory you need to use  com.tibco.tibjms.naming.TibjmsInitialContextFactory, and in the connection url should be the url to the tibco jms naming mine is tibjmsnaming://localhost:7222

Now inorder for us to connect to the server lets setup a connection factory. Click on the tab and ask you tibco administrator to send you the jndi name of the QueueConnectionFactory. Place that name in the remote jndi name field and place any reference you would like in the local jndi name field, I named mine EmsQueueConnectionFactory.

The second thing you need is to setup a reference to the destination queue. You do this by clicking on destinations tab and adding a destination. I gave mine the name of Request Queue. And similarly to the Connection factory you need to ask you tibco administrator for the jndi reference to the destination queue. I named my local jnd reference to ems.message.request.

All you need to do now is save and activate and you have your weblogic is setup for messaging to TIBCO ems.

The resulting xml config file should look similar to this :

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>

<weblogic-jms xmlns="http://www.bea.com/ns/weblogic/90"

       xmlns:sec="http://www.bea.com/ns/weblogic/90/security"

       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

       xmlns:wls="http://www.bea.com/ns/weblogic/90/security/wls"

       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.bea.com/ns/weblogic/920 http://www.bea.com/ns/weblogic/920.xsd">

  <foreign-server name="TibcoEmsQueue">

    <default-targeting-enabled>true</default-targeting-enabled>

    <foreign-destination name="DestinationQueue">

      <local-jndi-name>ems.message.request</local-jndi-name>

      <remote-jndi-name>TEST_QUEUE</remote-jndi-name>

    </foreign-destination>

    <foreign-connection-factory name="LocalConnectionFactory">

      <local-jndi-name>LocalQueueConnectionFactory</local-jndi-name>

      <remote-jndi-name>QueueConnectionFactory</remote-jndi-name>

    </foreign-connection-factory>

    <initial-context-factory>com.tibco.tibjms.naming.TibjmsInitialContextFactory</initial-context-factory>

    <connection-url>tibjmsnaming://localhost:7222</connection-url>

  </foreign-server>

</weblogic-jms>

Java Implementation

First of all this is a simplified solution I will not get into specifics of creating a delegate to handle the messages from the queue or spring injection but those will be handled in a future post.

So lets get started. I created a maven parent project called sample-software. In this maven project I have a module called sample-ejb which is of type ejb. Now the reason why this was done was to show you how to package a ejb in a ear file for deployment without having to write another tutorial.

Okay, so now you should create 1 maven project with 2 maven modules. The result should look something like :

    +samples

     |-ejb

     |  -pom.xml

     |-ear

     |  -pom.xml

     |-pom.xml

The parent pom.xml should look something like:

  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

  <groupId>bayestech</groupId>

  <artifactId>samples</artifactId>

  <packaging>pom</packaging>

  <name>Sample Projects</name>

  <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>

  <modules>

  	<module>ejb</module>

  	<module>ear</module>

  </modules>

The ejb pom.xml should look something like:

    <parent>

    <artifactId>samples</artifactId>

    <groupId>bayestech</groupId>

    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>

  </parent>

  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

  <groupId>bayestech</groupId>

  <artifactId>ejb</artifactId>

  <packaging>ejb</packaging>

  <name>Sample EJB</name>

  <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>

  <description>Sample ejb project</description>

    <dependencies>

        <dependency>

            <groupId>javax.ejb</groupId>

            <artifactId>ejb</artifactId>

            <version>3.0</version>

            <scope>provided</scope>

        </dependency>

        <dependency>

            <groupId>javax.annotation</groupId>

            <artifactId>jsr250-api</artifactId>

            <version>1.0</version>

            <scope>provided</scope>

        </dependency>

        <dependency>

            <groupId>javax.jms</groupId>

            <artifactId>jms</artifactId>

            <version>1.1</version>

            <scope>provided</scope>

        </dependency>

 </dependencies>

   <build>

        <plugins>

        	<plugin>

 		<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>

 			<artifactId>maven-ejb-plugin</artifactId>

 			<configuration>

 				<ejbVersion>3.0</ejbVersion>

 			</configuration>

 		</plugin>

 	</plugins>

 </build>

A thing to note is that I marked all dependencies as provided. This is because

I am going to add them all to the ear file APP-INF/lib folderThe ear pom.xml should look something like:

  <parent>

    <artifactId>samples</artifactId>

    <groupId>bayestech</groupId>

    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>

  </parent>

  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

  <groupId>bayestech</groupId>

  <artifactId>ear</artifactId>

  <packaging>ear</packaging>

  <name>Sample ear</name>

  <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>

   <description>A bundle of all the applications</description>

  <dependencies>

  	<!-- ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- ADD ALL OUR PROJECTS 												  -->

  	<!-- ******************************************************************** -->

    <dependency>

    	<groupId>bayestech</groupId>

      	<artifactId>ejb</artifactId>

      	<version>${project.version}</version>

      	<type>ejb</type>

    </dependency>

    <!-- ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- ADD ALL DEPENDENCIES												  -->

  	<!-- ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- A ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- B ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- C ******************************************************************** -->

    <dependency>

      <groupId>commons-logging</groupId>

      <artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>

      <version>${commons.logging.version}</version>

    </dependency>

  	<!-- D ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- E ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- F ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- G ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- H ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- I ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- J ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- K ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- L ******************************************************************** -->

  	<dependency>

      <groupId>log4j</groupId>

      <artifactId>log4j</artifactId>

      <version>${log4j.version}</version>

      <scope>runtime</scope>

      <exclusions>

        <exclusion>

          <groupId>com.sun.jdmk</groupId>

          <artifactId>jmxtools</artifactId>

        </exclusion>

        <exclusion>

          <groupId>com.sun.jmx</groupId>

          <artifactId>jmxri</artifactId>

        </exclusion>

      </exclusions>

    </dependency>

  	<!-- M ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- N ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- O ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- P ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- Q ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- R ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- S ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- T ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- U ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- V ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- W ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- X ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- Y ******************************************************************** -->

  	<!-- Z ******************************************************************** -->  </dependencies>

   <!-- Specify the content of generated artifact. -->

  <build>

<!-- Specify the final name of the artifact. -->

    <finalName>sample-ear</finalName>

    <defaultGoal>package</defaultGoal>

<plugins>

      <plugin>

        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>

        <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>

        <!-- Specify used Java version. -->

        <configuration>

          <source>1.5</source>

          <target>1.5</target>

        </configuration>

      </plugin>

<plugin>

        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>

        <artifactId>maven-ear-plugin</artifactId>

        <configuration>

        	<displayName>Sample by bayestech</displayName>

            <version>5</version>

<!-- set default location -->

          <defaultJavaBundleDir>APP-INF/lib</defaultJavaBundleDir>

          <!-- Specify modules to include. -->

          <modules>

          	<!-- Include EJB Modules -->

<ejbModule>

               <groupId>bayestech</groupId>

               <artifactId>ejb</artifactId>

               <bundleDir>/</bundleDir>

            </ejbModule>

</modules>

          <resourcesDir>src/main/resources</resourcesDir>

        </configuration>

      </plugin>

</plugins>

</build>

Above is the ear configuration which the explanation is out of the scope of this tutorial. Email me if you need help or post a comment.

Finally on to the good stuff.

Okay now that we have the project setup after a long time of reading we are ready to create our mdb.

Firstly, create a weblogic-ejb-jar.xml file in the ejb/src/main/resources/META-INF/ directory, with the following configuration:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<weblogic-ejb-jar xmlns="http://www.bea.com/ns/weblogic/10.0" xmlns:javaee="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xml="http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.bea.com/ns/weblogic/10.0 http://www.bea.com/ns/weblogic/10.0/weblogic-ejb-jar.xsd">

    <description>Messaging Enterprise JavaBeans</description>

    <weblogic-enterprise-bean>

        <ejb-name>SampleMDB</ejb-name>

        <message-driven-descriptor>

        	<pool>

        		<max-beans-in-free-pool>10</max-beans-in-free-pool>

        		<initial-beans-in-free-pool>10</initial-beans-in-free-pool>

        		<idle-timeout-seconds>60000</idle-timeout-seconds>

        	</pool>

        	<destination-jndi-name>ems.message.request</destination-jndi-name>

        	<connection-factory-jndi-name>LocalQueueConnectionFactory</connection-factory-jndi-name>

    	</message-driven-descriptor>

    </weblogic-enterprise-bean></weblogic-ejb-jar>

The destination-jndi-name and connection-factory-jndi-name properties are the local jndi names we specified in the weblogic jms module right in the beginning of the tutorial.

Now in the ejb-jar.xml file you need the following to bind your class to the message bean name:

<display-name>Message Beans</display-name>	<enterprise-beans>

      <message-driven>

      	  <!-- Bean definition -->

         <ejb-name>SampleMDB</ejb-name>

         <ejb-class>bayestech.sample.message.SampleMDB</ejb-class>

         <messaging-type>javax.jms.MessageListener</messaging-type>

         <transaction-type>Container</transaction-type>

<!-- Listen to a queue -->

 		<message-destination-type>javax.jms.Queue</message-destination-type>

<!-- Activation criteria -->

         <activation-config>

         	<activation-config-property>

         		<activation-config-property-name>acknowledgeMode</activation-config-property-name>

         		<activation-config-property-value>Auto-acknowledge</activation-config-property-value>

         	</activation-config-property>

         </activation-config>

</message-driven>

   </enterprise-beans>

<assembly-descriptor>

    <container-transaction>

       <method>

          <ejb-name>SampleMDB</ejb-name>

          <method-name>onMessage()</method-name>

       </method>

       <trans-attribute>NotSupported</trans-attribute>

    </container-transaction>

 </assembly-descriptor>

In my environment the queue is not transacted, hence the trans-attribute is NotSupported.

Okay now all we need to do is create a MDB implementation in java which should look like this:

package bayestech.sample.message;import javax.ejb.EJBException;

import javax.ejb.MessageDrivenBean;

import javax.ejb.MessageDrivenContext;

import javax.jms.Message;

import javax.jms.MessageListener;

public class SampleMDB  implements MessageDrivenBean, MessageListener {

static final Log log = LogFactory.getLog(SampleMDB.class);

/* (non-Javadoc)

  * @see javax.ejb.MessageDrivenBean#ejbRemove()

  */

 public void ejbRemove() throws EJBException {

 	// TODO Auto-generated method stub

}

 /* (non-Javadoc)

  * @see javax.ejb.MessageDrivenBean#setMessageDrivenContext(javax.ejb.MessageDrivenContext)

  */

 public void setMessageDrivenContext(MessageDrivenContext arg0)

 		throws EJBException {

 	// TODO Auto-generated method stub

}

public void onMessage(Message arg0) {

 	log.info("it worked!!!!");

 }

}

Now build the maven project and deploy to weblogic and everything should work. Well I hope this gives you the base for a MDB. I have a spring context injected mdb if anyone is interested. I will quickly do the sample project and upload it at a later stage.

Conclusion

This is really simple way of implementing mdb in weblogic with a foreign TIBCO ems queue.