Web Tools Platform 1.0 M3 - New and Noteworthy for Web Services Tools

The Web Tools Platform (WTP) 1.0 M3 is the first WTP milestone containing the Web Services Tools.

Introduction

The Web Services Tools provides an extensible framework of wizards, actions, preferences, code generators and Web applications to help Eclipse users create, publish, discover, consume and test Web Services chiefly for, but not limited to, the Java programming language and the J2EE platform. Included in the contribution are tools for building Apache Axis Web services and Web service clients on Apache Tomcat.

The design and capabilities of the tools, both internally and visually, are anchored to a small but significant set of public specifications and consortiums, including:

Included in the Web Services Tools contribution are:

  • An embedded Web application for publishing, discovering and invoking Web services.
  • Extensible Wizards for creating Web Services from existing Java classes (these are called "bottom up" scenarios).
  • Extensible Wizards for creating Web services from existing WSDL (these are called "top down" scenarios).
  • Extensible Wizards for creating Web service clients from WSDL.
  • Extensions in support of Apache Axis and Apache Tomcat.
  • Wizards for integrating with public and private UDDI registries.
  • Wizards for configuring Web service and Web service client JAX-RPC handlers.
  • Popup actions.
  • Web Service scenario preference pages.
  • Internet proxy firewall preference page.
  • The Environment Command Framework, used to organize UI-agnostic engine code into dynamic trees of executable commands.
  • The Dynamic Wizard Framework, used to build wizards with highly dynamic page flows.
  • Models, parsers and code generators.

Note: The J2EE Tools and XML Tools also contain tools for Web services, such as the WSDL Editor, the WSDL and WS-I validators, and the J2EE Project Explorer.

Quick Tour

The Web Services wizard and the Web Services wizard are available on File -> New -> Others ->Web Services or on the New Wizard as shown below:

The Web Servcies Explorer is available on Run -> Launch the Web Services Explorer .

These Web services functions are also available via context menus. Preferences for the Web Services tools can be set in Window -> Preferences -> Web Services.

Refer to the following tutorials for a quick tour of the Web services functionality.

Note:
Follow the instruction at Getting Started with Web Service to get the required third party JARs not included in the WTP M3 driver before using the Web Services Tools.

Known Problems

Please be aware of the following known problems when using the Web Services Tools:

  • 84399: Do not hit Finish on the first page of the Web Service wizard or the Web Service Client wizard if you want to use an existing server. The wizards might not correctly default to use an existing server which cause a second server to be created. Instead of hitting Finish on the first page,
    1. click Next twice to get to the Service Deployment Configuration Page . Result:

    2. If you want to choose a server different from the one defaulted by the wizard, click the Edit button to: select a server .
    3. Click Finish .

  • 86418 and 86527: Do not hit the Browse button in the Web Services Explorer to bring up the WSDL Browser to browse for WSDL files in the workbench. Doing so might crash the Eclipse workbench on Linux and would cause the WSDL Browser to hang at showing the message "Please wait while the form loads...".

  • 84843: When generating Web service either top-down or bottom-up Java bean scenarios, occasionaly, the first deploy to Axis runtime fails with:
    IWAB0489E Error when deploying Web service to Axis runtime axis-admin failed with {http://xml.apache.org/axis/}HTTP (404)/s1/services/AdminService
    This problem is due to a timing issue. If you just wait a few more seconds and hit Next again, the wizard would successfully deploy the Web service to the Axis runtime.

  • 85823: When creating a Web service from Java bean, if you specify Generate proxy and Test the Web service, compile errors might show up in the server console the first time the server is started complaining about "package org.eclipse.jst.ws.util does not exist". This is a timing problem because webserviceUtils.jar, which contains the class org.eclipse.jst.ws.util.JspUtils, is not added to the WEB-INF/lib directory of the Web project in time for the JSP compile. Despite the error, eventually the sample JSPs come up OK and the Web service can be invoked successfully.

  • 86420: Do not use the Configure Handler context menu. It will cause a "An internal error occurred" message and a blank handler wizard would come up.

  • 86552: If the service name in the WSDL file used in Web service client scenario does not follow Java naming convention, e.g. having a lowercase first letter, the Proxy class generated by the Web service client wizard may not be able to correctly reference the generated type and may have compile errors.

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