GWT and Mule Playing Together

Mule is a leading open source solution for organizations to integrate and harmonize disparate systems within their enterprise. It also provides a fast track to SOA enable many of the functions within the organization and bring down barriers to application development and integration.

GWT (Google Web Toolkit) is a popular and leading framework for building AJAX web applications. There are a number of ways for GWT applications to communicate, the standard one is through its built-in RPC mechanism but there is no easy way for your GWT applications to talk with Mule endpoints directly.

SOAFaces is a lightweight framework that ties GWT and Mule together and makes it possible for GWT apps to access the Mule API and services directly from the AJAX client. This is done through the SOAFaces UniversalClient java interface which is very similar to the MuleClient interface found in the Mule APIs. The UniversalClient allows for messages to be invoked on Mule endpoints (SOA endpoints) and objects/data to be passed and returned directly from the GWT client code. All this is done without the need to use the GWT RPC mechanism. Simply use the UniversalClient interface in much the same way you would traditionally use the MuleClient interface in the Mule framework.

SOAFaces provides three sub APIs to develop with:

org.sofaces.services.*

This is the main package that includes the UniversalClient interface and facilitates the communication and marshaling (JSON or GWT/Java serializable objects) between GWT client and Mule/SOA back end services. This package can be used independently with any custom GWT application and in any j2ee app server. Mule endpoints can be invoked and messages will be routed to a MuleClient proxy on the j2ee back end. This is all transparent to the GWT/SOAFaces developer. Mule requests from GWT are proxied through the webserver and out to the Mule services bus, with all marshaling handled by SOAFaces.

org.soafaces.bundle.client.*

This package in SOAFaces makes it easy to build modular GUI applications (called Weblets) in GWT that have convenient access to SOA services like Mule (using UniversalClient interface). This package also provides a simple and optional API to persist the state of GWT POJO objects, so building modular web apps is easier and with less hassle using SOAFaces!

org.soafaces.bundle.workflow.*

This package in SOAFaces allows building back end server components called Tasklets. Tasklets can be used in jobs and workflows to execute back end batch type processing. Tasklets can be chained together to form more complex workflows and allowing message passing between the Tasklets which provides for rich functionality to be supported. Refer to JobServer for an example of a job scheduling engine that implements the Tasket API and for running and managing jobs.

The SOAFaces framework brings together these APIs for building Mule and GWT powered applications making accessing Mule a quick hop away from your AJAX apps.

For more information please refer to the SOAFaces website.

JobServer 2.6.0 beta released - packed with enterprise features

Grand Logic is pleased to announce the release of JobServer 2.6.0 JobServer). This release includes improved SOA and enterprise capabilities along with significant architectural improvements and reliability features.

Some of the new capabilities in this release include:

• Support for the latest version of Mule (version 2.2.1)
• High-availability features with support for hot fail-over of job scheduling
  
• Tiered architecture allowing web tier, job processing/scheduling tier, and database tier to be on separate host machines
• Support for web tier clustering - running JobServer's web GUI Workbench tools across a cluster of Tomcat servers
• Support for running Weblets/GWT and Mule/SOA services across cluster of machines
  

This release presents a number of key enterprise features that allows JobServer to play vital role in an organization's IT computing environment. Run and schedule jobs easier than ever before and now you have access the best SOA tools and APIs to build rich web based and SOA applications using GWT and Mule.

Never before is has it been easier to build Mule applications and deploy them in your IT environment. Build web GUIs for your Mule services in highly modular way using JobServer's tools and plugin SDK. Build your Mule services and deploy them in JobServer and easily build GWT powered GUI interfaces to your Mule services. JobServer makes using Mule easy.

JobServer Weblet/Mule architecture diagram

JobServer Job scheduling/processing architecture diagram

Download and test drive JobServer 2.6.0 now and learn more about JobServer's powerful plugin SDK, SOAFaces, that makes extending and customizing JobServer and developing custom jobs and SOA applications easier while using some of the best Java/AJAX and web/SOA open source technology available to developers.

About Grand Logic
Grand Logic is a privately held company focused on delivering quality software to its customers. It is founded on the principle that when innovation, dedication, and hard work come together great things can happen.

JobServer Now Supports GWT and SOA

With the latest release of JobServer 2.4.6, JobServer now support building GWT and SOA powered applications. JobServer is a great environment for building jobs and backend tasklets and now it is a great way to build and deploy GWT/SOA powered application. Check out JobServer powerful open source framework, SOAFaces. SOAFaces makes building and deploying GWT and SOA driving applications a snap.

JobServer provides a unique GWT application building tool that allows developers to build modular and component based GWT and SOA powered applications. JobServer Standard edition is now available for free!

Download and test drive JobServer 2.4.6 now and learn more about JobServer's powerful plugin SDK, SOAFaces, that makes extending and customizing JobServer and developing custom applications easier while using some of the best Java/AJAX and web/SOA open source technology available to developers.

About Grand Logic
Grand Logic is a privately held company focused on delivering quality software to its customers. It is founded on the principle that when innovation, dedication, and hard work come together great things can happen.

JobServer 2.4.6 - Free Edition is Here

Grand Logic is pleased to announce the release of JobServer 2.4.6. Starting with this release JobServer Standard Edition is available free! JobServer gives you the ability to build jobs and GWT/SOA powered applications.

Jobs can be built from modular building blocks and scheduled with JobServer's powerful job scheduler. JobServer also provides a unique GWT application building tool that allows developers to build modular and component based GWT and SOA powered applications. JobServer Standard edition is now available for free!

JobServer Standard is the entry level version but is fully featured. It comes with a built-in and lightweight database, which helps make it convenient to setup and get started out of the box - in minutes.All you need to have installed is the JDK. It supports most of the major functionality found in the high-end versions and is most applicable to environments with under a few hundred jobs/applications and moderate load. Developers wanting to develop new SOAFaces components in their development environment will find it handy. Even use it in Production environments and watch JobServer make your job scheduling chores and critical business transactions manageable and breeze to administer and monitor. Use JobServer in your Production environment and rest easy that your job processing is being handled reliably.

Download and test drive JobServer 2.4.6 now and learn more about JobServer's powerful plugin SDK, SOAFaces, that makes extending and customizing JobServer and developing custom jobs and applications easier while using some of the best Java/AJAX and web/SOA open source technology available to developers.

About Grand Logic
Grand Logic is a privately held company focused on delivering quality software to its customers. It is founded on the principle that when innovation, dedication, and hard work come together great things can happen.

JobServer Release 2.4.2

Grand Logic is pleased to announce the release of JobServer 2.4.2. This latest release introduces key new features and usability improvements to reporting and monitoring. One of the most requested features, the ability to run jobs in process or out of process, is available with this release. This feature provides users with the ability to customize, at an individual job level or at a Partition level, whether jobs run in the main JVM or in their own isolated JVM.

This release also includes a number of usability improvements including the ability by users to kill jobs and delete jobs directly from the JobTracker UI. Running and managing jobs is now easier than ever with this latest release of JobServer.

Download and test drive JS 2.4.2 now and learn more about JobServer's powerful plugin SDK that makes extending JobServer and developing custom jobs and applications easier while using some of the best Java and web open source technology available to developers.

About Grand Logic
Grand Logic is a privately held company focused on delivering quality software to its customers. It is founded on the principle that when innovation, dedication, and hard work come together great things can happen.

SOA Job Scheduling - Out of the Dark Ages

Classical batch job scheduling is still caught in the dark ages (or more specifically the 1980s). Many organizations still run jobs in arcane cron driven types of environments and manage their jobs in ad hoc ways with hard to track/report and administer systems. There are expensive mainframe and client/server job management platforms out there but they are out dated, for the most part, and are complex to manage and not very open or developer friendly.

Batch job scheduling and workflow processing in general is missing the SOA bandwagon and leaving the developer and the enterprise with a patch work of ad hoc solutions to deal with. To solve this challenge several issues need to be addressed. One, there is a need for a standard way to build server-side processing tasks that are modular/reusable and can be composed into more complex jobs that can be wired together at design time. Second, server-end tasks need convenient integration with ESBs and other web services type of infrastructure to make it easy to build jobs that can access the evolving SOA environments emerging in many organizations. Lastly what is needed a is to put a nice face on your hard working blue collar batch jobs and tasks. Wouldn't be nice if you could configure a job/task from an AJAX web application to quickly customize the job's properties? And wouldn't be nice if you could do this using SOA services available in your environment and be able to build, package and deploy these batch jobs and their supporting GUI applications (property customizers) quickly and easily?

There is no sliver bullet, but what is needed is an open standard for building batch tasks/jobs. Well as you may have guessed we have the answer. SOAFaces is just such a framework. It is built with all these challenges in mind and with goal to make building modular batch jobs and SOA applications modular and reusable.

SOAFaces provides a unique approach to the solution. Here is how it works. A job can be composed of one or more tasklets. A tasklet is a rather simple server-side interface that once implemented does your bidding. Tasklets can be chained together to form more complex jobs (tasklets in a job need no prior knowledge of each other). A tasklet can optionally have one input JavaBean and one output JavaBean. The input JavaBean can be customized (its properties can be edited) by something called a weblet. This is a GWT driven modular web component that functions as the GUI customizer for the tasklet's input JavaBean. Note that the input JavaBean and weblet are optional. You can build for example a simple or just hardwired tasklet with no customizer inputs at all. So many of the features are optional to help keep simple things easy and hard things possible. The attached diagram show how tasklets and weblets work together to build SOA powered jobs.

This diagram shows the three states that a job can be in. First is the design time, when the job is being configured and wired together. This is when the weblet can be used to customize the input JavaBeans used by the tasklets among other things. Second is the processing/runtime mode when the tasklets are run as part of a job. In this stage the tasklets can consume an input JavaBean and produce an output JavaBean. The post runtime mode, defines the period after which the tasklet/job has run and end users can view the logging history of the tasklet/job and what input/output JavaBeans where used by it. This is very critical for auditing and reporting.

With the SOAFaces framework, both the weblet and the tasklet also have direct access to web services so resources across the enterprise can be accessed and used to both configure the job at design time or execute the job at runtime and with convient access to SOA service like Mule and other web services.

The final piece of the SOAFaces framework is the packaging of tasklets and weblets into bundles. A tasklet and corresponding weblet can be packaged into a JAR called a SOAFaces Bundle (aka SFB). This is a modular and self contained package that can be dropped into any job processing container that supports SOAFaces to allow developers and end users to quickly plug in new components to build jobs.

For a complete example of how SOAFaces can be used to build a robust and extensible job scheduling and management platform check out JobServer. JobServer supports and implements the SOAFaces framework giving developers and end users the features and capabilities discussed.

JobServer 2.0.14 released with Ext GWT support

The latest release of JobServer 2.0 now provides support for Ext GWT. You can now build your SOA weblets and jobs using the full power of GWT 1.5 and Ext GWT. JobServer allows you to build full blown SOA applications and jobs using the GWT framework and now you can take full advantage of GWT by using the advanced UI widgets available from Ext GWT. By combining JobServer with Ext GWT you can now build powerful and visually compeling web applications while leveraging the full power of SOA and ESBs like Mule.

JobServer allows developers to build and deploy SOA powered applications and jobs using a modular architecture. Build GUI applications using GWT and deploy them dynamically to the JobServer platform while empowering your GWT applications with easy access to web services and backend ESB services. JobServer makes it easy to build GUI applications that are decoupled from the backend, while allowing easy integration with existing and new web services. With JobServer there is no need to write GWT RPC code. Read more about how JobServer and its open source SDK, SOAFaces, and how it allows developers to build modular SOA powered applications and batch jobs.

Download and test drive JS 2.0 now and learn more about the powerful SOAFaces SDK that makes developing jobs and applications easier while using the best Java and web technology available to developers.

About Grand Logic
Grand Logic is a privately held company focused on delivering quality software to its customers. It is founded on the principle that when innovation, dedication, and hard work come together great things can happen.