WSO2 Web Services Application Server(WSO2 WSAS) 2.1 Release Notes

10th October 2007

WSO2 WSAS is the Enterprise ready Web services engine powered by Apache Axis2. It is lightweight application server for Web services that incorporates leading open source components into a simple, easy-to-use and highly performant package.

It supports Java components as services using both SOAP and REST models. Web services support include WS-Security, WS-Trust, WS-SecureConversation, WS-Reliable Messaging, WS-Addressing, WS-Policy, WS-SecurityPolicy and more, giving a full secure and reliable infrastructure that interoperates with both J2EE and .NET frameworks using open standard protocols.

WSO2 WSAS is built on Apache Axis2, the popular Web services framework mainly developed by WSO2 engineers. WSO2 WSAS provides many value additions on top of Axis2, making it a more enterprise ready product. It integrates other core Apache Web services projects such as Apache Axiom, Apache Rampart, Apache Sandesha2 , and Apache Neethi to form a production quality, comprehensive Web services server platform.

An open source product, WSO2 WSAS is available under the Apache Software License (v2.0). This includes all of the extra integration and management functionalities as well.

WSO2 WSAS can be used as a standalone server or within a J2EE compliant servlet container. It also contains client components required to communicate with services. The support for WS-ReliableMessaging and WS-Security means that WSO2 WSAS is ideal for hosting B2B solutions, or building enterprise class integrated applications.

New Features In This Release

• Data services support for RDBMS, MS-Excel(97-2003),CSV and JNDI data sources
• WSAS IDE - Eclipse IDE integration
  • JAVA2WSDL form completion of all round web services cycle through IDE
  • Inclusion of offline Web Services Archive build feature with all resources
  • Introduction of WSAS Tools from IDE (Validators AAR/MAR, WSDL Converter 1.1->2.0)
  • All the WSAS Preferences now persist through Eclipse Preferences
  • Debug features now can be configured from preferences
  • Various Bug fixes and improvements
• Easy to use tools in the WSAS console
  • WSDL2Java
  • Java2WSDL
  • WSDL 1.1 to WSDL 2.0 converter
  • Try it for public WSDLs available either 1.1 or 2.0 versions
  • AAR/MAR Validators
• Various bug fixes since the WSAS 2.0 release

WS-* Support

• SOAP 1.1/1.2
• WSDL 1.1
• WSDL 2.0
• MTOM, XOP & SOAP with Attachments
• WS-Addressing
• WS-Security
• WS-Trust
• WS-SecureConversation
• WS-MetaDataExchange
• WS-SecurityPolicy
• WS-ReliableMessaging
• WS-Policy
• WS-PolicyAttachment
• WS-MetadataExchange
• WS-Transfer
• XKMS

Open Source components included in WSO2 WSAS/Java

• Apache Axis2 (SOAP)
• Apache Axiom (High performance XML Object Model)
• Apache Rampart/Apache WSS4J (WS-Security)
• Apache Rahas(WS-SecureConversation)
• Apache Sandesha2 (WS-ReliableMessaging)
• WS-Addressing implementation in Axis2
• Apache Neethi (WS-Policy)
• WS-SecurityPolicy implementation in Axis2
• Apache XML Schema
• Apache Derby (Database)
• Hibernate (Persistence)
• Embedded Apache Tomcat
• Apache Tribes (Group Communications Framework)

Tools

• AJAX based Management Console with complete administration capability of the server
• Command line system administration tool
• WS-Commons TCPMon
• WSDL2Java/Java2WSDL/WSDL 1.1 to WSDL 2.0 Converter/AAR & Mar Validator and General Try it tools
• IDE Integration

Apache Axis2 modules included with WSO2 WSAS

• Apache Rampart: Supporting WS-Security & WS-Trust
• Apache Rahas: Supporting WS-SecureConversation
• Apache Sandesha2: Supporting WS-Reliable Messaging
• Mex: Supporting WS-MetaDataExchange
• Throttle: For throttling requests
• Statistics: For gathering & monitoring statistics
• Tracer: For tracing SOAP requests & responses
• WSO2 WSAS Administration: For administering Web services
• XFer: Supporting WS-Transfer
• XKMS: Supporting XML Key Management Specification

Known Issues

1. POJO to Web service feature is still at an experimental stage. One can upload jar/zip file and can create an AAR out of it. If you uploaded a jar/zip file which has the semantics of an AAR, when its transformed into AAR its services.xml will be replaced by the generated services.xml. In addition to this, the user cannot give associate any library dependencies or web content with the generated AAR file.
   • Due to limitations in Axis2, method overloading is not supported, and hence the WSDL for services where methods are overloaded cannot be generated. Hence all WSDL based functionality related to services will not work.
2. WS-Policy support is still in the experimental stage and limited to single port scenarios.
3. You cannot have two different versions of the Apache Sandesha2 module in the system.
4. A <parameter name="OmitSOAP12Action">true</parameter> entry has been added to the HTTP & HTTPS transportSenders in order to overcome some issues with some browsers. In case of interoperability failures, please change the value of this parameter to false and retry.
5. The 'Try It' feature does not work for MTOM enabled services.
6. Persistent Reliable Messaging support is experimental. Thus it might not provide QoS expected, during every possible interruption scenario..
7. When daemon.sh is used in Gentoo kernel that runs on Intel processors with 32/64 bit, users probably have to rename the native binaries with the proper name as given in error message.

Reporting Problems

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Thank you for your interest in WSO2 WSAS