What is "Missing Port Information" error?

Question

Setting FINEST log level on JAXRPC in the AS8 2004Q04 Beta reveals nothing.
Searches on this forum provides only 3 matches for "Missing port information" (this one makes 4). In http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jsp?forum=136&thread=508958 the same problem that I have is described, and the problem is left unresolved, despite a plea from a second user. ( I wonder what happened to these people...Did they sell short or become .NET developers. Neither are an answer for me. )
Searches in the bug parade shows that this error is generic: In 6157880, classpath was not set correctly. In 4859401, service used a J2SE 1.4 API in a 1.3 environment. In 4802443 there is a getter for a public field and so jaxrcp was confused. There are more bugs matching but I'm not listing them all here. My point is that there doesn't seem to be a single root cause for this problem.
So, logs don't help, forum doesn't have answer, bug parade is too noisy. This problem seems unresolved here on Sun's web pages, but here I try again:
Here are some questions:
1) What is "port information"?
2) From where is it missing? Where does AS8 expect to find it?
3) Anyone have a strategy on how to debug this?
I have Axis TCPMON tracing the soap messages and can verify that AS8 originates the error, not the client. The limited information from the server log verifies this too:
[#|2004-11-01T16:28:20.008-0500|SEVERE|sun-appserver-pe8.1|javax.enterprise.resource.webservices.rpc.server.http|_Thre
adID=11;|JAXRPCSERVLET22: no endpoint specified|#]Here is the output of a client that dumps the exception:
     [java] Endpoint address = http://Stratocaster:8080/ym/ym-alias
     [java] javax.xml.rpc.soap.SOAPFaultException: JAXRPCSERVLET28: Missing port information
     [java]     at com.sun.xml.rpc.client.StreamingSender._raiseFault(StreamingSender.java:515)
     [java]     at com.sun.xml.rpc.client.StreamingSender._send(StreamingSender.java:294)
     [java]     at svcp.XXXAPIR0501_Stub.create2(XXXAPIR0501_Stub.java:282)
     [java]     at SubClient.main(SubClient.java:31)

Answer 1

I believe I've gotten to the bottom of this error and will report it here in case there is anyone that is also having this problem and in case there is anyone that can make sense of it.
The alias and endpoint fields must be equal.
The deploy tool allows you to enter an alias and an endpoint for your web service. I'll show you the user interface specifics below. The data you enter in these fields show up in the wsdl, the web.xml and the sun-web.xml, and I'll show what elements below.
Except for the preceding '/' in the alias field (the '/' is inserted by deploytool), the alias and the endpoint string must be identical: if '/imp-alias' is the alias value, the endpoint must be 'imp-alias'.
If they are not equal and your client uses the alias value in endpoint address, you will get "Missing port information" error.
If they are not equal and your client uses the endpoint value in endpoint address, you will get '404 Not Found' error.
For example, lets say I set alias to 'api-alias' and endpoint to 'api-endpoint'. Using my browser, I can get the wsdl with http://localhost:8080/context/api-alias?wsdl (where context is also a value set in deploytool gui). The returned wsdl will show that the soap:adress location attribute is: http://localhost:8080/context/api-endpoint. If your client uses the wsdl to generate stubs, the default endpoint is this location and your client will get the '404 Not Found' error. If you client provides an endpoint address by setting the ENDPOINT_ADDRESS_PROPERTY to http://localhost:8080/context/api-alias, your client will get the "Missing port information" error.
You get to the alias and endpoint fields in deploytool from the File panel on the left. Open the subfolder that represents your war file. There will be your web service. Select the web service and the main panel will change to contain about 4-6 tabs. One tab labelled Aliases another tab labelled Endpoint.
The alias field shows up in the web.xml file like this:
<servlet-name>APIImpl</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/api-alias</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>The endpoint field show up in the web.xml file under the same servlet-mapping element as alias:
<servlet-name>APIImpl</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/api-endpoint/__container$publishing$subctx/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>The endpoint field shows up in the wsdl in the soap:address element's 'location' attribute:
      <soap:address location="http://localhost:8080/context/api-endpoint" xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/"/>The endpoint field shows up in the sun-web.xml file
<endpoint-address-uri>api-endpoint</endpoint-address-uri>John