GridScope 2.0 User Guide
Starting
the GridScope Service Manager.
Setting
up the Deployment Settings
Creating
and Managing User Accounts
Searching
for Existing Services
Creating
& Integrating New Services
Test
and Verify Client Application
Monitoring
Service Performance
The GridScope User Guide is a reference for users and
developers who have installed and implemented GridScope’s Service Manager. If you have not installed the
Service Manager, please refer to the GridScope Installation Guide at http://www.gridscope.com/doc/product/r2/guides/GridScopeInstallationGuide.html.
This guide walks you through the steps that you will need
to take to integrate and manage web services easily within your SOA-based
applications using the GridScope Service Manager.
The GridScope Service Manager is ready to work for you as soon
as it is installed. There are several
basic activities users may want to perform, right away, to optimize their
installation and begin managing their SOA: creating user accounts, creating
services, etc.
Note: For all procedures outlined below, ‘gridscope_home’ represents the home directory where you installed GridScope.
Starting the GridScope Service Manager
GridScope can be started from the command prompt or as a desktop icon (Windows installations).
a. From the command prompt, change directories to ‘gridscope_home\bin’. ‘Start’ the ‘startGridScope.bat’ program.
b. (For Windows) Create a desktop shortcut to the ‘startGridScope.bat’ file. Double-click the shortcut to start GridScope. If this generates a security warning, click ‘Run’.
Startup may take several seconds while the web server initiates.
Opening the GridScope Console
The GridScope Console is the primary management interface for the GridScope Service Manager. It is browser-based for ease of use and access. To open the Console, start your Internet browser and point it to http://<gridscope_host_name>:8080/service_manager/index.do. Save this location to your favorites for quicker access.
Console Login Page
Note: The default values for an administrator’s user name and password combination are ‘admin’ and ’admin’. To set up the deployment server settings and additional user accounts follow the steps below:
Setup the Deployment Settings
Once you login, navigate to the ‘Admin’ section. The entry page shows you the deployment settings for the GridScope server instance. You can adjust the settings by clicking on the ‘Edit’ button.
Server Deployment Settings Detail
Edit Server Deployment Settings
Creating and Managing User Accounts
Initially, you will need to log-in as the administrator in order to set up the user accounts. The default values for the login and password for the administration user are ‘admin’ and ‘admin’. To set up additional user accounts follow the steps below:
1. Click on the ‘Search Users’ link on the navigation bar to view the current users that can access the GridScope Console and their associated roles.
Search Users
User Detail
1. For registering new users, select the ‘New User Registration’ link.
2. Complete the required information on the Registration form and click ‘Register’.
User Registration
You may also want to edit the administrator user account to change the administrator password or email address:
1. If not already there, navigate to the User Listing in the Admin screen of the Console (select the ‘Search Users’ link, if necessary).
2. Click on the ‘edit’ link in the ‘administrator’ row.
3. Modify the information on the Registration form as desired
Search User Groups
User Group Detail
Edit User Group
The primary screen for working with services is the Service Listing screen. This screen shows you a list of registered services and presents you with options to initiate various tasks: searching for services, creating/integrating new services, editing/deleting existing services and calling a service (primarily for diagnostic purposes). These tasks enable the administrator or developer to define, configure and use services at any point in the service lifecycle.
To view a summary of definition and configuration details, click on the service name in the Service Listing. This will take you to a screen that shows the service definition and the settings of all the variables you can configure with GridScope. If you want to edit any details, you must first return to the Service Listing, then perform the steps described in ‘Editing Existing Services‘.
Search Services
Searching for Existing Services
To search for an existing service, navigate to the ‘Services’ main page (or click on ‘Search Services’ on the side navigation menu bar). This will give you a listing of services and search field. If the service you want to edit is not shown on the list, enter some identifying text in the search field, then click search. Identifying text can be all or part of the service name, location, namespace, description, etc.
Service Detail
Service
Configuration Detail
Working with Service Providers
Different types of services may be provided by different service providers – e.g. SalesForce.com, Employease, and Google. You may click on the ‘providers’ tab to perform the functions to manage service providers. The following are some of the key functions to manage service providers within the GridScope Console:
1. Add/Edit Service Provider Information: Click on ‘Add New Provider’ to add a new service provider. Enter the details of the provider within the form supplied within that screen. The name of the provider is used within the ‘Add New Service’ function to register the service under a given provider.
Edit Service Provider
2. Search and Manage Service Providers: Click on ‘Search Providers’ to access the list of service providers. You can search for a specific provider by providing a keyword matching the name of the provider. For each provider, you can perform various functions such as view detail, change, remove, and access the various ‘Services’ supplied by that provider.
Search Service Provider
Service Provider Detail
Working with Service Groups
Different types of services may be organized within different service groups – e.g. Financial Services, Order Management, CRM, Content Services, etc. You may click on the ‘services’ tab and then ‘Search Groups’ within the side navigation menu bar to perform the functions to manage service groups. The following are some of the key functions to manage service groups within the GridScope Console:
1. Add/Edit Service Group Information: Click on ‘Add New Group’ to add a new service group. Enter the details of the group within the form supplied within that screen. The name of the group is used within the ‘Add New Service’ function to register the service under a given group.
Edit Service Group
2. Search and Manage Service Groups: Click on ‘Search Groups’ to access the list of service groups. You can search for a specific group by providing a keyword matching the name of the group. For each group, you can perform various functions such as view detail, edit, delete, and access the various ‘Services’ within that group.
Search Service Groups
Service Group Detail
Creating & Integrating New Services
The primary function of the GridScope Service Manager is to
simplify defining, configuring and using services. There are five steps for
creating and integrating a web service from within your applications:
1.
Identify Service
2.
Register Service
3.
Develop Service Client
4. Test and Verify Application
5. Monitor Service Activities
Identify Service
Identify the service that you plan to use by noting the location of the Web Service Definition Language (WSDL) file – e.g. http://api.google.com/GoogleSearch.wsdl. Once you have identified and analyzed the service using its WSDL file, the next step is to register the service.
Register Service
To register the service, perform the following steps
(please refer to the figures that follow this section for a more detailed
understanding of the service registration process):
1. Launch the GridScope Console as described in ‘Opening the GridScope Console‘ and login using a username/password (admin/admin is the default for administrator privileges). By default, the Service Listing screen is presented after login. If you are already in the Console, navigate to the Service Listing screen to perform the next steps.
2.
Click on ‘Add New Service’ in the side
navigation menu bar.
3.
Enter the basic information about the service:
a. Definition
Location: This is the complete path to the service definition (WSDL) file –
examples are:
i.
http://api.google.com/GoogleSearch.wsdl
ii. http://www.xignite.com/xInsider.asmx?wsdl
b. Service
Name: Name of the service as it appears on the WSDL file. This can be found as
an attribute called ‘name’ under the ‘service’ element and is typically at the
bottom of the WSDL file – e.g. ‘GoogleSearchService’ in the case of Google
Search API. You can also enter any name and it will be appropriately corrected.
c. Commit this service to the repository by clicking on ‘Done’. To proceed with configuring the service behavior from a service consumer standpoint, click on the ‘Configure’ button.
Edit Service
4. Enter the service configuration information to configure/provision the service as you would like it to behave. GridScope provides tool tips to describe each service configuration parameter.
a. Enable monitoring if you want GridScope to automatically track performance characteristics
b. Enable operation-level caching to improve response times. Check desired operations to be cached and set both the cache size and duration (time to live).
c. Enable exception tracking to record when performance falls outside your desired parameters.
d. Enable alerts on the exceptions to be notified of an exception event. Use the Exception List to specify who should be notified.
e. Click on ‘Next’ to proceed to the Security Configuration screen.
Edit Service
Configuration
5. Enter the security configuration information to configure security for the service. GridScope provides tool tips to describe each security configuration parameter.
a. Enter relevant authentication information depending on the authentication method of the service. The methods supported include:
· Basic Security
· WS-Security User Name Token
· WS-Security SAML Assertion Token
· Custom Security Headers
a. Enter encryption information if applicable.
b. Enter digital signature information if applicable.
6. Once you are done entering this information, click 'Submit'.
Edit Security Configuration
Your service is now registered and will be managed for you by GridScope.
Develop Service Client
Now that the service has been registered, as shown above, you can start to use the service within your ‘client’ application. Look at the sample code snippet provided, for an example of how to make a service call from a client application.
Note 1: If you have used the WSDL provided for the service from the GridScope Console to generate your client code, then you will not need to make any changes to that code.
Note 2: If you have used the endpoint WSDL URL as your starting point within your client application, you will need to set the target endpoint address to point to the GridScope Gateway before you make the web service call and the Gateway will do the rest. GridScope is client-platform independent meaning that you can talk to it using Java/J2EE, .NET, PHP, etc. as long as you set the target address appropriately to the Gateway instead of the service endpoint. Also note that everything else in your code is exactly the same as you would if you were to call the service directly. Once you take care of pointing the service URL to the Gateway URL as shown above, GridScope will manage all your service interactions as you had configured in Step 2 while registering the service.
Test and Verify Client Application
Before completing the service integration, make sure that the client application performs as expected and that the service is returning appropriate results. One method for testing is provided by the GridScope Service Manager. Perform a sample service call (as described in ‘Calling Services‘ below) to verify the service returns the expected results.
Monitor Service Activities
Once the service is working properly, GridScope can automatically monitor all service activities and exceptions that occur. Automatic monitoring is initiated the first time the serviced is called via the GridScope Gateway. Monitoring results can be viewed using the ‘Activities’ and ‘Exceptions’ screens of the GridScope Console. For more details regarding service monitoring, see ‘Monitoring Service Performance‘.
Editing Existing Services
To edit an existing service, click on the ‘edit’ link next to the service you want to edit to open the Edit Service screen. Adjust the service definition and configuration information as described in ‘Register Service‘. Click ‘Submit’ when done.
Calling Services
GridScope enables a user to call a service to test its performance. To call a service, follow these steps:
Call Service
1. Click on the ‘Call’ link beside the service you are interested in to go to the Call Service screen. This screen includes a summary of some of the service details.
2. If the service has multiple operations, select the desired operation from the dropdown menu.
3. Click ‘Update Request Message’ to automatically change the sample service request to conform to the desired operation.
4. If desired, modify the sample service request to perform the operation to your specifications
5. Select whether you want to ‘Call Managed Service’ (meaning the call will pass through the GridScope Gateway) or ‘Call Service Directly’ (meaning it will bypass the Gateway and go directly to the service provider).
6. Click the ‘Call Service’ button to initiate the service call.
7. GridScope then presents the service response for your review.
Calling a service provides a means of hands-on troubleshooting that further simplifies managing your services. GridScope gives you the option of a ‘managed’ or ‘direct’ call to help determine whether the source of the exception lies within the Gateway or with the service provider.
GridScope provides several methods for monitoring and tracking service performance. Users can monitor service activities (when services perform properly) and service exceptions (when they don’t). Users can define the criteria for exceptions and alerts and to satisfy their specific needs.
The GridScope Service Manager automatically monitors all service activities and exceptions the first time a service call is managed by the GridScope Gateway. The results can be viewed via the GridScope Console using the ‘Activities’ and ‘Exceptions’ screens.
Monitoring Activities
An activity is any service behavior that performs within specifications. Activity monitoring starts on the Activity Summary screen. The summary lists all recent activity in the Activity Summary table. The screen also provides time-based filtering options for viewing the Activity Summary.
To search for specific activities, click on ‘Search Activities’ in the side navigation menu to go to the Search Service Activities screen. This screen provides a list of recent service calls, with some general information about them, and several search options. Click on the activity name to view more activity details.
GridScope provides several preformatted charts for viewing the activity data. Charting is accessed from the Activity Summary screen. Users can select the chart type and time interval for charting. Once the desired charting options are set, click the chart link (either ‘Line’ or ‘Bar’ chart) beside the service activity of interest.
Activity Summary
Activity Summary
Chart (Bar)
Activity Summary
Chart (Line)
Search Activities
Activity Detail
Monitoring Exceptions
An exception is any service behavior that fails to perform within specification. Exception criteria are set during service configuration and can be changed at any time by editing the service, as described in ‘Editing Existing Services‘. Exception monitoring starts on the Exception Summary screen. The summary lists all recent activity in the Exception Summary table. The screen also provides time-based filtering options for viewing the Exception Summary.
To search for specific exceptions, click on the ‘Search Exceptions’ link in the side navigation menu. This screen provides a list of recent service calls, with some general information about them, and several search options. Click on the exception name to view more exception details.
When viewing the exception details, GridScope offers the user the option to call the service again to test the exception. Clicking the ‘Call Service Again’ button opens a Call Service screen where the user can create a new service request message. GridScope automatically generates a generic service request message, which the user can edit if desired.
Exception Summary
Search
Exceptions
Exception Detail
Performance Alerts
Alerts are warnings or notifications that an exception has occurred. Alerts are based on the exception management criteria set in the service configuration (see ‘Register Service‘ or ‘Editing Existing Services‘). Users can define what the desired performance specifications are, and therefore what constitutes and exception. Users can also define the recipients for the alerts on a service-by-service basis.
Alert Summary
Search Alerts
Alert Detail
