Resources for Mark Watson's Sun ONE Services Book

Last update: August 11, 2002

I wrote this book in the summer of 2001. The Java platform changes fairly rapidly, so I use this page to provide up to date links for various J2EE and Sun ONE specifications and other resources. I also invite you to visit my main web site for Open Source and Open Content (including a free web book on Java and artificial intelligence).

News flash - Sun Java Web Services Developer Pack 1.0 available

This kit gives you Tomcat for servlet/JSP and support, SOAP support, UDDI directory support, and ebXML support.

I highly recommend this kit.

Downloading the Example Programs

Click HERE to download a 1.2 megabyte ZIP file containing the examples for this book. Please, if you do not have my Sun ONE book, do not bother to download this file as it will not be of much use to you without the book.

If you have any problems with these examples, first read this entire web page to see if anyone else had similar problems and to see if there is a known workaround. If you notice a problem, send me an email with a clear description of the problem (and if possible, a workaround) and I will update this web page to help other readers.

You will also need the Xerces XML parser for several examples (e.g., the UDDI client). Get it here (get version 1.X for compatibility with the book examples, but version 2.x should be OK also).

Required Software to use the Example Programs

In the book, I discuss several good Java application servers. To get started, I recommend starting with the current stable Java development kit (version 1.3.1) and the latest Sun J2EE reference platform (1.3 FCS version).

Book corrections

1. Chapter 2: page 21: chapter title should be "Overview of Different Platforms for Building Web Services".
2. Chapter 8: pages 158-163: Using WASP: Wasp_liite, as described in the book, is no longer available. Systinet makes their professional WASP 4 available for free use under a "one CPU only" license. If you want to use WASP 4, it runs as a standalone server so it is not required to install it running under Tomcat (as described in the book). Download WASP 4, and read the file README for a quick start on getting the WASP server up and running. Systinet has an online tutorial that you should read before working through the WASP related material in Chapter 8.
3. Chapter 8: page 164: reference to free tools and JBuilder: JBuilder 4 Foundation was a free IDE; JBuilder 5 personal is licensed for non-commercial use only. I now use NetBeans and Emacs with JDE for all my Java delopment work.
4. Chapter 8: pages 171-172: Apache SOAP: since writing this book, I have used Apache SOAP extensively, and recommend it. The Apache project also has a new SOAP project Axis that is currently at version alpha 2 (as of September 21, 2001).
5. Chapter 11: Note: the Enhydra Enterprise Server is no longer available as Open Source software. If you do not need EJBs for your application, you can use Enhydra, which is still available at www.enhydra.org .
6. Chapter 11: page 220: listing at bottom of page: The first line line-wrapped into two lines; type this command all on one line.
7. Chapter 12: page 245: The text states that InstantDB is free for non-commercial use; this is no longer true. I do distribute an old version of InstantDB with my Open Source NLBean project, but I have special permission from Lutris Technologies to do this.
8. Chapter 17: pages 343 and 344: directions for setting up the example using Sun's J2EE reference platform: start the j2ee server, then start the deploy tool. Then, using the deploy tool's File->Open menu, open the 5 ear files listed at the bottom of page 343 (these are found in the src/givingspace directory). Once these five ear files are opened, for each one, select it, then use the Tools->Deploy menu to deploy to the running J2EE server (for me, for my testing, this is always on localhost or 127.0.0.1). Once these ear files are deployed, start the research and CORBA servers (Windows command files are in src/givingspace; you have to create your own Unix shell scripts - trivial since these batch files are one-liners). Then, in a web browser, visit the URL http://127.0.0.1:8000/web to login to the GivingSpace demo.

Notes on CIA World FactBook Examples

Notes on running the complete GivingSpace example from Chapter 17

First, read the additional instructions in the "Book Corrections" section of this page for Chapter 17.

Most problems are caused by either missing libraries (e.g., CORBA naming classes) or problems with a firewall preventing local connections for testing. I run Mac OS X with Norton Internet Security that has a fine frewall setup, except that it is not flexible enough to set permissions for web access other than port 80. As a result, I find that to do web services development I have to break by Internet connection and temporarily shut down my firewall. If you are doing your own firewall under Linux, etc. using IP chains, you can allow connections from localhost (or 127.0.0.1) to ports 8000, 8080, etc.

If you are having problems with missing libraries at runtime, a quick kluge is to place JAR files for these libraries in your $JDK/lib/ext directory (but remove them when you are done).

Since running the complete example from Chapter 17 has been problematic for some people (it takes me a while to get everything set up from scratch also!), I am currently looking into packaging JBoss and Tomcat with the example and distributing one big ZIP file. Currently (May 10, 2002) I am experimenting with a setup for this. For most readers however, I still recommend Sun's J2EE reference plaform.

Example program corrections

<<none so far>>

Sun ONE Starter Kit

For about $20, you can order a complete starter kit from Sun. Alternatively, everything you need can be downloaded from java.sun.com .