JISC

As the number of web service tools in the JISC e-Learning Framework increases steadily, there is a need for generic software resources that can deploy these tools seamlessly into Virtual Learning Environments and manage access to them. This project makes this possible.

The aim of the project was to assemble a toolkit that, given a Web Services Description Language (WSDL) document, will automatically generate consumer software for the associated Web service together with an interface that makes it available as a resource in a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). This Service-Oriented Consumer Kit for JISC e-Learning Framework Tools (SOCKET) will be an invaluable resource for both the tool developer and teaching communities.

The VLE will obtain information about the proxy services available to it by interrogating the toolkit’s service registry.  Access to the security domains to which the Web services belong will be controlled by the Guanxi security system.

The resultant hybrid VLE (monolith + Web services) will represent an intermediate species on the evolutionary path to a VLE that can be fully integrated into a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).  Although the project will use the Bodington Open Source VLE, SOCKET’s interfaces will be produced in such a way that it should be straightforward to adapt the toolkit for use with any VLE capable of communicating with a Java application server.

Objectives

• Create a toolkit software module that acts as an automated factory that manufactures Web service client software from a WSDL file and places the software in a suitable location for use by the VLE
• Create a toolkit software module that publishes information to the service registry using a suitable data model for the VLE to be able to add the service to its list of available resources
• Create a software module for the VLE that will enable it to interrogate SOCKET’s service registry to find information on the services available and how to access them
• Create a toolkit software module that will use the client software to design and render an appropriate web-based interface to the service
• Test SOCKET using a range of different services.  This will include creating a client for the commercial product Questionmark Perception via its Web services interface

Methodology

The project methodology involved dividing the project into roughly 5 loosely coupled sub-projects, with one person taking the lead for each:

• creation of the core SOCKET Java code
• construction of the XSLT view transformations
• Bodington, Guanxi and Perception
• and the jUDDI registry

This approach worked well and enabled us to fulfil our main objectives. The major challenges had been identified correctly before the project started. The first was to produce XSLT stylesheets that could deal with the wide range of possible combinations of input and output parameters. The second was dealing with the wide range of possible WSDL styles. The UDDIbrowser and JAXP technologies were not used as UDDI4J proved sufficient for our purposes.

Report available electronically only. Read the final report below.