WSDL, custom datatypes, fault element name issues

Question

Hello all,
I am having a LOT of problems with BEAs webservices. I am posting
this here in the hope that someone can help me and tell me what I am
doing incorrectly. I am running
WebLogic Server 7.0 SP1 Mon Sep 9 22:46:58 PDT 2002 206753
WebLogic XMLX Module 7.0 SP1 Mon Sep 9 22:54:41 PDT 2002 206753
Background:
My goal is to make my company's product web services aware. I take an
EJB, try to run it through the standard ant tasks and generate a web
services accessible EJB. Sounds pretty easy, but complex types seem
to make this quite difficult.
I have been able to create a web service accessible EJB (only since
7.0.1), but I am quite unhappy with the quality of what I am able to
produce.
I have a datatype which acts as a key, but it does not follow the
javabeans idiom - i.e. it does not have a default constructor or
accessor methods and I am not in the position to change it. I have
created a codec for this class which works and an xml schema (both by
hand). Its name is AgentKey. I have also had to use the autotyper to
create codecs and typemapping entries for java.util.Properties,
I can connect using the WebLogic classes and I am now trying to
interact using MS Excel and Apache's Axis as my test clients.
Issues:
My first question deals with generating a client. There seem to be
two ways to generate a client. Firstly via the <client> subtask of
<servicegen><service>, the second way via <clientgen> task. Since I
am using a custom data type (AgentKey) I have to manually insert the
AgentKey schema into the web-services.xml file generated by
servicegen. When I try to generate a client via the
servicegen/service/client task there is no opportunity for me to
insert this datatype schema information and I therefore get the
following messages (lots of them, but I'm only including one):
[servicegen] WARNINIG: Unable to find a javaType for the xmlType:['java:net.agentis.apml.runtime']:AgentKey.
Make sure that you have registered this xml type in the type mapping
[servicegen] Using SOAPElement instead
BTW: I am also receiving the same problem with java.util.Properties.
BTW: WARNING is misspelt
If I attempt to generate a client class via the <clientgen> task, I
need to supply either a wsdl or ear file as a parameter. I cannot
supply a wsdl file because I haven't deployed the EAR yet (and I don't
want to until the EAR has the client classes in it), and I can't
supply the EAR because I want the ear to include the client classes.
It is a bit of a catch 22 situation. Is there a solution I can't see?
NOTE: it would be very, very nice if you added a schemaMapping
attribute to the <servicegen/service> task so the web-services.xml
file didn't have to be manually hacked. Something similar to the
typemapping attribute already in the servicegen/service task would do
it.
My next problem deals with the validity of the WSDL. I am seeing that
the WSDL created has exceptions defined multiple times. I saw a
message from Manjo saying that it looked like a bug. I agree and
would like to get a copy of the patch. On a more significant note,
when is either SP2 or 7.1 due for release?
Another problem with the WSDL (once you have cleansed the multiple
exception messages) is that the fault elements of the
binding/operation elements require names and they don't have any. For
example, this is straight from the deployed EJB WSDL file:
<binding name="ExampleAgentPortSoapBinding" type="tns:ExampleAgentPort">
<soap:binding style="rpc" transport="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/http"/>
<operation name="serviceWithPrimitiveDatatypes">
<soap:operation soapAction="" style="rpc"/>
<input>
<soap:body use="encoded" namespace="http://sillyurl.com/reallysilly"
encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"/>
</input>
<output>
<soap:body use="encoded" namespace="http://sillyurl.com/reallysilly"
encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"/>
</output>
<fault>
<soap:body use="encoded" namespace="http://sillyurl.com/reallysilly"
encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"/>
</fault>
</operation>
<operation ...
The schema definition at http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/ says the
fault element require a name attribute:
<complexType name =" tBindingOperationFault">
<complexContent>
<extension base="wsdl:tExtensibleDocumented">
<attribute name="name" type="NCName" use="required"/>
</extension>
</complexContent>
</complexType>
The name of the fault should be the same name as the fault in the
portType definition. In my example the name is "AgentisException" as
evidenced by this snippet:
<portType name="ExampleAgentPort">
<operation name="serviceWithPrimitiveDatatypes">
<input message="tns:serviceWithPrimitiveDatatypes"/>
<output message="tns:serviceWithPrimitiveDatatypesResponse"/>
<fault name="AgentisException" message="tns:AgentisException"/>
</operation>
Once these changes have been made then the WSDL will validate. Are
there plans to fix these bugs?
On a different note, when I try to interact with a method that uses a
custom data type, such as AgentKey, via the "WebLogic Webservice
standard testing home page" the custom data type without a default
constructor cannot be rendered correctly. For instance, the AgentKey
value is:
<!-- Do not know how to create a sample instance for this part due to the following
exception:java.lang.InstantiationException: net.agentis.apml.runtime.AgentKey.
Pls replace this with the correct XML before invoking the service. --->
<agentKey/>
Since I can't deploy a valid WSDL, I can't get either Axis or Excel to
connect to my web services.
When I attempt to invoke Axis' (beta 1.1) wsdl2java I recieve the
following message.
java.io.IOException: ERROR: Fault is missing a name= attribute in operation
"serviceWithPrimitiveDatatypes", in binding {http://sillyurl.com/reallysilly}ExampleAgentPortSoapBinding.
This seems understandable considering the issues I mentioned earlier.
Unfortunately Excel doesn't really give me anything to go with. If I
type in the WSDL URI then it will give me a list of methods I can
invoke, but if I try to add the service I get the very unhelpful "The
Web Service References Tool could not generate the requested code.
Any changes that were made to your project have been rolled back."
Any help with those two issues would be greatly appreciated also.
One final issue is that I cannot seem to fix is taskdef'ing
<servicegen> properly from Ant. I can do the actual taskdef but then
it cannot find classes from within the weblogic.jar. If I run the
setExamplesEnv.cmd first the I don't need to do the taskdef and
everything works fine. Has anyone else had this issue? (we can't run
that command on our clients desktops before we build our build scripts
- anyway, I've put it down to one of those weird Ant classpath
issues.)
In summary:
Problems I can see and would like some help on are:
- multiple exception messages
- fault operations with no name
- the ability to generate client code with complex data types before
the EAR is deployed.
Could the product team add
- a clean way to add in schema datatypes without having to manually
hack the web-services.xml file.
I know this has been quite a long email, but it has been months in the
making. Anyone's time would be greatly appreciated.
Mark Mansour
Agentis Software
[email protected]

Answer 1

Hi Mark,
From your base post:
My next problem deals with the validity of the WSDL. I am seeing that
the WSDL created has exceptions defined multiple times. I saw a
message from Manjo saying that it looked like a bug. I agree and
would like to get a copy of the patch. On a more significant note,
when is either SP2 or 7.1 due for release?I would recommend starting here with support since getting valid WSDL seems to be the root of most of
your issues.
Concerning the upcoming release, I believe it is scheduled for late this quarter; contact Michael
([email protected]) for more information.
Also, at the bottom of this post:
I would just like to see an automated way to do this (I've had to write my own
utility to do this for me :(Does the autotype ant task help in this situation? Have you taken a look at this?
http://e-docs.bea.com/wls/docs70/webserv/anttasks.html#1080062
Thanks,
Bruce
Mark Mansour wrote:
Hiya Bruce,
I will try and get some time to follow this up with the support people too.
In response:
Problems I can see and would like some help on are:
- multiple exception messages
In your client code, you can set the following property to avoid the exceptionmessages so that the typemapping
registry can be setup.
//dont parse wsdl till we set the typemapping
System.setProperty( "weblogic.webservice.servicenamechecking","false" );
This is not a client issue. The WSDL is generating incorrect WSDL. Here is a
little snippet :
<message name="AgentisException" >
<part name="AgentisException" xmlns:partns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
type="partns:string" />
</message>
<message name="setTraceLevel" >
<part name="agentKey" xmlns:partns="java:net.agentis.apml.runtime" type="partns:AgentKey"
/>
<part name="intVal" xmlns:partns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" type="partns:int"
/>
</message>
<message name="AgentisException" >
<part name="AgentisException" xmlns:partns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
type="partns:string" />
</message>
As you can see the AgentisException is defined twice (in my real WSDL it is redefined
every time a method has the AgentisException in its interface (which in my case
is 5 times))
- fault operations with no nameI believe the fault issues that you have raised have been addressed in the upcomingrelease that will be
available for beta testing shortly. Contact [email protected] if you
want to participate in the beta.
great. Is there any ETA on the final release date?
- the ability to generate client code with complex data types before
the EAR is deployed.
There is an example to show how to do this: http://dev2dev.bea.com/direct/webservice/dyncmplx.zip
Unfortunately this doesn't solve my problem. I still don't have an EAR or WSDL
file from which I can generate a client to be included in the final EAR file that
gets deployed to the server. My original post explains this a bit better.
Could the product team add
- a clean way to add in schema datatypes without having to manually
hack the web-services.xml file.
Take a look at http://dev2dev.bea.com/direct/webservice/wswa.html#qz50 and others
in this area.
This was more in reference to the building of the web services in the first place
rather than registering custom datatypes at runtime. The manual procedure is
documented at http://edocs.bea.com/wls/docs70/webserv/customdata.html#1058102,
I would just like to see an automated way to do this (I've had to write my own
utility to do this for me :(
Hope this helps,
Bruce
Thanks Bruce.
Mark