XAR building from project files

Posted by Admin on 31-Mar-2009 02:50

Hello,

I have begginer quesion about building a XAR file from project files. I know the process of using Deployment Archive Export tool, and making XARs with it, but we don't want to export XARs with it, rather build XARs from project files e.g. *.esbp

It's important for us because we want to build project on build server with cleanInstallation always.

Some steps we would like to use:

1) checkout files from SVN

2) make XAR from them, and here we think we need to use:

- make temporary directory

- copy all processes (*.esbp) to the ESB/Processes directory in temporary directory

- rename .esbp into .xml

- same for services and serviceTypes

- now the tricky part which I don't know how to do: we need to fill ESB/Containers and ESB/Endpoints with something which exist only in Model.xml, and is managed by SMC, so it couldnt't be done from project files rather by using tools, and export next from Domain Manager - please correct if I'm wrong

- if we succesfully do blocking issue with Containers and Endpoint we can can make XAR using Ant tasks

3) add XAR to the Model.xml

4) run the cleanInstallation

I tried to write as easy to understand as I can, but I cannot exclude that our try of making XARs is totally wrong, and there could be easier way to achieve our goal?

Best regards,

Adrian

All Replies

Posted by jtownsen on 03-Apr-2009 04:22

Hi Adrian,

There was a great presentation at Exchange last year called "Continuous Integration in SOA Projects" (http://communities.progress.com/pcom/docs/DOC-15776 ).  Although it doesn't say so directly in the slides, the result of this approach is a complete SDM model with all the Sonic artifacts - everything ready to install.

A quick overview of the Service Delivery Platform (SDP) approach:

Developers to check their changes into a version control respository (eg. Subversion).  The changes are detected by a Continuous Integration Server (eg. Hudson) and the project gets build at tested.  Project/Artifact dependecies are managed by Maven and resulting artifacts are available for download from a Maven Repository (eg. Nexus).  As part of the build process, artifact documentation is automatically generated and updated to a web server.  It's also possible to automatically update bug tracking systems etc.

At this stage, SDP is available as a Professional Services offering from Progress Sofware.  Questions can be directed to your local Progress office.  Alternatively, you could contact me offline and I'll put you in contact with the right people in your region.

--

Jamie Townsend

Solutions Architect

Progress EMEA

Posted by Admin on 03-Apr-2009 05:02

Hello Jamie

The file you are linking to is a dead link, is this file still available and where could one find it.

Kr

Posted by jtownsen on 03-Apr-2009 05:10

The wrong URL seems to be because this new communities site includes the training ")." in the url.  Here's the direct link to the presentation: http://www.psdn.com/ak_download/media/exch_audio/2008/SOA/SOA-14_Gies.ppt

--

Jamie

Posted by Admin on 17-Apr-2009 10:40

Hi Adrian,

When exporting a XAR from a Sonic domain, the output XAR will contain the serivce types, services instances, processes, esb container config, endpoints, and any artifacts from the Sonic FS. When building a XAR from source, you only get artifacts that exist in the source which include service types, processes, and some endpoints (not all). if you want to build the XAR artifacts from source using the Soniant scripts and tools, see page 48 in the soa_deploy.pdf. (for sonic 7.6).

At my firm we built our own deployment system It requires all development teams to export a XAR from their dev domain and check-in the XAR as part of their project in CVS. It's one extra step that developers don't like too much, but it's really the best way to capture the full configuration for an esb project for deployment to any other domain.

Hope it helps,

Raffi

This thread is closed