WSO2 Web Services Application Server(WSO2 WSAS) 3.0 Release Notes

6th February 2009

WSO2 WSAS is the Enterprise ready Web services engine powered by Apache Axis2. It is a lightweight application server for Web services that incorporates leading open source components into a simple, easy-to-use and highly performant package. WSAS is based on the revolutionary WSO2 Carbon [2] framework, Middleware a la carte'. Now you can adopt the middleware to suite your enterprise architecture. All the major features have been developed as pluggable Carbon components.

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 fully 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 also integrates other core Apache Web services projects such as Apache Axiom, Apache Rampart, Apache Sandesha2, Apache Savan , 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 functionality as well.

Key Features

• Data services support - Expose you enterprise data as a services in a jiffy
• WSAS IDE - Eclipse IDE integration
• Clustering support for High Availability & High Scalability
• Full support for WS-Security, WS-Trust, WS-Policy and WS-Secure Conversation and XKMS
• EJB service provider support - Expose your EJBs as services
• Axis1 backward compatibility - Deploy Axis1 services on WSAS & Engage advanced WS-* protocols in front of legacy services
• JMX & Web interface based monitoring and management
• WS-* & REST support
• GUI, command line & IDE based tools for Web service development

New Features In This Release

• Based on the OSGi based WSO2 Carbon architecture. This is a unification of all Java based products from WSO2. Now you can have features from the lightweight super-fast WSO2 ESB & the super-cool WSO2 MashupServer, running on your WSAS instance. You can mix and match the functionality you require according to requirements of your enterprise. The middleware can be adopted to your architecture. You could even extend the middleware by developing your own middleware components.
• Enhanced admin UI
• Extensible server admin framework
• WS-Eventing support
• Policy editor
• Separable frontend & backend - a single frontend server can be used to administer several backend servers simultaneously
• Various bug fixes and enhancements.

The full feature list is available at http://wso2.org/projects/wsas/java/features

XML & WS-* Standards Support

• SOAP 1.1/1.2
• WSDL 1.1
• WSDL 2.0
• MTOM, XOP & SOAP with Attachments
• WS-Addressing
• WS-Security 1.0/1.1
• WS-Trust
• WS-SecureConversation
• WS-SecurityPolicy
• WS-ReliableMessaging
• WS-Policy
• WS-PolicyAttachment
• WS-MetadataExchange
• WS-Transfer
• WS-Eventing
• 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)
• Spring Framework

Tools

• AJAX based Management Console with complete administration capability of the server
• WSDL2Java/Java2WSDL/WSDL 1.1 to WSDL 2.0 Converter/AAR & Mar Validator and Try it(invoke any remote Web service)
• 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 it's transformed into an AAR, its services.xml will be replaced by the generated services.xml. In addition to this, the user cannot 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 such services will not work.
2. WS-Policy support is limited to policy expressions with a single policy alternative.
3. You cannot have two different versions of the Apache Sandesha2 module in the system.
4. Persistent RM is still in the experimental stage
5. 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.
6. The 'Try It' feature does not work for MTOM enabled services.
7. Cannot connect to a JMX service using a JMX client tool such as jconsole from a remote machine when the server is running on Linux. See http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6209663. To rectify this, you should edit the /etc/hosts file on the server machine and set the correct IP address.
8. Data Services, Axis1 services, Javascript services & POJO services cannot be deployed using the URL-based repository configuration

Reporting Problems

Contact us

Training

WSO2 Inc. offers a variety of professional Training Programs, including training on general Web services as well as WSO2 WSAS, Apache Axis2, Data Services and a number of other products. For additional support information please refer to http://wso2.com/training/course-catalog/

Support

WSO2 Inc. offers a variety of development and production support programs, ranging from Web-based support up through normal business hours, to premium 24x7 phone support.

For additional support information please refer to http://wso2.com/support/

For more information on WSO2 WSAS, visit the WSO2 Oxygen Tank

How to do various things with WSAS- WSAS HOWTO Series

Thank you for your interest in WSO2 WSAS