post past :: james murty

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1. SOAP - the complexity of simple

   A friend recently asked me how to go about writing code to access a SOAP API to perform a one-off task.

   Below is the bare-bones step-by-step summary I sent him. I feel sorry for anyone encountering this travesty for the first time...

   • Find a good free SOAP library (eg Apache Axis)
   • Obtain the WSDL (Web Service Definition Language) document that describes the SOAP service you will talk to
   • Feed the WSDL into a tool in your SOAP library to generate client stub code. This stub code exposes the services functionality and handles all communication. Each SOAP library should have such a tool, but they all work differently
   • Write your program to use the client stub code. You will generally build up objects representing your data using classes provided in the client stub code, then call a "send" method of some sort to actually transmit that data to the SOAP service
   • Hope like crazy that the SOAP library you chose is compatible with the library used by the service. If not, start again at point 1

   Tags: Coding

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2. SQS API update (2008-01-01)

   Amazon have announced a new API version (2008-01-01) for the Simple Queue Service. The new API promises much cheaper usage fees for the service, but the API update includes a number of major changes that are not compatible with prior API versions.

   For those already familiar with SQS, you can find a detailed list of changes in the document Migrating to Amazon SQS API Version 2008-01-01.

   This new API works quite differently to the previous versions and will not support all of the features necessary for the examples in the Programming S3... book. In particular, the loss of the ChangeMessageVisibility operation will make it impossible to implement the automated visibility extension mechanism included in the boto service example. The fact that all existing SQS tools will be incompatible with the new API is also problematic for the SQS Applications chapter.

   The book is well into the production process and we will not have enough time to update the SQS chapters to cover the new API, especially as we would also have to wait until the third-party libraries and tools we demonstrate to be updated. Keeping up with Amazon is proving to be quite a challenge.

   I will write sample code (Ruby, Java, Python) that is compatible with the new API and will include this in the online resources we will make available when the book is released. This code, and a brief summary of API changes, may be as much as we can do to cover the new API in the book.

   Tags: AWS O'Reilly Book

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3. JetS3t version 0.6.0 released

   I am pleased to announce the release of JetS3t version 0.6.0, available now from the JetS3t web site.

   This release has been a long time coming (over a year since 0.5.0) and it includes numerous bug fixes and enhancements.

   Here are some highlights:

   • Support for buckets located in Europe, including the ability to create these buckets in Cockpit
   • Administration tasks run much faster by using more communication threads by default
   • Support for generating S3 POST upload forms that will allow users to upload data from a web browser directly to your S3 account
   • An increased range of encryption algorithms are available thanks to the Bouncy Castle library, and the encryption algorithm is now configurable in Cockpit via the Preferences dialog
   • Added a brand new application called CockpitLite, which allows you to provide third parties with mediated access to your S3 account via the Gatekeeper
   • Rudimentary bandwidth throttling for uploads
   • REST implementation now automatically adjusts for clock differences between a client machine and S3 (ie RequestTimeTooSkewed failures will be a thing of the past)
   • The Synchronize application has been made more configurable with a range of new options
   • Includes configuration options for requesting specific TCP window size settings from your kernel

   Refer to the RELEASE_NOTES.txt document for a full list of enhancements.

   Tags: AWS JetS3t

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