This document gives an introduction to Axis2's modular architecture with explanations on every module.
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A new architecture for Axis was introduced during the August 2004 Summit in Colombo, Sri Lanka. This new architecture on which Axis2 is based is more flexible, efficient, and configurable in comparison to Axis1.x architecture. Some well established concepts from Axis 1.x, like handlers etc., have been preserved in this new architecture.
Any architecture is a result of what that architecture should yield. The success of an architecture should be evaluated based on the requirements expected to be met by that architecture. Let us start our journey into Axis2 by looking at the requirements.
In SOAP terminology, a participant who is taking part in a Web service interaction is known as a SOAP Node. Delivery of a single SOAP Message is defined based on two participants, SOAP Sender and SOAP Receiver. Each SOAP message is sent by a SOAP Sender and received by a SOAP Receiver. A single SOAP delivery is the most basic unit that builds the Web service interaction.
Each SOAP Node may be written in specific programming language, may it be Java, C++, .NET or Perl, but the Web services allow them to interoperate. This is possible because on the wire each Web service interaction is done via SOAP, which is common to every SOAP Node.
Web service middleware handles the complexity in SOAP messaging and lets the users work with the programming language they are accustomed to. Axis2 allows Java users to invoke Web services using Java representations, and handles the SOAP messaging behind the curtain.
Axis2 handles SOAP processing along with numerous other tasks. This makes life of a Web service developer a whole lot easier. Following are the identified requirements:
Apart from the above functionalities, performance in terms of memory and speed is a major consideration for Axis2. Axis2 Core Architecture is built on three specifications- WSDL, SOAP and WS-Addressing. Other specifications like JAX-RPC, SAAJ and WS-Policy are layered on top of the Core Architecture.
Axis2 architecture lays out some principals to preserve the uniformity. They are as follows:
Axis2 architecture separates the logic and the states. Code that does the processing does not have a state inside Axis2. This allows code to be executed freely by parallel threads.
Axis2 architecture is modular. Therefore, Axis2 Framework is built up of core modules that collectively make up the core architecture of Axis2. Non-core/other modules are layered on top of this core modules/architecture.
XML processing Model - Handling the SOAP Message is the most important and most complex task. The efficiency of this is the single most important factor that decides the performance. It makes sense to delegate this task to a separate sub-project under the Web services project, allowing that sub-project (AXIOM or AXis Object Model) to provide a simple API for SOAP and XML info-set. It will hide the complexities of the efficient XML processing within the implementation.
Deployment Model - The Axis2 deployment model allows the user to deploy services, configure the transports, and extend the SOAP Processing model per system, service, or operation basis.
Transports - Axis2 defines a transport framework that enables the user to use multiple different transports. The transports fit into specific places in the SOAP processing model. The implementation provides a few common transports and the user can write or plug-in new ones if and when it is needed.
Data Binding - The basic client API of Axis2 lets the users process SOAP at the infoset level, where as data binding extends it to make it more convenient to the users by encapsulating the infoset layer and providing a programming language specific interface.
Information Model has two main hierarchies-Contexts and Descriptions. This model is described in UML notations below.
( A ----<> B says, B has 1 or more objects of A. A------>B says, the given relationship holds between A and B.)
The two hierarchies are connected as shown in the above figure. The Description hierarchy represents the static data. This data may be loaded from a configuration file that exists throughout the lifetime of Axis2. For example, deployed Web services, operations, etc. On the other hand, the context hierarchy holds more dynamic information about the things that have more than one instance (e.g.Message Context).
These two hierarchies create a model that provides the ability to search for key value pairs. When the values are searched at a given level, they are searched while moving up the hierarchy until a match is found. In the resulting model, the lower levels override the values in the upper levels. For example, when a value is looked up in the Message Context and is not found, it would be looked up in the Operation Context, etc, up the hierarchy. The Search is first done up the hierarchy, and if the starting point is a Context then it searches in the Description hierarchy as well.
This allows the user to declare and override values, with the result being a very flexible configuration model. The flexibility could be the Achilles heel for the system as the search is expensive, specially for something that does not exist. Yet in the final analysis, developers believe that the flexibility would serve better in this instant.
As we mentioned above, the XML processing model of Axis2 has become a separate sub-project, called Apache Axiom, in the Apache Web services project. Please refer to the OM Tutorial for more information.
The architecture identified two basic actions a SOAP processor should perform, sending and receiving SOAP messages. The architecture provides two Pipes ('Flows'), to perform these two basic actions. The Axis Engine or the driver of Axis2 defines two methods send() and receive() to implement these two Pipes. The two pipes are named In Pipe and Out Pipe, and the complex Message Exchange Patterns (MEPs) are constructed by combining these two pipes.
Extensibility of the SOAP processing model is provided through handlers. When a SOAP message is being processed, the handlers that are registered will be executed. The handlers can be registered in global, service, or operation scopes and the final handler chain is calculated combining the handlers from all the scopes.
The handlers act as interceptors and they process parts of the SOAP message and provide add-on services. Usually handlers work on the SOAP headers, yet they may access or change the SOAP body as well.
When a SOAP message is being sent through the Client API, an Out Pipe would begin, the Out Pipe invokes the handlers and end with a Transport Sender that sends the SOAP message to the target endpoint. The SOAP message is received by a Transport Receiver at the target endpoint, which reads the SOAP message and starts the In Pipe. The In Pipe consists of handlers and ends with the Message Receiver, which consumes the SOAP message.
The processing explained above happens for each and every SOAP message that is exchanged. After processing one message, Axis2 may decide to create other SOAP messages, in which case more complex message patterns emerge. However, Axis2 always views the SOAP message in terms of processing a single message. The combination of the messages are layered on top of that basic framework.
The two pipes does not differentiate between the Server and the Client. The SOAP Processing Model handles the complexity and provides two abstract pipes to the user. The different areas or the stages of the pipes are given names, and according to Axis2 slang, they are named 'phases'. A Handler always runs inside a phase, and the phase provides a mechanism to specify the ordering of handlers. Both Pipes have built-in phases, and both define the areas for 'User Phases' which can be defined by the user.
Axis2 has some inbuilt handlers that run in inbuilt phases and they create the default configuration for Axis2. We will be looking more in to how to extend the default processing Model in the next section.
There are three special handlers defined in Axis2.
Transport Sender - Sends the SOAP message to the SOAP endpoint the message is destined to. Always runs as the last handler in the out-pipe
An incoming SOAP message is always received by a Transport Receiver waiting for the SOAP messages. Once the SOAP message arrives, the transport Headers are parsed and a Message Context is created from the incoming SOAP message. This message context encapsulates all the information, including the SOAP message itself, transport headers, etc., inside it. Then the In Pipe is executed with the Message Context.
Let us see what happens at each phase of the execution. This process can happen in the server or in the client.
There may be other handlers in any of these phases. Users may use custom handlers to override the mechanics in each of these phases.
TheOut Pipe is simpler because the service and the operation to dispatch are known by the time the pipe is executed. The Out Pipe may be initiated by the
Message Receiver or the Client API implementation. Phases of the Out Pipe are described below:
Above, we discussed the default processing model of Axis2. Now let us discuss the extension mechanism for the SOAP processing model. After all, the whole effort of making this SOAP engine/processing model was focused on making it extendable.
The idea behind introducing step-wise processing of the SOAP message in terms of handlers and phases is to allow easier modification of the processing order. The notion of phases makes it easier to place handlers in between other handlers. This enables modification of the default processing behavior. The SOAP Processing Model can be extended with handlers or modules.
The handlers in a module can specify the phase they need to be placed in. Furthermore, they can specify their location inside a phase by providing phase rules. Phase rules will place a handler,
Axis2 defines an entity called a 'module' that can introduce handlers and Web service operations. A Module in terms of Axis2 usually acts as a convenient packaging that includes:
Modules have the concept of being 'available' and 'engaged'. 'Availability' means the module is present in the system, but has not been activated, i.e., the handlers included inside the module have not been used in the processing mechanism. When a module is 'engaged' it becomes active and the handlers get placed in the proper phases. The handlers will act in the same way as explained in the previous section. Usually a module will be used to implement a WS-* functionality such as WS-Addressing.
Apart from the extension mechanism based on the handlers, the WS-* specifications may suggest a requirement for adding new operations. For example, once a user adds Reliable Messaging capability to a service, the "Create Sequence" operation needs to be available to the service endpoint. This can be implemented by letting the modules define the operations. Once the module is engaged to a service, the necessary operations will be added to that service.
A service, operation, or the system may engage a module. Once the module is engaged, the handlers and the operations defined in the module are added to the entity that engaged them.
Modules cannot be added (no hot deployment) while the Axis2 engine is running, but they will be available once the system is restarted.
The Deployment Model provides a concrete mechanism to configure Axis2. This model has three entities that provide the configuration.
This file holds the global configuration for the client and server, and provides the following information:
The Service archive must have a META-INF/services.xml file and may contain the dependent classes. The services.xml file has the following information.
Module archive must have a META-INF/module.xml file and dependent classes. The module.xml file has Module parameters and the Operations defined in the module.
When the system starts up, Axis2 prompts the deployment model to create an Axis Configuration. The deployment model first finds the axis2.xml file and builds the global configuration. Then it checks for the module archives and then for the service archives. After that, the corresponding services and modules are added to the Axis Configuration. The system will build contexts on top of the Axis Configuration. After this, Axis2 is ready to send or receive SOAP messages. Hot deployment is only allowed for services.
There are three parameters that decide the nature of the Web service interaction.
Variations of the three parameters can result in an indefinite number of scenarios. Even though Axis2 is built on a core that supports any messaging interaction, the developers were compelled to provide in-built support for only two most widely used Message Exchange Patterns (MEPs).
The two supported MEPs are One-Way and the In-Out (Request-Response)
scenarios in the Client API. The implementation is based on a class called
ServiceClient and there are extensions for each MEP that Axis2
Client API supports.
The One-Way support is provided by the fireAndForget method
of ServiceClient. For one way invocations, one can use HTTP ,
SMTP and TCP transports. In the case of the HTTP transport, the return
channel is not used, and the HTTP 202 OK is returned in the return
channel.
The In-Out support is provided by the sendReceive() method in
ServiceClient. This provides a simpler interface for the user. The Client API
has four ways to configure a given message exchange
sendReceive() or sendReceiveNonBlocking()
methodsDepending on the values of the above four parameters, Axis2 behaves differently.
Axis2 has two basic constructs for transports, namely: Transport Senders and Transport Receivers. These are accessed via the AxisConfiguration.
The incoming transport is the transport via which the AxisEngine receives the message. The outgoing transport is decided based on the addressing information (wsa:ReplyTo and wsa:FaultTo). If addressing information is not available and if the server is trying to respond, then the out going transport will be the outputstream of the incoming transport (if it is two-way transport).
At the client side, the user is free to specify the transport to be used.
Transport Senders and Transport Receivers contain the following information.
Each and every transport out configuration defines a transport sender. The transport sender sends the SOAP message depending on its configuration.
The transport receiver waits for the SOAP messages, and for each SOAP message that arrives, it uses the In Pipe to process the SOAP message.
Axis2 presently supports the following transports:
Although the basic objective of the code generation tools has not changed, the code generation module of Axis2 has taken a different approach to generate code. Primarily, the change is in the use of templates, namely XSL templates, which gives the code generator the flexibility to generate code in multiple languages.
The basic approach is to set the code generator to generate an XML, and parse it with a template to generate the code file. The following figure describes how this shows up in the architecture of the tool.
The fact here is that it is the same information that is extracted from the WSDL no matter what code is generated. First, an AxisService is populated from a WSDL. Then the code generator extracts information from the AxisService and creates an XML, which is language independent. This emitted XML is then parsed with the relevant XSL to generate code for the relevant language. No matter what the output language is, the process is the same except for the template that is being used.
Databinding for Axis2 is implemented in an interesting manner. Databinding has not been included in the core deliberately, and hence the code generation allows different data binding frameworks to be plugged in. This is done through an extension mechanism where the codegen engine first calls the extensions and then executes the core emitter. The extensions populate a map of QNames vs. class names that is passed to the code generator on which the emitter operates on.
The following diagram shows the structure:
The following databinding extensions are available:
AXIOM is based on a StAX API (Streaming API for XML). Xml-beans supports StAX API. Data binding in Axis2 is achieved through interfacing the AXIOM with the Xml-beans using the StAX API, which is supported by both parties. At the time of code generation, there will be utility methods generated inside the stub (or the message receiver) that can de-serialize from AXIOM to data bound object and serialize from data bound object to AXIOM. For example, if the WSDL has an operation called "echoString", once the code is generated, the following methods will be generated inside the relevant classes.
public static org.apache.axiom.om.OMElement toOM(org.soapinterop.xsd.EchoStringParamDocument param)// This method will handle the serialization. public static org.apache.xmlbeans.XmlObject fromOM(org.apache.axis2.om.OMElement param, java.lang.Class type) //This method will handle the de-serialization.