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· One min read

During some testing I had to put in place a cluster on my network. So I create a first virtual machine. It is not possible to directly copy the Virtual Disk Image (.vdi). VirtualBox saved in each disk image a UUID that is also store inside the virtual machine image. VirtualBox does not support two images with the same number. So to clone the an image you need to use the VBoxManage clonehd command line.

The clonehd command copy the VDI file and assigns a new UUID into it.

VBoxManage  clonehd /opt/tools/vm/vm1-rhel.vdi  /opt/tools/vm/vm2-rhel.vdi

Once the copy is done, you can now register this new VDI in your VirtualBox environment and create a new virtual machine.

Note: I am running VirtualBox on MacOS X, and I needed to put complete path to VDI files, if not the command id not working

Alternative approach

Initially I had issue with the clonehd command since I was not using full path. So what you can do is:

cp vm1-rhel.vdi vm2-rhel.vdi
VBoxManage internalcommands sethduuid vm2-rhel.vdi

You can now add the new VDI to your VirtualBox environment.

· 2 min read

This year I was lucky enough to have a presentation at the second edition of the "Université du SI", organized by Octo Technologies. I have to say that this conference is one of the best that I have attended, for sure it is the best in France. Unfortunately I was only able to attend the first day of the conference, but even in one day, I was very happy with the content of the presentations, keynotes, and networking opportunities.

I won't go in details in all the presentations that I have seen, Google for the Enterprise, Application Server Future, Usability concerns, and keynotes. If you want to have a good feedback about this conference I invite you to read, in French, the reports from Le Touilleur Express.

Let me just share the presentation that I gave with Vincent Massol from XWiki, about CMS vs Wiki.

Wiki vs CMS duel

First of all, the room was packed, so it looks like it is an interesting subject for many of you, so do not hesitate to post comments or question on this entry. Vincent and I will be pleased to update our presentation for a new event.

The main message of the talk was:

  • For collaboration on content the wiki is king
  • For publication of content the CMS is king

Wiki vs CMS

· One min read

eXo Platform, and I, will be present in conferences in the upcoming weeks:

  • Linux Solutions, March 31st - April 2nd : In addition to the demonstration pod where you can meet eXo people, I am inviting you to joing us during the OW2 Annual Conference presentations:
    • Next generation Portals: how OpenSocial standard adds social to the mix (April 2, 01:30 - 02:00)
    • Which Portlet Bridge is made for you? (April 2, 02:00 - 02:30)

You can find the full program here.

  • Salon Intranet, May 12th,13th : Once again, eXo will be present with a demonstration pod, but also come to meet eXo CEO, Benjamin Mestrallet and myself during the "eXo Platform, the Open Source solution for your Intranet" on May 12th from 3pm-4pm.

· 2 min read

When deploying your Web Service client you often need to change the endpoint of the service that  has been set during the code generation. This short post explains how you can set change it at runtime in the client code.

You have two approaches to do that:

  • set the endpoint in the Port using the BindingProvider
  • get the endpoint URL from the WSDL itself at runtime

Use the Binding Provider to set the endpoint URL​

The first approach is to change the BindingProvider.ENDPOINT_ADDRESS_PROPERTY property value of the BindingProvider (Port) using the following code:

try {
  EmployeeServiceService service = new EmployeeServiceService();
  EmployeeService port = service.getEmployeeServicePort();

  BindingProvider bp = (BindingProvider)port;
  bp.getRequestContext().put(BindingProvider.ENDPOINT_ADDRESS_PROPERTY, "http://server1.grallandco.com:8282/HumanRessources/EmployeeServiceService");

  Employee emp = port.getEmployee(123);

  System.out.println("Result = "+ emp);
} catch (Exception ex) {...}

Use the WSDL to get the endpoint URL​

Another part is to set the WSDL when you are creating the Service. The service will be using the value that is located in the WSDL port -SOAP Endpoint-. This is simply done using the following code:

try {
  EmployeeServiceService service =
  new org.demo.service.EmployeeServiceService
  (new URL("http://server1.grallandco.com:8282/HumanRessources/EmployeeServiceService?wsdl"),
  new QName("http://service.demo.org/","EmployeeServiceService"));

  EmployeeService port = service.getEmployeeServicePort();
  Employee emp = port.getEmployee(123);

  System.out.println("Result = "+ emp);
} catch (Exception ex) { ... }

Note that, in Glassfish, like lot of Web Service environments the WSDL can generate dynamically the Endpoint URL based on the URL used  to get the WSDL. With this approach you can also dynamically change the Soap endpoint. (If compatible with the network configuration of the production environment.)

· 10 min read

I am writing this post as an answer to Christian Faure's blog post, (in French), about interest of enterprise portals. Let me take each point, one by one and comment them. I won't go in the all the details of many other points that why new enterprise portals are interesting for many of us, I just want to focus on Christian's remarks.