Using the JBI JavaEE ServiceEngine

Update April 10th, 2008
An update has been provided on how to use the Java EE SE in the latest version of Netbeans. Please go here to read this update.
----------

In order to familiarize myself with different JBI components I would like to walk through an example using the JBI JavaEE Service Engine written by Sun. So what is the JavaEE Service Engine? It's a highly useful JBI component providing a bridge between the web container (glassfish) and the JBI container (OpenESB), or more specifically the NMR (Normalized Message Router). It's useful because it allows EJBs and Servlets, packaged as web services, to communicate directly with JBI components and vic versa. Consequently, this increases performance since the request/response doesn't have to travel in and out of the HTTP BC and the glassfish Servlet container.

So if you are writing EJB 3.0 web services, you have alot to gain by using BPEL and JBI in general, and you need to look into using the JavaEE SE. The following is a simple example of how to use it.

If you haven't already, first start out by downloading the latest OpenESB installer which includes Netbeans 6.0. Then follow this video tutorial to create a Composite Application consisting of a BPEL process invoking an EJB web service (but not using the JavaEE SE yet). This will help us create our web service and get familiar with BPEL and Netbeans. If you prefer to skip this step I have uploaded the EJB Module, BPEL Module, and Composite Application for convenience. After completing this step your casa file should look like this (in netbeans, right click on the CompositeApplication and click Edit Application Configuration):



Notice there are no endpoints for the JavaEE SE. Here is the sequence of events when running the test included in the HelloBPELCompositeApp:
http client --> inbound HTTP BC --> BPEL SE --> outbound HTTP BC --> Glassfish Servlet Container --> invoke Hello web service --> response.

The next step is to actually utilize the JavaEE SE advantages. This only requires adding the EJB module as a JBI module to the HelloBPELCompositeApp. In JBI you can add multiple JBI Modules (Service Units) to Composite Applications (Service Assembly). In netbeans, right click on HelloBPELCompositeApp and click Add JBI Module. Select Hello, which is the EJB Module. If you expand the JBI Modules directory under HelloBPELCompositeApp, you should see Hello.jar and HelloBPEL.jar. Before we can redeploy we first must modify the casa file to remove the existing connection between the outbound HTTP endpoint and glassfish. Reopen the casa file (in netbeans, right click on the CompositeApplication and click Edit Application Configuration), and highlight the line going between the HelloRole_partnerRole Consumer to the HelloPort Provider. Your casa file should look like this now and this verifies that we are going through the JavaEE SE:



--
April 8th, 2008 Update
Since this post is pretty popular I have an update since this post doesn't work with the latest version OpenESB+Netbeans. Not only do you have to remove the line as described above, but you also need to remove the SOAP Port, otherwise you will receive an "java.net.BindException: Already bound: 8080". So in the image above highlight and delete the HelloPort.

Also in newer versions of Netbeans access to the CASA file is done by double clicking on the Service Assembly file under your Composite Application project.
--

Rebuild HelloBPELCompositeApp by right clicking and choosing Clean and Build. Then undeploy and deploy HelloBPELCompositeApp. Finally rerun the test and it should pass. Again we know the JavaEE SE is being used based off the casa file. The new sequence of events are:
http client --> inbound HTTP BC --> BPEL SE --> JavaEE SE --> invoke Hello web service --> response.

It should be obvious where the performance improvement is located. That is what makes the JavaEE SE so powerful. For convenenice, here is the final netbeans Composite Application project with the modified casa file.

If you are curious to know what netbeans was doing under the covers for us when creating the EJB Module Service Unit here is a quick explanation. In netbeans and File view you can expand the build directory under HelloBPELCompositeApp. Next expand the Hello.jar service unit. There you will see the jbi.xml and an empty sun-resources.xml. The jbi.xml file defines the endpoints the JavaEE SE must activate. These endpoints will be used by the BPEL SE consumer endpoint. Also interesting is it includes a binary of the Hello Service (Hello.class).