GlassFish and Vista - Interoperable out-of-the-box

GlassFish v2 M4 and Windows Vista were released two weeks ago. I installed GlassFish M4 on my machine and Vista Enterprise on a different machine. In this blog, I explain the steps followed to invoke a Web service deployed on GlassFish by Vista client and vice versa.

First, lets deploy a service on GlassFish and invoke it using a client on Vista.

1. Using screencast WS#1, I developed a trivial Web service using NetBeans IDE and deployed on GlassFish.
2. On Vista machine, I generated the client-side artifacts using the command:
   
   svcutil /config:Client.exe.config http://129.145.133.129:8080/WebApplication11/NewWebServiceService?wsdl
3. Then I coded the client code to invoke the service endpoint as:
   
   using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
   class Program
   {
       static void Main(string[] args)
       {
           NewWebServiceClient client = new NewWebServiceClient();
           string response = client.sayHello("Duke");
           Console.WriteLine("Response from WSIT endpoint: " + response);
       }
   }
}
4. Next step is to compile the client code using the command:
   
   csc.exe /r:"C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.0\Windows Communication Foundation\System.ServiceModel.dll"
        /r:"C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.0\Windows Communication Foundation\System.Runtime.Serialization.dll"
        Client.cs AddNumbersImplService.cs
   
   I wonder if there is a way by which csc.exe compiler can be made smarter to recognize WCF assemblies by default. But for now, I need to explicitly specify the assemblies during compilation otherwise the compiler throws bunch of errors like:
   
   NewWebServiceService.cs(100,63): error CS0234: The type or namespace name 'ServiceModel' does not exist in the namespace 'System' (are you missing an assembly reference?)
5. After a successful compilation, invoking the client shows the result:
   
   Response from WSIT endpoint: Hello Duke

Now let's deploy a similar Web service on Vista and invoke it using GlassFish.

1. There are multiple ways a WCF Web service can be created from scratch but I find the following steps easiest. Create  service endpoint service.svc as:
   
   <%@ServiceHost language=c# Debug="true" Service="WCFEndpoint.Hello" %>

using System.ServiceModel;

namespace WCFEndpoint
{
   [ServiceContract]
   public interface IHello
   {
       [OperationContract]
       string sayHello(string name);
   }

   public class Hello : IHello
   {
       public string sayHello(string name)
       {
           return "Hello " + name;
       }
   }
}
2. In the same directory create Web.config as:
   
   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
   <system.serviceModel>
       <behaviors>
           <serviceBehaviors>
               <behavior name="MetadataBehavior">
                    <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" />
               </behavior>
           </serviceBehaviors>
       </behaviors>
       <services>
           <service behaviorConfiguration="MetadataBehavior" name="WCFEndpoint.Hello">
               <endpoint address="" binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration=""
                   name="Hello" contract="WCFEndpoint.IHello" />
           </service>
       </services>
   </system.serviceModel>
</configuration>
3. I installed IIS after installing Vista so WCF extensions need to be explicitly registered as shown here.
4. Create a virtual directory, say wsit, in IIS mapping to the directory where service.svc and Web.config are present. You should now see the default WCF/IIS page as shown here. The service endpoint now should be hosted at http://localhost/wsit/service.svc.
5. Using screencast #WS2, create a JAX-WS client to invoke the Web service.

This is an example of a trivial interoperable Web service between GlassFish M4 and Vista but the key fact is that, as a developer, this is provided as out-of-the-box experience. No extra tweaks or no special configurations required.

I plan to build upon this Web service by adding enterprise Web services features such as Reliable Messaging, Security etc. and show how WSIT enables interoperability with WCF.

_{Technorati: WSIT Web Services Interoperability GlassFish Vista}