The Geek Blog

So I’ve spent a few days going over Google App Engine for Java.  So far, I have to say, I’m impressed.  Google has created a really cool service that lets anyone write a Java web application and host it on their multitude of servers.  This is all for free, I might add.  You have to be aware of a number of limitations including no threading and you’re limited to their data store for persistence.  Once you get over that, you’ll see the advantage of it:

1. Reliability
2. Durability
3. Security
4. Scalability

So I got a little overwhelmed with the “ity” words, but it’s very appropriate.  App Engine for Java will take the “cloud” by storm, I think.  I have been looking for a Java web host and am always discouraged by the price and the limitation on memory and disk space.  With Google, you can get a decently sized application running for free and they provide all the nuts & bolts.

Nice, Google.  Computing in the cloud isn’t such a farce as I thought it was.

I spent a good 50+ hours on trying to consume a Microsoft WCF secure web service with a Java solution.  I tried Spring Web Services, Axis2, and looked at Metro/Tango and decided Axis2 was the “easiest” solution.  The web service I’m connecting to implements WS-Security, WS-SecureConversation, WS-Policy, WS-Trust and WS-Addressing (at least) and it’s provided through a .NET 3.5 WCF endpoint.

It doesn’t work.

Axis2 can’t handle SpNego which is a WCF closed protocol allowing two WCF machines to negotiate the credentials between them.  The client has spent way too much money paying me to continue to figure out a Java solution, so I wrote a .NET 3.5 C# client.  Took me literally five lines of code and it’s working.  That’s great for .NET developers but a whole lotta horse shit for the rest of the world.  I’m hoping Axis2’s Rampart module is updated to play nice with WS-SecureConversation and a .NET WCF web service.  Until then, I’m using the .NET client to download the data and I’m storing the SOAP body into a database table.  On the Java side, I’m still using JAXB2 to unmarshall the data into Java objects and process it through our existing persistence framework.

Go me!