10 Replies Latest reply on Oct 17, 2007 7:00 AM by ropalka

    [Productivity] Level 3 - Transition / staging

    asoldano

      This thread is about the forth level of productivity efforts we're thinking about. Please refer to this http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=121127 for a topic introduction.

      Staging is almost always required before a software system is allowed to go live in production. Even if companies perform slightly different tasks in this phase, we should be able to address most of the issues that might come out when dealing with this transition.

      Some of the most important topics here are QA testing, authentication, tracking, logging, etc.

        • 1. Re: [Productivity] Level 3 - Transition / staging
          asoldano

          What are we going to do?

          * As always documentation is going to be modified and eventually enriched to cover the previously outlined topics.

          * Speaking of tools, I'm thinking about something (let's say in the jmx-console) to enable/disable logging on every endpoint (see this post http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=115661).
          Moreover we should cope with client side logging too, at least in the documentation; I'm thinking about explaining the need for tools like
          TCP-Mon
          http://ws.apache.org/commons/tcpmon/
          or Lms
          http://www.javalinuxlabs.org/lms/index.html

          * Finally, speaking of QA tests, I would suggest users a web based tool for generic webservice invocation; developers might feel comfortable with java test cases or IDE tools, however those might be too difficult to be used by non-technical guys like QA testers. For example Wise (http://www.javalinuxlabs.org/wise/index.html) provides this functionality.

          • 2. Re: [Productivity] Level 3 - Transition / staging
            maeste

             

            "alessio.soldano@jboss.com" wrote:

            * Speaking of tools, I'm thinking about something (let's say in the jmx-console) to enable/disable logging on every endpoint (see this post http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=115661).

            Of course I agree ;P...well time it's a problem in this period, but I'll try to take a look soon as promised in that post.


            Moreover we should cope with client side logging too, at least in the documentation; I'm thinking about explaining the need for tools like
            TCP-Mon
            http://ws.apache.org/commons/tcpmon/
            or Lms
            http://www.javalinuxlabs.org/lms/index.html

            I'm convinced this kind of tool should be web based since, in my experience, a lot of time you need to trace communication with external customers and it's possible only with public IP address. Servers isn't used to have an X server active to use TCPMon....
            Moreover LMS could be extended to communicate with the logging MBean described above and used to read (from a single console) server logs (or better all logs in the server farm) and client side logging if "proxy" feature is activated...


            * Finally, speaking of QA tests, I would suggest users a web based tool for generic webservice invocation; developers might feel comfortable with java test cases or IDE tools, however those might be too difficult to be used by non-technical guys like QA testers. For example Wise (http://www.javalinuxlabs.org/wise/index.html) provides this functionality.

            This sound like music to my ears...:)
            As said in previous level it could be very useful also to generate unit test starting from QA tests, and in my experience (we use it internally since 3 years) it facilitate a lot the communication between QA and developers about ws bugs.

            hoping it may help

            • 3. Re: [Productivity] Level 3 - Transition / staging
              ropalka

               

              "alessio.soldano@jboss.com" wrote:
              Speaking of tools, I'm thinking about something (let's say in the jmx-console) to enable/disable logging on every endpoint

              Yes, that would be great.
              "alessio.soldano@jboss.com" wrote:
              I'm thinking about explaining the need for tools like
              TCP-Mon
              http://ws.apache.org/commons/tcpmon/
              or Lms
              http://www.javalinuxlabs.org/lms/index.html

              Isn't Wireshark (initially Ethereal) suffiecient enough?

              Richard

              • 4. Re: [Productivity] Level 3 - Transition / staging
                maeste

                 

                "richard.opalka@jboss.com" wrote:
                [
                Isn't Wireshark (initially Ethereal) suffiecient enough?


                Maybe for skilled users...and still be less usable for the goal. Is matter of fact that axis TCPMon is largely used in ws tracing, even by people using different stacks.
                As already said a web base solution may be much more better IMHO.

                • 5. Re: [Productivity] Level 3 - Transition / staging
                  asoldano

                   

                  "richard.opalka@jboss.com" wrote:
                  "alessio.soldano@jboss.com" wrote:
                  I'm thinking about explaining the need for tools like
                  TCP-Mon
                  http://ws.apache.org/commons/tcpmon/
                  or Lms
                  http://www.javalinuxlabs.org/lms/index.html

                  Isn't Wireshark (initially Ethereal) suffiecient enough?


                  Well, Ethereal is fine, however I see two points where more specialized tools might be better:
                  - it's a general purpose "sniffer" that means you have to configure a lot of filters and so on to acually capture the soap communication you're looking for and if you have long conversations this might be painful
                  - it requires X (assuming you're on a *nix system). Immagine you're the service provider and need to check messages coming from a customer. Your only option is to run Ethereal on the server running the WS (ok, or on any other host along the route, but this doesn't change a lot), but servers often do not have a graphic subsystem like X installed. I'm not saying it can't be done, but that it might be not so easy ;-)

                  • 6. Re: [Productivity] Level 3 - Transition / staging
                    ropalka

                     

                    "alessio.soldano@jboss.com" wrote:
                    Well, Ethereal is fine, however I see two points where more specialized tools might be better:
                    - it's a general purpose "sniffer" that means you have to configure a lot of filters and so on to acually capture the soap communication you're looking for and if you have long conversations this might be painful
                    - it requires X (assuming you're on a *nix system). Immagine you're the service provider and need to check messages coming from a customer. Your only option is to run Ethereal on the server running the WS (ok, or on any other host along the route, but this doesn't change a lot), but servers often do not have a graphic subsystem like X installed. I'm not saying it can't be done, but that it might be not so easy ;-)

                    Yes, you are right. But I'd use thirdparty SOAP sniffers instead of writing our own because we're out of resources.

                    Richard

                    • 7. Re: [Productivity] Level 3 - Transition / staging
                      ropalka

                       

                      "alessio.soldano@jboss.com" wrote:

                      Well, Ethereal is fine, however I see two points where more specialized tools might be better:
                      - it's a general purpose "sniffer" that means you have to configure a lot of filters and so on to acually capture the soap communication you're looking for and if you have long conversations this might be painful
                      - it requires X (assuming you're on a *nix system). Immagine you're the service provider and need to check messages coming from a customer. Your only option is to run Ethereal on the server running the WS (ok, or on any other host along the route, but this doesn't change a lot), but servers often do not have a graphic subsystem like X installed. I'm not saying it can't be done, but that it might be not so easy ;-)

                      But in these cases Apaches TCPMon is useless too ;-)

                      Richard

                      • 8. Re: [Productivity] Level 3 - Transition / staging
                        asoldano

                         

                        "richard.opalka@jboss.com" wrote:
                        "alessio.soldano@jboss.com" wrote:

                        Well, Ethereal is fine, however I see two points where more specialized tools might be better:
                        - it's a general purpose "sniffer" that means you have to configure a lot of filters and so on to acually capture the soap communication you're looking for and if you have long conversations this might be painful
                        - it requires X (assuming you're on a *nix system). Immagine you're the service provider and need to check messages coming from a customer. Your only option is to run Ethereal on the server running the WS (ok, or on any other host along the route, but this doesn't change a lot), but servers often do not have a graphic subsystem like X installed. I'm not saying it can't be done, but that it might be not so easy ;-)

                        But in these cases Apaches TCPMon is useless too ;-)

                        Richard


                        Yep, Lms is better for the X issue ;-)

                        • 9. Re: [Productivity] Level 3 - Transition / staging
                          asoldano

                           

                          "richard.opalka@jboss.com" wrote:

                          Yes, you are right. But I'd use thirdparty SOAP sniffers instead of writing our own because we're out of resources.
                          Richard


                          Yes, I agree. As a matter of fact I was thinking to suggest users using those thirdparty tools (Lms too is a thirdparty tool, not something to develop from scratch), after having explained them why they're important and useful. This said, we might somehow endorse the tools we think are the most suitable for our users' need, but this is quite an other discussion ;-)

                          • 10. Re: [Productivity] Level 3 - Transition / staging
                            ropalka

                             

                            "alessio.soldano@jboss.com" wrote:
                            This said, we might somehow endorse the tools we think are the most suitable for our users' need, but this is quite an other discussion ;-)

                            Yes, it's an another discussion. But put to your notes we should suggest only HTML based tools ;-)

                            Richard