[kepler-dev] complex data types and web service harvester..

[Bertram Ludaescher]

>>>>> "IA" == Ilkay Altintas <altintas at sdsc.edu> writes:
IA> 
IA> Bertram,
IA> WSHarvester in the Alpha3 doesn't work due to some problem with the 
IA> annotation. Shawn and I have been working on it since then. It is 
IA> almost working again including the dynamic registy of services into the 
IA> actor library.

good news! So I guess it'll be in the upcoming beta release, right? 

IA> For the complex type, web service features in Kepler has not been 
IA> designed to handle complex Java types because of type mapping issues.  
IA> It was a design decision that was made when this actor was design. So 
IA> it is a feature not a bug. =) 

I see =B-)

IA> There might be a way to map complex 
IA> XMLSchema types but I couldn't yet come up with a method that maps any 
IA> XMLSchema type to a Ptolemy type. Any suggestions on this are welcome.

I suggest to discuss it ;) 
Maybe we can have a meeting/Kepler phone conf on this.

Oh-- btw: I would like to suggest also to have a Kepler wiki similar
to the SEEK wiki. We could have a more high-level
user-readable/friendly discussion board this way. So there might be a
page for each of the following:
(1) Complex XML Schema types and WS-Harvester
(2) Kepler actor repository
(3) Semantic types
(4) ...

A stylesheet for the discussion might help, e.g.
(A) Intro to the problem/issue
(B) Specific issues/suggestions
(C) Comments

Comments should be open to anyone; other sections of the discussion
might only be editable by Kepler members.

what do you think? 

I find both the bugzilla as well as the mailing list not ideal for
some of these discussions.. maybe a Wiki-based forum might help to
bundle the issues

IA> I know Jesus et al. had the same problem in the bio. workbench and they 

right .. hence the cc..

IA> decided to build static clients for their web services instead of a 
IA> dynamic proxy. We can also try similar approach if there are web 
IA> services that require special type handling.
IA> 
IA> If I remember right from the Seek meeting in may, the web services from 
IA> Kansas had java object types. So it might not be possible to use the 
IA> web service actor as a client for them.

why not? Are they incompatible?? That's an interesting (sub-)issue
(1.x) for (1) above.

hmmm.. maybe we need another parameter (or smart logic) to set (or
better: detect) what kind of type system is to be used...

arghh... what ever happened to the simple interoperability of web
services.... 

and people talk about grid service extensions while we can't even get
web services to work uniformly... brave new world ;-)

*sigh* 

Bertram

IA> 
IA> Ilkay
IA> 
IA> 
IA> 
IA> 
IA> On Nov 4, 2004, at 7:42 AM, Bertram Ludaescher wrote:
IA> 
>> 
>> Ilkay et al:
>> 
>> I was just trying to  harvest the WSDL on this page:
>> http://seek.ecoinformatics.org/Wiki.jsp?page=TaxonMtg_Nov2004
>> but didn't succeed.
>> 
>> I think there might be  several reasons why:
>> 
>> (1) I don't know how to actually use the web service harvester ;-) Can
>> we put some info under right-click."Get Documentation"?
>> 
>> (2) I'm using the alpha3 so maybe the ws harvester doesn't work there?
>> 
>> (3) There seems to be a fundamental problem (Matt just pointed out
>> during our SEEK mtg), i.e., that the ws actors/harvester cannot handle
>> comples WSDL/XML Schema types.
>> 
>> I suspect that other ws clients (e.g. Java based ones) might have
>> similar problems in generating a good mapping from complex XML Schema
>> types to a Java object type (or in our case a Ptolemy complex type).
>> 
>> Any ideas anyone? (Is there already a bugzilla entry for this?)
>> 
>> Bertram
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> kepler-dev mailing list
>> kepler-dev at ecoinformatics.org
>> http://www.ecoinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/kepler-dev