Release Notes

This document contains the release notes for OGSA-DAI WSI.

Release 2.2

OGSA-DAI WSI 2.2 is a pure Web services version of OGSA-DAI. There are four distributions:

• OGSA-DAI WSI + Apache Axis 1.2.1 source and binary distributions:
  • Source and binary distributions are bundled with Apache Axis 1.2.1 JARs and other third party JARs.
  • Binary distributions are compiled under Apache Axis 1.2.1.
  • These are compatible with Apache Axis 1.2.1 on Tomcat.
• OGSA-DAI WSI + Apache Axis 1.2RC3 source and binary distributions:
  • Source and binary distributions are bundled with Apache Axis 1.2RC3 JARs and other third party JARs.
  • Binary distributions are compiled under Apache Axis 1.2RC3.
  • These are compatible with Apache Axis 1.2RC3 on Tomcat or OMII 2.1.

There is no difference between the source code, WSDL or XML Schema across the versions - it is purely the Apache Axis JARs that vary.

New Functionality

New functionality provided in this release is as follows:

• A prototype data service resource that creates prototype transient data service resources is provided. Transient data service resources exist in memory and have no associated configuration files on the server. This data service resource has an associated activity:
  • demoCreateTransientInstance.
• A prototype multi-resource is provided. This data service resource interacts with multiple relational data service resources via the client toolkit and integrates the result. server. This data service resource has three associated activities:
  • sqlBag
  • removeDuplicates
  • sqlResilient
• eXist is now an officially supported data resource.
• A number of new activities are provided. These include:
  • Data conversion activities:
    • sqlResultsToXML - converts java.sql.ResultSet into WebRowSet.
    • sqlResultsToCSV - converts java.sql.ResultSet into CSV.
    • sqlResultToBytes - converts a binary column result from a java.sql.ResultSet into a stream of bytes.
  • Relational meta-data activities:
    • extractDatabaseSchema - retrieves the logical schema from a relational database.
    • databaseSchemaToXML - converts logical schema information from a relational database into an XML document.
    • extractPhysicalSchema - retrieves physical schema information from a relational database.
  • XMLDB activities:
    • xQueryStatement - run an XQuery statement against an XML database [48].
  • Projection and transformation activities:
    • removeDuplicates - removes duplicate rows from the results retrieved from multi-resources.
    • resultsetProjection - projects of a java.sql.ResultSet onto column name name or index.
    • webrowsetProjection - projects a WebRowSet onto column name or column index.
    • csvProjection - projects CSV values onto column index.
    • frequencyDistributor - distributes numeric values onto spaces.
    • randomSample - generates a random sample of the input data.
    • bytesToTempFile - writes a stream of bytes to a temporary file and then outputs a reference to this temporary file.
  • Delivery activities:
    • deliverToNull - throws the input stream away.
    • deliverToResourceProperty - writes data to a resource property.
    • deliverToAttachment - delivers results to a SOAP attachment.
  • Resource management activities:
    • removeResource - withdraws a data service resource from a service.
    • demoCreateTransientInstance - creates a new transient resource.
  • Multi-resource activities:
    • sqlBag - merges the results of multiple queries executed on different relational data service resources.
    • sqlResilient - retrieves the results of multiple queries from the first available relational data service resource of a set of resources.
• The readFile activity now produces byte[] when reading binary files [25].
• fileWritingActivity now accepts byte[] and org.w3c.dom.Node objects from other activities [58].
• deliverFromGDT and deliverToGDT activities now accept the type of a target service (i.e. OGSA-DAI WSI or WSRF) and so can avoid an extra communication with the target service to identify the service type.
• Improved support for BLOB handling in the following activities [24, 41]:
  • bytesToTempFile
  • sqlQueryStatement
  • sqlUpdateStatement
  • sqlResultsToCSV
• There is a prototype interface to support authorization of access to resources and activity usage.
• There is now client toolkit support for the following activities (as well as all the new activities):
  • directoryAccessActivity
  • fileAccessActivity
  • fileManipulationActivity
  • gzipDecompression
• Support for application-specific message bundles to be used in OGSA-DAI by developers of extensions to OGSA-DAI (e.g. activities).
• Third-party JARs are now bundled with OGSA-DAI.
  • This includes all but two JARs required to compile an OGSA-DAI WSI binary distribution from an OGSA-DAI WSI source distribution.
  • It also allows users of OGSA-DAI WSI binary distributions to use OGSA-DAI clients without the need to have their own Axis/Tomcat deployment.
• Tutorials have been written for:
  • How to register new message bundles.
  • How to write OGSA-DAI-compliant exceptions.
  • How to use OGSA-DAI logging.
  • How to authorize access to resources and activities.
• User documentation for individual activities now specifies the expected input and output types of each activity.
• An initial set of usage scenarios and best practice is available on the OGSA-DAI WWW site.
• Work on benchmarking and performance evaluations in the period leading up to this release is available on the OGSA-DAI WWW site.

Changes

The main changes between this and the previous release are as follows:

• Apache Xindice is no longer an officially supported data resource.
• Relational data services no longer expose the databaseSchema property. Relational database schema can be accessed using the following activities:
  • extractDatabaseSchema
  • databaseSchemaToXML
  • extractPhysicalSchema
  This allows database schema information to be streamed to a client using data transport operations and addresses the problem of certain databases causing OutOfMemoryExceptions that arose in previous versions of OGSA-DAI.
• If an activity fails then downstream activities now have their status set to TERMINATED instead of ERROR
• fileWritingActivity has been changed. The following renamings occurred:
  • BOF renamed to start
  • EOF renamed to end
  • toEOF renamed to toEnd
• The following classes in uk.org.ogsadai.dataresource have been renamed or relocated. These changes affect data resource configuration files also.
  • DataResource renamed to DataResourceAccessor
  • TestDataResource renamed to TestDataResourceAccessor
  • JDBCDataResource renamed to JDBCDataResourceAccessor
  • XMLDBDataResource renamed to XMLDBDataResourceAccessor
  • FilesDataResource renamed to FilesDataResourceAccessor
  • NullDataResource renamed to NullDataResourceAccessor
• The following classes in uk.org.ogsadai.examples.demoFactory have been renamed or relocated. These changes affect data resource configuration files also.
  • DemoFactoryDataResource renamed to DemoFactoryDataResourceAccessor
  • DemoInstanceDataResource renamed to DemoInstanceDataResourceAccessor
• The following method was renamed:
  • uk.org.ogsadai.activity.ActivityContext.getDataResource method renamed to uk.org.ogsadai.activity.ActivityContext.getDataResourceAccessor
• All classes in package uk.org.ogsadai.dataresource.factory relocated to uk.org.ogsadai.service.resource.factory
• uk.org.ogsadai.activity.transform.DataStoreActivity relocated to uk.org.ogsadai.activity.misc.DataStoreActivity (this affects existing activity configuration files) and uk.org.ogsadai.client.toolkit.activity.transform.DataStore relocated to uk.org.ogsadai.client.toolkit activity.misc.DataStore
• uk.org.ogsadai.client.toolkit.activity.delivery.InputStreamActivity relocated to uk.org.ogsadai.client.toolkit.activity.delivery.InputStream and uk.org.ogsadai.client.toolkit.activity.delivery.OutputStreamActivity relocated to uk.org.ogsadai.client.toolkit.activity.delivery.OutputStream
• Stricter package boundaries:
  • uk.org.ogsadai.common and uk.org.ogsadai.exception only import from each other.
  • uk.org.ogsadai.convertors only imports from uk.org.ogsadai.common and uk.org.ogsadai.exception.
  • uk.org.ogsadai.client only imports from uk.org.ogsadai.convertors, uk.org.ogsadai.common and uk.org.ogsadai.exception.
• User documentation has been refactored [1, 7, 8, 10].
• Changes to arguments expected by command-line installation, deployment and client tools as a consequence of the bundling of third-party JARs.
• schema/ogsadai/xsd/general_types.xsd has been replaced by two files schema/ogsadai/xsd/perform.xsd and schema/ogsadai/xsd/response.xsd
• Data service resource creation refactored so that configuration files are parsed into configuration objects. Data service resource objects (uk.org.ogsadai.service.resource.DataServiceResource) are now created using these objects rather than files.
• All OGSA-DAI exceptions are now derived from OGSA-DAI exception classes in the uk.org.ogsadai.exception package.
• The following exceptions have been relocated:
  • uk.org.ogsadai.client.toolkit.exception.DAIException has been relocated uk.org.ogsadai.exception.DAIexception.
  • uk.org.ogsadai.exception.DAIDirectoryNotDirectoryException has been relocated to uk.org.ogsadai.common.files.DAIDirectoryNotDirectoryException
  • uk.org.ogsadai.exception.DAIDirectoryNotFoundException has been relocated to uk.org.ogsadai.common.files.DAIDirectoryNotFoundException
• Exceptions throughout the code base have been refactored.
• Improved support for internationalization both of logging messages and of exceptions.
• The client toolkit classes responsible for communications with services have been refactored:
  • A now-redundant layer of classes has been removed.
  • Setting of connection properties was rationalised [22, 45]
• Installers were refactored and improved to avoid having Web services container-specific targets.
• JavaDoc has been improved across the code base.

Bug Fixes

Bug fixes, in addition to those occuring as a side-effect of the above, are as follows:

• Client toolkit bugs relating to timeouts not being set or security properties not being set when using data transport operations have been fixed.
• Relational database schema is now accessed via activities rather than being exposed as resource properties. This allows database schema information to be streamed to a client using data transport operations and addresses the problem of certain databases causing OutOfMemoryExceptions that arose in previous versions of OGSA-DAI.
• Data transport putFully and putBlock are handled correctly by the client toolkit allowing these to be deserialized to integers, floats and booleans correctly service-side.
• Bugs in OGSA-DAI WSI WSDL have been fixed so that Apache Axis WSDL2Java can now be used to generate client-side stubs.
• The uk.org.ogsadai.examples.client.toolkit.ParameterisedUpdateViaDataTransport now works due to the refactorings in the client toolkit [22].
• Saving of resource properties files in the resource deployment tools now handle Windows paths to ensure that path-related information in the files appears correctly when the file is reloaded.

Known Problems

Known problems are listed on the Known Problems page.

Release 2.1

OGSA-DAI WSI 2.1 is a pure Web services version of OGSA-DAI. The OGSA-DAI WSI 2.1 source distribution is compatible with Apache Axis 1.2.1 or OMII 2.1 or 2.1 on Apache Axis 1.2RC3. The OGSA-DAI WSI 2.1 binary distribution comes in two flavours - one compatible with Apache Axis 1.2.1 and one compatible with OMII 2.0 or 2.1 on Apache Axis 1.2RC3.

Changes

The main changes between this and the previous release are as follows:

OGSA-DAI WSI 2.1 is almost identical to OGSA-DAI WSI 2.0 which was released just one week earlier. This release was motivated by:

• A need to allow data resource accessors to be notified whenever a session is terminated, so that session-related resource properties can be removed.
• A bug fix to ensure that a single block of data can flow through a pipeline containing an inputStream activity and an outputStream activity.

If you have OGSA-DAI WSI 2.0 and were not dependant on or concerned by these then there is no requirement for you to upgrade.

The additions / changes were as follows:

• In core/src/java/:
  • Changed uk.org.ogsadai.activity.ActivityRequest
  • Changed uk.org.ogsadai.activity.CallThroughExternalPipe
  • Changed uk.org.ogsadai.activity.CallThroughPipe
  • Changed uk.org.ogsadai.service.resource.DataServiceResource
  • Changed uk.org.ogsadai.sessions.SessionManagerFactory
  • Changed uk.org.ogsadai.sessions.SessionConfigurationLoader
  • Changed uk.org.ogsadai.sessions.impl.SessionConfiguration
  • Changed uk.org.ogsadai.sessions.impl.TransientSessionManager
  • Changed uk.org.ogsadai.sessions.impl.TransientSessionManagerFactory
  • Added uk.org.ogsadai.dataresource.DataResourceListener
  • Added uk.org.ogsadai.dataresource.DataResourceEvent
  • Added uk.org.ogsadai.dataresource.DataResourceEventDispatcher
  • Added uk.org.ogsadai.dataresource.TestDataResource
  • Added uk.org.ogsadai.sessions.impl.TransientSessionConfiguration
• In doc:
  • Changed tutorials/dataresource/howTo.html
  • Changed clients/clienttoolkit/ObtainingMetaData.html
  • Changed misc/HowToUpgrade.html
  • Changed misc/KnownProblems.html
  • Changed clients/clienttoolkit/index.html
  • Changed clients/clienttoolkit/SecureServices.html

Known Problems

There are two current issues that can arise with the use of OGSA-DAI WSI 2.1 under OMII. The OGSA-DAI team is currently working on resolving these and updated information will appear on the OGSA-DAI WWW site in due course.

• Information on deployed services is lost when the container is restarted. This means that you need to:
  • Deploy your data service resources before you start your container.
  • Then, EITHER deploy a configurable data service and then instruct it to expose the resources using our end-to-end client (as described in our pages on exposing data service resources via data services).
  • OR deploy a data service and instruct it to expose the resources using our ANT exposeResource target (as described in our pages on exposing data service resources via data services). So long as you do not invoke any operations on the service all resources you request be exposed will be exposed when you first communicate with the service.
• Non-secure service-to-service data transport will work only if you remove the file webapps/axis/WEB-INF/classes/client-config.wsdd from your container.

Other known problems are listed on the Known Problems page.

Release 2.0

OGSA-DAI WSI 2.0 is a pure Web services version of OGSA-DAI. The OGSA-DAI WSI 2.0 source distribution is compatible with Apache Axis 1.2.1 or OMII 2.0 or 2.1 on Apache Axis 1.2RC3. The OGSA-DAI WSI 2.0 binary distribution comes in two flavours - one compatible with Apache Axis 1.2.1 and one compatible with OMII 2.0 or 2.1 on Apache Axis 1.2RC3.

Features

The major features of this release are as follows:

• OGSA-DAI WSI 2.0 is compatible with both Apache Axis 1.2.1 and OMII 2.0 or 2.1 on Apache Axis 1.2RC3. It should still work with Apache Axis 1.2RC3 also (if you have the OGSA-DAI WSI 2.0 binary distribution for Apache Axis 1.2.1 you'll need to get the source distribution and compile against Apache Axis 1.2RC3).
• Data service resources support concurrent request execution and queueing of requests.
• All data service resources exposed by a specific service share the same settings for the number of concurrent requests that can be executed and the number that can be queued. These are specified at service deployment time.
• Sessions are now supported. Multiple perform documents can be submitted which operate within the context of the same session. Data transport operations now operate within the scope of a session.
• Data service accessors have been provided. These manage access to a data resource on behalf of a data service resource. They each have their own specific configuration files.
• Configurable data services provide an undeploy operation so that a service can be instructed to no longer expose a specific data service resource. This is reflected in the client toolkit.
• There have been numerous efficiency improvements most notably in the refactoring of our java.sql.ResultSet to WebRowSet converters.
• Client and server-side now support message-level security between clients and services for services deployed under OMII 2.0 or 2.1.
• The OGSA-DAI data browser is now compatible with both OGSA-DAI WSRF 2.0 and OGSA-DAI WSI 2.0 services.

Known Problems

Known problems are listed on the Known Problems page.

Changes

The main changes between this and the previous release are as follows:

• The date in all OGSA-DAI XML Schema namespaces have been updated i.e.:

  http://ogsadai.org.uk/namespaces/2005/03/...
  

  has been updated to:

  http://ogsadai.org.uk/namespaces/2005/10/...
  

• Data service resources now have a:
  • data resource class configuration file which specifies the data resource accessor to use.
  • session configuration file which specifies the maximum and default timeouts for sessions.
• Files data service resources no longer have associated role map documents.
• Data resource configuration files dataResource element no longer has the implementation attribute.
• Data resource configuration files for file data resources now have a new XML Schema. This is in schema/ogsadai/xsd/data_resource_config_files.xsd. The main changes are:
  • The driver element has been replaced by a rootDirectory element.
  • The rolemap is no longer needed.
  • The productInfo is no longer needed.
• Service interfaces have been completely refactored.
  • A terminate operation has been added. This is a placeholder and currently does nothing. It will be used to support request termination in future releases.
  • The updateRoleMaps operation for configurable data services no longer exists.
  • All OGSA-DAI-specific service operations throw one of five new fault types. The client toolkit has been completely refactored to reflect these fault types as Java exceptions.
• SQL activities no longer implicitly convert java.sql.ResultSets to WebRowSet. A new activity - sqlResultsToXML - has been provided to make this explicit. Whereas in previous releases you would use a sqlQueryStatement activity, for example, you now use a sqlQueryStatement activity connected to a sqlResultsToXML activity.
• Encrypted role map files are no longer supported and ogsadai-startup-tomcat.jar is no longer provided.
• OGSA-DAI tutorial examples are compiled as part of a source distribution build and are distributed within ogsadai-examples.jar.
• The Client Toolkit APIs have been modified to support sessions and concurrency. Some methods such as the poll method are now parameterised with a SessionID object. A user may attach session requirements to an ActivityRequest before performing it.
• The request status resource property available in previous versions is no longer available. Instead a session request status resource property is created dynamically whenever a new session is created. This indicates the processing status of the request that is currently joined to the session.

Release 1.0

OGSA-DAI WSI 1.0 is a pure Web services version of OGSA-DAI. Unlike OGSA-DAI WSRF, OGSA-DAI WSI can run on an Axis/Tomcat deployment - there are no Globus Toolkit dependencies.

Features

The major features of OGSA-DAI WSI 1.0 are as follows:

• Access to data is provided via an OGSA-DAI data service. For those already familiar with the OGSI version of OGSA-DAI this service amalgamates the capabilities of the GDSF and GDS services (the metadata and configuration roles of the GDSF and the metadata and perform document processing aspects of the GDS).
• Allows the exposure of multiple data service resources, where a data service resource represents a data resource plus a specification of the activities that can be performed on that data resource.
• Allows multiple data service resources to be accessed through a single service. Data service resource identifiers, provided in the query, allow a client to target a specific data service resource.
• A listResources() operation is provided at a data service to list all the data service resource identifiers available to that data service.
• The data service resource identifiers returned by a data service can subsequently be used by a client to obtain metadata, etc, about the data service resources corresponding to that identifier.
• Access to data service resource metadata (such as database schemas, request status, supported activities etc) is provided by an implementation of the WS-ResourceProperties specification. In particular support for using the GetResourceProperties, and GetMultipleResourceProperties portTypes is provided.
• Access to version information about the OGSA-DAI data service is available through the getVersion() operation. For instance invoking this will return the string "OGSA-DAI WSI 1.0", allowing you to determine what version of OGSA-DAI WSI is running at the server end.

Changes

The following OGSA-DAI WSI-specific changes have been made for this release:

• None to date.

The following general OGSA-DAI changes have been made for this release:

• Core OGSA-DAI functionality (the engine and data resource connection classes) has been abstracted out into a service-level independent module. OGSA-DAI OGSI, WSI and WSRF share exactly the same core code. Core OGSA-DAI functionality and activities are now Globus-independent.
• The namespaces of OGSA-DAI configuration, perform and response documents have been completely changed:
  • Perform and response documents are now declared within the http://ogsadai.org.uk/namespaces/2005/10/types namespace.
  • Data resource and activity configuration documents and roleMap documents are now declared within the http://ogsadai.org.uk/namespaces/2005/10/config namespace.
• The deliverToStream activity now delivers to a URL of form http://HOST:PORT/WEBAPP/servlet/DeliverToStreamServlet?url=http://HOST:PORT/WEBAPP/ogsadai/DataService&streamId=NAME - gsh has been renamed to url.
• Control flow constraints can now be expressed within perform documents. This means you can ensure that one activity will not start until another has completed e.g. ensuring that a new table is not filled with data until it has been created.
• Server-side exceptions outwith client control and authorisation failures have been refactored. The problems are logged in detail server-side and tagged with a unique ID. This ID, with a request to contract the service deployer, is returned to the client.
• All OGSA-DAI data services now provide a getVersion operation which returns the OGSA-DAI flavour and version number.
• GUI installation tools now allow required JARs to be selected via a file browser.
• GUI installation tools now render yes/no options as check boxes.

Bug Fixes

The following OGSA-DAI WSI-specific bug fixes have been made for this release:

• None to date.

The following general OGSA-DAI bug fixes have been made for this release:

• Client toolkit now raises an authorisation error if roleMapping fails server-side.
• sqlQueryStatement activity can now retrieve BLOB or IMAGE fields from databases.
• GridFTP-related delivery activities have had their JavaDoc, and the associated client toolkit JavaDoc revised to include details about how security credentials are used.
• WebRowSet processing code for SQL activities no longer has option to make results human-readable.
• Perform document schema property provided by OGSA-DAI service now includes required import statements.
• Response documents constructed in-code now meet the response document XML Schema.
• User doc front page now includes link to JavaDoc in binary distributions.
• Errors in stringTokenizerActivity JavaDoc have been corrected.
• Various user doc revisions and corrections have been made.
• GUI installation tools now no longer occasionally freeze.
• Installation tools now no longer need to edit the Tomcat server configuration file so problems with its location or format no longer arise.

Other Issues

• OGSA-DAI WSI does not currently support data service security.
• OGSA-DAI WSI does not currently support third-party delivery via push and pull operations (the DataTransport portType).
• OGSA-DAI WSI does not currently deploy upon OMII releases. This situation has arisen due to a divergence in Axis dependencies between OGSA-DAI WSI and the current OMII release, OMII 1.2. For more information please consult the OGSA-DAI WSI Installation Guide