Before you start

Learn what to expect from this tutorial, and how to get the most out of it.

A brief introduction

Those of you who have been following IBM's support for the Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) standard through delivery of WSDM run time and tooling are probably aware of the Autonomic Integrated Development Environment (AIDE). As a logical next step in the support of an open standard like WSDM, the run-time code was contributed to the Apache Muse project, and keeping in step, a new revamped version of the tooling for WSDM is now available as part of the Eclipse Test and Performance Tools Platform (TPTP). While the runtime provides a stable reference implementation of the WSDM specifications and a programming model for building WSDM endpoints, the tooling lets you visually model a WSDM interface in an IDE, generate the endpoint code that follows the Muse programming model, and also test a sample deployment of the generated endpoint with your custom implementation added to it.

The tooling is available as part of the Build to Manage download in Eclipse TPTP 4.3. It is manifested as a set of plug-ins that provide editors for various WSDM-related constructs like capabilities, managed resource types, and so on, and Muse-specific artifacts like a runtime deployment descriptor. Also available in TPTP is a Managed Agent Explorer that lets you test the endpoints built using the tooling in addition to introspecting existing endpoints.

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About this tutorial

This tutorial uses a hands-on approach to help you build WSDM interfaces for existing applications and IT resources. Rather than delve into the intricate details of the artifacts that define an endpoint, this tutorial takes a task-based approach that a developer or architect with a high-level knowledge of WSDM can quickly grasp. Advanced WSDM developers, who are well aware of the complex artifacts required for creating anything more than a simple endpoint, will appreciate the simplicity and quick turnaround that the tooling provides. Through a number of screen shots and code snippets, this tutorial gets you up and running with WSDM endpoint development in no time.

Tasks that you should perform are typically in separate sections and the section title carries a Task prefix. Each task contains a discrete set of steps. A number of screenshots are included in the tutorial. Typically, only portions of the screen are shown (to save space). However, each screenshot is accompanied sometimes by a link to the full screenshot where it is useful to see the entire context in which a user action is taken.

I use the "Create a WSDM interface for an HTTP server using Apache Muse" tutorial as a reference throughout this tutorial (when I say the "other tutorial," this is what I am referring to). It will help you compare and understand how to use the tooling for WSDM to generate WSDM endpoints that use the Apache Muse run time. The artifacts generated in this tutorial will look very similar to the artifacts that you create by hand in "the other tutorial."

This tutorial is meant to be an introductory tutorial on effortlessly building WSDM endpoints. As such, a number of advanced features are skipped and not even identified in the interest of time and simplicity. These features will be covered in future tutorials that you can expect to see very soon on your favorite destination for leading-edge technical articles, developerWorks!

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Prerequisites

This tutorial is for developers who have a high level of understanding of the Web Services Distributed Management concepts and a good grasp of Web services in general. The intent of the tooling is to hide the complexities of Web services development and Apache Muse artifacts while advocating a standard programming model. However, familiarity with Web services will help you follow the tasks closely. Java™ programming experience using an IDE such as Eclipse is also helpful.

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System requirements

Much of the development in this tutorial is done in the Eclipse IDE with the Test and Performance Tools Platform (TPTP) plug-ins installed. The first section of this tutorial explains how to set up the Eclipse TPTP installation and the tooling for WSDM on top of it. Prerequisites for Eclipse TPTP can be found at http://www.eclipse.org/tptp/home/downloads/.

To run the endpoint generated in this tutorial and see it in action as a management interface to Apache Tomcat, you must have Apache Tomcat installed on your machine. Apache Tomcat 5.0 is recommended because you can use the same 1.4-level JDK, which is the supported Java runtime for Eclipse TPTP.

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Table of contents

• Before you start
• Setting up the development environment
• Modeling a WSDM interface, creating a manageable resource type model
• Modeling management capabilities
• Generating code and building the endpoint implementation
• Deploying and testing the endpoint
• Summary
• Resources
• About the author

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