My worst trip to the US - On my way to Purdue

This has undoubtedly been my worst trip to the US. Oh boy it was all going wrong right from the start. Well I thought that my flight was at 2.15 AM so I planned to get to the airport at 11.45 PM which would give me 2 and a half hours (which is most often than not more than enough). Well we got to the airport around 12 and I proceeded through the security checks to the checking area. Believe it or not the queue was soooo long and I was standing at the entrance to the checking area. I would guess that there were around a 150 passengers ahead of me. To my great relief I was not alone there were several other passengers on the same flight to heathrow around me. Having traveled before it was pretty clear that at the pace the queue was moving I wouldn't get to the checking desk in time. So i went up to a Sri Lankan Airlines ground hostess and inquired about the situation. She didn't seem concerned and simply said that most of the passengers in the queue are on the same flight. Well Sri Lankan airlines should take the blame for putting passengers into that situation. The heathrow flight was to leave at 2 AM and another flight to Rome via Paris was to leave at 2.45 AM and these dumb idiots (Well thats the most decent word that comes to my mind at this moment) were checking in all these passengers on the same queue. I don't think it can get any worser. Anyway around 1.40 AM (there were still more than a 25 passengers ahead of me at that time) they gave priority to the Heathrow passengers and checked us in. Cool so you checking with just 15 mins to go. By this time I was well aware that the flight would not leave on time, to make matters even worse my transit at London was just 2 hours.

Well so I checked in and went through immigration and to my surprise the gate was just at the point where you end immigration. Normally you would do up there stairs and through the duty free area and head towards the gates. Now it was pretty clear to me that this was something new and I heard on news that they had opened up the Airport viewing area just a week ago. This move shows how silly the Sri Lankan authorities are. In order to make use of the viewing area they make a new gate (well renovate the old one) and take passengers on a bus to the plane (Just like they did in the good old days). Well the viewing area makes no sense cause now they have the air bridge which they didn't have back in the time that the viewing area was in place. Having spent so much money, time and effort in a air bridge they abandon that and go back to taking passengers by bus to the air craft. Oh god people cannot do sillier things than that.

Ok so I make it to the aircraft at 2.15 and it was 3 AM when the flight finally left. This meant that my transit time was now cut down to an hour. Luckily there were no other hiccups and I was able to make the connection. This was the first time that I was flying Virgin Atlantic, the flight took off 10 minutes before schedule (I was just wondering, were they able to transfer my luggage in 50 minutes?) and was on track to land at Chicago O'Hare airport at 1.30 PM. 35 minutes out from O'Hare the captain speaks and says that we have started our decent and that we would be on the ground at the scheduled time. Cool, my next flight to Indianapolis was at 6.05 PM so I was making plans for what I would do in O'Hare. Roam around the duty free shops, grad some lunch and maybe have a nap as well. I was watching the flight path on the screen and I noticed that we were making a u turn, well this normally happens at busy airports where you have to roam in the air till you get a landing slot. We went in a circle twice and then the captain comes online again to deliver some news. Well the news was not good at all, he said that the weather down in O'hare was rotten and that there was a storm and that we would have to divert into Milwalki for refueling. So we land in Milwalki around 2 PM. The gentlemen next to me said that we wont be in O'Hare for another couple of hours at least. OK that got me thinking, will I miss my connection? The captain came online and said that we are waiting for a refueling truck and that it would take 20 mins to refuel once the truck arrives and that we should be good to go. Although that news was very encouraging the refueling truck didn't arrive for more than a hour and it was 4 PM when we got off the ground. Whew I thought I've had it all and whats next? So we land in O'Hare by 4.30 and start taxing to the gate. The captain comes online again and says that there is a Air Mexican flight at the gate assigned to us and that the gate would be free anytime between 5 and 25 minutes. My flight was at 6 and by this time I was very concerned as to whether I would make the connection. It was 5.30 when we got to the gate and with just 30 mins to go I had almost given it up. Nevertheless once I got off the flight I start running to the immigration area in a bid to get through immigration and run to catch my flight. Well well it was not to be so, when I got to the queue there were more than 200 passengers in the queue. I gave up hopes of making my connection (Although I was harboring hopes that the American Airlines flight might be delayed too :)). It was 6.30 when I got through immigration, so I go to the baggage belt and look for my bag. I also was on the look out for a cart to get my luggage on to but there weren't any available so I thought that I will first get the luggage and then look for it (Cause I may not need one if it had not arrived :)). There was no sign of my bag and the conveyor was still so I asked the guy over there whether there was more luggage to be unloaded. Just then he asked me my last name and checked a piece of paper and said that both my bags are in London. Cool, so I have no baggages to carry, that made it even easier, so I went through customs and went to the American Airlines desk and asked a guy there about my flight. He said that it has been canceled and directed me to the American airlines desk. So I change terminals and go there to find a 100 people in the queue, all of then been on the same boat (missed connections). Luckily you could call American and request for a re-booking, so I went to there customer service line and tried it out. They said that the other two flights for that night were overbooked too and that the next available flight was at 3.45 PM the following day. I was planning to be at the university that night in order to attend the orientation session on Monday. Next I tried calling Chamikara and discussed what could be done. My options were, Ask Virgin Atlantic for a Hotel and take the 3.45 flight the following day, Try my luck with the 8.30 PM shuttle for Purdue (This was already overbooked otherwise I would have been on that), stay at Chicago and take the shuttle the following day. When I checked with the shuttle there was one available for 12.30 PM the following day. So I went back to Virgin Atlantic and requested for a Hotel, They were kind enough to give me a Hotel room and meals at the Marriot in Chicago. So I stayed at the Marriot and got the shuttle the following afternoon to Purdue. The shuttle normally takes 3 hours but guess what the shuttle had to detour due to an accident on 65. To make matters even worse there was another accident on the alternate path too. Phew is there anything else to happen?

Well at last it was 5.30 PM when I got to Purdue. I was glad that Chamikara was there to pick me up. Well I had planned for delayed luggage and carried cloths for a week in my hand luggage :). So I didn't have to sleep under bed sheets like a few of my friends had to do once. Well they would be laughing there guts out now if they were reading this. Well thats not the end of the story though but thats more than enough for this post....

live web panel discussion: Componentization and enterprise SOA

Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana, WSO2 founder and CEO, and Paul Fremantle, co-founder and CTO, will be leading the discussion titled "What does componentization really mean for your SOA? tomorrow (April 30, 9:00-10:00 a.m. Pacific / 12:00-1:00 p.m. Eastern). They will bring extensive expertise in SOA and the OSGi specification that is enabling SOA middleware componentization.

They will be drawing from the experience they have gained in developing the revolutionary Carbon platform.

For more details on this discussion please refer here.

LTTE's Connections to the WEST

The following banners depict how much the WEST is supporting the LTTE a banned terrorist organisation.

WSO2 Mashup Server - What can it do for you?

If you were wondering what the WSO2 Mashup Server can do, here is a nice little flash demo that explains that very thing in a couple of minutes.

How will the Recession Effect SOA's

Lots of companies are cutting IT costs and IT projects are put on hold, so how would the recession effect SOA projects?

One might think that there will be a reduction in SOA projects but that's not true, this poll shows that 85% believe that SOA projects could reduce cost and hence increase your chances of facing this recession.

Whats more mature Open Source SOA frameworks such as WSO2's SOA framework help you reduce cost further. So make sure you have a peep at it if you are on the hunt for SOA products.

The role of ESB's in a SOA

ESB's (Enterprise Service Bus) have a big role to play in an SOA. Don't take my word for it take a look at the results of this poll which shows that 84% use an ESB in there SOA. Some use multiple.

If you are on the look for an Lightweight Open Source ESB make sure you checkout the WSO2 ESB.

Creating OSGI Bundles using the Maven Bundle Plugin

If you are involved with a project or a piece of Software that requires that your jars be OSGI bundles then this tutorial is for you. This tutorial by Sameera explains how the Maven bundle Plugin comes to your rescue. We use it extensivelyy in are WSO2 Carbon based projects at WSO2.

This article would also help users who are trying to deploy custom mediators on the WSO2 ESB 2.0.

The need for Business Processors in your SOA

What is a business process?
Why are business processors important in an SOA?
Can your SOA be more agile with the use of a business process?
Do we need a standard to describe business processors?
What role does BPEL play in a business Process?
What is the WSO2 Business Process Server?
Can a business process be secured, made to be reliable or its access be throttled?

Are you looking for answers to these questions? Then this Webinar is for you. This Webinar is presented by Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana, CEO of WSO2 and founding author of BPEL4WS, and Milinda Pathirage, project lead for WSO2 BPS.

WSO2 Business Process Server and Carbon - Podcast

In this Podcast Dennis Byron talks to Paul Fremantle the CTO of WSO2 on the newly launched WSO2 Business Process Server. Paul also touches on the benefits the WSO2 BPS got by being built on the Carbon Platform.

Axis2 - First Element must contain the local name, Envelope

This Exception could occur on both the server side or the client side. This exception is thrown when trying to build the SOAP envelope from the response (or request in the case of server side). The server is expecting a SOAP response but it receives something else (That does not have a SOAP envelope).

The easiest way to resolve this issue is to use a tool such as TCPMonitor and monitor the request and response. That will help you diagnose where the problem is.

Terror Attack on Cricket - Our Beloved Game

Today was a sad day for Cricket. The reason was the terror attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore. Reading through the news it does seem that the Sri Lankan team was extremely lucky.

It was reported that a rocket flew past the bus. Imagine what would have happened if the driver was hit? What if they took our whole team hostage? What if that rocket hit the bus? The results would have been tragic. We should be happy that it was a lucky escape.

I saw in one of the news that Kumara Sangakkara was quoted as saying" i do not regret playing in lahore". Kudus to the spirit that Sangakkara showed. Terror is everywhere, there is no place thats a 100% safe.

Some people may argue saying that Sri Lanka should not have toured Pakistan, I dont agree with them a bit though. It was a united team from Pakistan and India that came down to Sri Lanka in 1996 when several teams (Australia and the West Indies) refused to come and play in Sri Lanka. This was during the world cup of 1996. We should stand for each other especially in times of difficulty. A stick can be broken easily, but it takes a mighty effort to break a pile of sticks tied together.

Imagine what would have happened if this was the Indian team been attacked in Pakistan? India would have put the blame on Pakistan saying that they were involved. There is so much that the military can do to avoid these incidents.

I sinceerly hope that the 2011 world cup would stay in the Sub Continent.

How to set up WSO2 WSAS on Apache Tomcat

WSO2 WSAS can be run standalone (When WSAS is run standalone it runs on a embedded instance of Apache Tomcat), but there may be instances where users would want to run it on another Application Server. This Knowledge-Base article from Chamara explains how WSO2 WSAS can be set up on Apache Tomcat.

Note : This applies for WSO2 WSAS 3.0 and above.

Open Source SOA Platform - Everything you need to build SOAs

There are many proprietary as well as Open Source SOA products in the market. Most of these vendors (if not all) do not offer a Complete set of tools to build SOA's. Some of them may offer an ESB and a Governance Solution while another may offer just an ESB and so on. So isn't there a single Vendor that offers a Complete SOA stack?

Well not really, If you've heard of WSO2 then you would have heard about our SOA platform. I see three distinct advantages in WSO2's SOA platform.

1. Its a Complete Platform which offers everything you need to build your SOA - What WSO2 provides is not a set of isolated products, its a complete SOA platform where each product can work with another on the same platform. It provides tools for Service creation in Various Languages (Java, C, C++, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, JavaScript) , Service Composition, SOA Governance, Tools to Consume Services in various languages (Java, C, C++, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, JavaScript), and tools for Connecting Services.
2. Its completely Open Source under the Apache License - No Gimmicks, No Community version or Enterprise Version. What you get is Production quality code and its free for you to use the way you wish.
3. Enterprise level Support from WSO2 which comprise of a set of leaders in the SOA space. You get consultancy from the Architects and the Engineers themselves, Engineers who know every hook and corner of the products.

Interested? All of these products are released under the Apache Licence (No Strings attached) so go ahead download it and try it out yourself. You can provide us your feedback by posting your comments on our forums or dropping us a mail.

Show Twitter Updates on Blogger

I just added a widget that shows my Twitter updates on this blog. This could be done trivially by visiting this page.

What is the WSO2 Business Process Server?

The WSO2 Business Process Server which was released a couple of weeks ago is the latest addition to its Open Source SOA Stack. In this podcast Milinda Pathirage the lead developer of the project explains what the WSO2 Business Process Server is and how its fits into your SOA. He also touches on the advantages the business process server gained by been built on top of the WSO2 Carbon platform.

The Financial Crisis - What is it really?

We've been hearing of this Financial Crisis for a few months now. We've heard of banks going bankrupt, people loosing jobs and so on. We've also heard about the whole financial system falling down and the notion of this been a vicious cycle. How did the world get into this mess?

Here are a couple of great presentations by Jonathan Jarvis, that explains this using visuals. Its a great resource for people like me who do not understand this financial jargon.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized - Part 1

The Crisis of Credit Visualized - Part 2

Looking to expose legacy data as Web Services?

If you are looking to unlock data that's locked up in databases, CSV's or Excel files then the WSO2 Data Services Solution is what you've been looking for. It helps Database administrators expose data selectively within a matter of minutes by simply following a Wizard. Check out this compact flash demo that explains what the WSO2 Data Services solution can do for you.

How to add mediation to WSO2 WSAS

In a previous post I spoke about how service hosting capabilities can be added to WSO2 ESB. Now its time to do the reverse and show how mediation capabilities can be added to WSO2 WSAS.

This article from Ruwan explains the process in details. If you feel that you would like to see it in action instead of reading it then you could follow this screen case as well.

How much do we take Technology for Granted?

We live in a age of cutting edge technology (if not bleeding edge) and how much do we take it for granted? I remember the days when I used a dial-up connection to access the Internet (Not too long ago, may be 5-6 years ago) and now I'm using an ADSL connection which has like 512K download speed and contemplating whether I need an upgrade :). I cant imagine how I would live without an Internet connection.. Oh man the world has changed so much.

This clip makes us realise how much we take technology for granted. It comes with a dash oh Humour (More than a dash may be).

Came across this clip thanks to Jonathans post.

20th February 2009 - An Unforgettable Night

Friday night was one of those nights that you'd remember for a long time. I got a news alert around 9.25 PM Saying that the air defence system was activated in anticipation on a possible LTTE air attack. That was when we were going down for dinner. Around 9.40 I heard a weird sound, something like a motor. That was when I decided to step out and look up towards the sky. The sound was getting louder and within a minute or so I saw a small plane fly over us. As it was passing over us there was firing in the direction of the light aircraft. The firing came from the direction of the army camp which is located around 500m from our place (It used to be a commando training camp but now its a staff training college).

My initial suspicion was that they might attack the Sapugaskanda oil refinery which is located around 1Km from our place. Luckyly that was not the case, if it was I could have been toast :).

This was the 7th time the LTTE carried out an air attack. And the 7th time which is lucky for most people sealed their fate. It could well be their last air attack as well.

This was not the first that I experienced such terror. I remember the JVP attacking the Sapugaskanda police station in 1988, I was 7 then. I was fast asleep and suddenly woke up to the noise of gun fire. My mom and dad who slept in the room adjoining us came rushing in. My dad was over me shielding me while my mom was shielding my sister. We heard people firing along the road and that was a horrifying might. Last Friday was not that bad but it sure brought back memories of that incident.

Need for New Global Conventions in area of Conflict

"Due to the fact that communities and their aspirations continue to change, conflicts are an indispensable reality in our societies. My definition of peace is an atmosphere in which harmonious change can occur. Therefore, I am stressing the need to introduce innovative global conventions to exert balanced pressure on all stakeholders in a conflict zone. This would keep disturbances within the frame of humanity, just as gravity orchestrates droplets colliding without repeatable pattern into a waterfall. "

In an Insightful article Dr Thrishantha Nanayakkara raises the need for new global conventions to validate politically sensitive claims made by the various parties in a war zone. He uses the conflict in Sri Lanka and a few incidents that unfolded in the recent past to make his points clear.

I sincerely hope that his voice wouldn't fall on deaf ears and that adequate action will be taken to resolve this.

Personally I have a high regard for Dr Thrishantha Nanayakkara, he conducted our Artificial Intelligence course back in University. He is a fabulous teacher and a wonderful person.

Holiday at the Kandalama Hotel

Last weekend we (me and my wife) went for a holiday to the Kandalama Hotel. I don't believe in Marketing crap such as Valentines day, but it just happened to be that Valentines day fell on that weekend (Also Kandalama had a good offer for that weekend).

Kandalama Hotel is located on the hills overlooking the Kandalama Tank. The length of the hotel is around 1 KM from end to end (Dambulla Wing to Sigiriya Wing). From the Sigiriya Wing you could see the Sigiriya fortress in a distance, hence its a wonderful place to stay for anyone wanting to visit Sigiriya. A unique feature of the hotel is its commitment to protecting the environment. The hotel is built into the mountains and is surrounded by plenty of trees and creepers. You wake up to the cheeping sounds of plenty birds found in the vicinity. It is said that if the buildings of the hotel are removed that the area would look just like it was before the hotel was build. The Architect Deshamanya Geoffrey Bawa has designed it in such a manner that the hotel was built without damaging anything in the surrounding environment.

At Kandalama there are plenty of activities that one could indulge in. These include Elephant rides, boat rides, Bird Watching, Mountain Biking, Hiking and so on. Most of the hotels boast about having bird watching and so on when they do not have anything to offer. This is not the case with Kandalama though. As the hotel is surrounded by trees and the Kandalama Lake, birds are a familiar sight. If you look up towards the sky at any given time you would see at least a couple of Eagles soaring over the skies. Monkeys are also a familiar sight. They come to eat seeds and fruits as well as drink water from the lake as well as the swimming pool.

We also took the opportunity to visit the Eco Park at Kandalama. Its a place where they house an Animal Rehabilitation Centre. As Kandalama is situated in a rural part of Sri Lanka Surrounded by a jungle Serpents are a familiar sight. This also means that accidents do happen and that injured Serpents and Animals can be found on the roads. Sanath who is specialist in Serpents and Animals runs the rehabilitation centre in which he brings in and treats these injured Serpents and Animals. He also maintains a collection of Serpents for people to see. These Serpents which are captured from the area of the hotel itself are not kept for long at this centre. They are released to the wild after a couple of months. Sanath also did mention that he gets telephone calls from villages when they encounter Serpents. Sanath then rushes to the rescue of these serpents and bring them over to the rehabilitation centre. The 12 foot Python that he had was such a Serpent which was captured in a neighboring Temple. Sanath is also competent in handling wild snakes. He demonstrated this by handling a Spectacle Cobra as well as petting a Forsten's Catsnake. I would call him Sri Lankas Steve Erwin.

Another environment friendly action of the Kandalama hotel is that they try to recycle everything. The hotels garbage is brought to a special centre where it is sorted and put into several categories. These are then sent to the various recycling centres. Kandalama also recycles their waste water.

We had a wonderful learning experience by visiting the Paper recycling and production plant. This was a small factory that made paper using Elephant Dung. I would cover the details of that in a separate post.

All in all Kandalama was a wonderful holiday as well as a learning experience. We thoroughly enjoyed our holiday. I would like to encourage anybody who has not visited the Kandalama Hotel to do so. Its a unique experience.

I've uploaded the photos of the trip here.

WSO2 Mashup Server 1.5.2 Released

Its been some time since we released the 1.5.1 version of the WSO2 Mashup Server. The main reason for doing the 1.5.2 release was a memory leak that was present in the release which was inherited from Axis2. This memory leak was fixed in the 1.41 release of Axis2 but we could not focus on doing a release because of the effort that was put into WSO2 Carbon.

So Mashup Server users should upgrade to the latest version. The upgrade is pretty straight forward and is just a matter of preserving the scripts and the database folder of the old installation.

In addition to this memory leak there were a few other issues that we fixed. You could have a look at the release note for full details.

Using Eventing and EDA with the WSO2 ESB

In a previous post I mentioned of an Article that explains about Eventing, EDA and how it could be used in an SOA environment. This time Asanka goes on to explain the usage of Eventing and EDA with the WSO2 ESB 2.0.

How does Apache Axis2 Differentiate SOAP from REST

Apache Axis2 supports both SOAP as well as REST. The default behaviour is that any service deployed on Axis2 can be accessed as using SOAP or REST style request. So how does Axis2 differentiate SOAP from REST request?

It first looks at the HTTP Method of the incoming request. If its GET, PUT or DELETE it is processed assuming its a REST request, but if its POST we need to do some checks. These include checking the content-type of the incoming request. SOAP 1.2 uses the content-type of application/soap+xml while SOAP 1.1 uses text/xml as its content-type. Hence using this we could differentiate SOAP request from REST style request. Does that mean that we are done? Well no. There is a little glitch though. The content-type text/xml is used to send REST (POX to be exact) style request as well. So if the content-type is text/xml we need to do further processing. The field we look for in such cases is the SOAPAction header. According to the SOAP 1.1 spec the SOAPAction header is mandatory (Its optional in SOAP 1.2 though). Therefore if a request comes in with the content-type text/xml that has a SOAPAction header it is treated as SOAP.

Axis2 - How to set the SOAP Version on a client

There may be instances where you want your Axis2 client to send request in a specific SOAP Version. Axis2 supports both SOAP 1.1 as well as SOAP 1.2. The default used is SOAP 1.2.

Setting the SOAP version can be done as follows, for SOAP 1.1

serviceClient.getOptions().setSoapVersionURI(org.apache.axiom.soap.SOAP11Constants.SOAP_ENVELOPE_NAMESPACE_URI);

for SOAP 1.2

serviceClient.getOptions().setSoapVersionURI(org.apache.axiom.soap.SOAP12Constants.SOAP_ENVELOPE_NAMESPACE_URI);

WSO2 Carbon - High Quality at Low Cost

Its seldom that you get high quality at low cost. But that's what you get if you get your hands on WSO2 Carbon based products. Chinthana says that its analogous to "Drive as a Hummer, save as a Prius". I cant agree with him more.

How to add your own component to a WSO2 Carbon based product

WSO2 Carbon based products are a collection of carbon components. In addition to the carbon components shipped in a product one could write there own component as well. This article by Isuru explains how this could be done. Remember that in a previous post I did mention how you could create a UI component for such a carbon component.

Using EDA in an SOA environment

Support for eventing was one of the new features that came with WSO2 Carbon based products. Eventing support which is powered by the Apache Savan project is available in both the WSO2 ESB as well as WSO2 WSAS.

This article by Asanka, titled "Fusion : Eventing with SOA - Introduction" gives an overview of eventing and EDA (Event Driven Architecture) together with an illustration on how it can be used in an SOA environment.

The role of Mashups in SOA

In this presentation titled "Mashups : Bringing Springtime to Your SOA", Jonathan Marsh the VP of Business Development at WSO2 talks about the intersection of Mashups and SOA.

Extending WSO2 Carbon - Building your own UI component

A key feature of WSO2 Carbon is that the UI for the product is assembled using various UI components by its UI framework. Hence in order to deploy your own UI component in Carbon all you need to do is follow a few conventions.

This blog by Sumedha explains in detail the way this can be done.

Want to learn what WSO2 Carbon is?

Well if you are looking around for resources to learn what WSO2 Carbon is here is a great one. Paul Fremantle, Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at WSO2, will be giving you a preview of the new WSO2 Carbon platform in a free webinar that is scheduled for Tuesday, 12th February 2009 09:00 AM (PDT). This webinar s titled "WSO2 Synergies: The Carbon Story".

So go ahead and register now.

How to create a Proxy Service in WSO2 ESB 2.0

The ability to host proxy services is a key feature of the WSO2 ESB. In this post I will explain how a Proxy Service can be created in the new WSO2 ESB 2.0 release.

As its name suggests a Proxy Service is a virtual service that hides the actual service. When defining a Proxy Service in the WSO2 ESB you could provide a inSequence, outSequence, faultSequence and a target endpoint (Not all of these are required).

A sequence as its name suggests send the message through a sequence of mediations. Hence users could perform mediation on requests heading into a Proxy Service (using the inSequence) as well as responses it receives (using the outSequence).

When an endpoint is defined in a Proxy Service, messages that are directed to it goes through the inSequence before been sent to the actual endpoint.

Now that we've covered a few basic ideas on the terms used in Proxy Services lets go ahead and create one. Its always advisable to declare entities in your configuration as reusable components (Just as you do it in OOP). Hence lets define our sequences and endpoints as reusable entities and use them in the creation of the Proxy Service.

For this example I would be creating a proxy service for the digit2image service which can be found on mooshup.com (The community site of the WSO2 Mashup Server).

1. Lets create our endpoint. An Endpoint can be created by visiting the Endpoints link (Located under Manage).
   
   There are four distinct kind of endpoints, Please refer the documentation on endpoints for there detail. For this example I will create a simple Address Endpoint.
   
   
   When creating a address endpoint I simple specify its name and an Address (Having a look at the wsdl of our actual service, I find that the endpoint URL is http://mooshup.com/services/system/digit2image.SOAP12Endpoint/


2. Lets create a sequence. A sequence can be created by visiting the Sequences link (Located under Manage)
   
   
   
   When it comes to sequences, you could create complex sequences using one or more of the inbuilt mediators or using your own custom mediators. For simplicity I will be creating a sequence with a simple Log mediator. All it does is log the message to the console.
   
   
   
3. Now that we have our reusable components in place its time to create the actual Proxy Service. This can be done by visiting the Proxy Service link (Located Under Add).
   
   
   This will take you through a 3 step wizard.
   
   1. In the first step I provide a name for my service. Additionally I could configure several properties on a Proxy Service, for simplicity I will be sticking to the defaults. You could refer the documentation on Proxy Service creation for more details.
      
      
   
   
   2. step 2 asks for an Insiquence and a targetEndpoint. Its mandatory that you have at-least one of these. You could optionally have both as well. In our example lets use the sequence we created in Step 2 (DemoSequence) as the inSequence and the endpoint we created in Step 1 (digit2ImageServiceEndpoint) as our target endpoint.
      
      
   
   
   3. step 3 asks us for an outSequence and a faultSequence, both of which are optional. So lets use the default of none.
      
      
   Once you've done hit finish. Now we have created our new Proxy Service on WSO2 ESB 2.0.
   

Note : If you want this proxy service to be saved dont forget to go to the synapse link and hit save so that this Proxy will be available when you restart the server.

How to Cluster WSO2 Carbon based Products

Clustering for high availability and scalability is one of the main requirements of any enterprise deployment. As an Enterprise SOA offering WSO2 Carbon based products are capable of running in a clustered environment.

Well if that's the case how does one configure WSO2 products so that they can be clustered? Azeez, an Architect and Product Manager of WSO2 WSAS and Mr clustering at WSO2 has written a couple of articles that explain this in details. In the first article titled "Introduction to WSO2 Carbon Clustering" he explains some of the core concepts associated with WSO2 Carbon clustering. In his second article titled "WSO2 Carbon Cluster Configuration Language" he goes on to explains in detail the clustering configuration language used by WSO2 Carbon based products.

These articles apply to WSO2 WSAS (Web Services Application Server), WSO2 ESB (Enterprice Service Bus), WSO2 BPS (Business Process Server) as well as Apache Axis2.

Axis2 - ADBException: Unexpected subelement

This is another common issue that Apache Axis2 users face.

org.apache.axis2.AxisFault: org.apache.axis2.databinding.

ADBException: Unexpected subelement someElementName

Again the solution to this is simple. This exception could occur when a request is been sent (Before the request is sent) or when a response is arrived (Or alternatively it could occur on the server side when a request is received). Therefore it makes life easy to know where things really went wrong. And again TCPMonitor comes to the rescue. Simply send your request through TCPMonitor. This will help you diagnose whether the exception was thrown when sending the request or receiving the response.

Now lets figure out why this exception could occur. When a stub (or Skeleton) is generated using adb as the data binding framework (If no option (-d) is provided for the databinding framework Axis2 uses adb by default) it performs validation on the request it sends and the response it receives. The validation is performed based on the XML Schema for the request or response message. Hence if a response is to have three elements named a,b,c in a sequence and the response contains somethinglike a,d,c Axis2 would complain saying that it received an Unexpected element named d.

So this issue can be solved easily by comparing the request/response messages against the Schema that defines those messages. This could be tricky sometimes especially if you are not familiar with XML Schema.

This error could occur when there are namespace mismatches as well and spoting these could proove to be tricky as as a user found out over here.

Axis2 - The endpoint reference (EPR) for the Operation not found

Well if you've ever used Apache Axis2, I'm sure you would have faced this at some time or another.

The endpoint reference (EPR) for the
Operation not found is http://localhost:8080/services/someService
and the WSA Action = someAction

There has been a number of occasions where this question has been asked on the Axis2 mailing list as well. The answer to this is pretty simple though (Simple for someone who knows a bit of Axis2).

This exception simply means that Axis2 could not find the service and the operation that this request is headed to.

Several services can be hosted in Axis2, and these services could have several operations. Hence when Axis2 gets a request it should first search for the service and then the operation that the request is headed to. In Order to achieve this it uses some hints. This article from Chinthaka explains these in detail.

So if you hit this problem my advice is this. Try using TCPMonitor to intercept the request going into Axis2, have a look at it and make sure that the request contains some information that Axis2 could use to dispatch the request to the correct service and operation.

Experience in Canberra, Australia

Last month I was down in Canberra, Australia together with my colleague Asanka on a consulting engagement. Canberra is the Capital of Australia and its not surprising that this engagement was with a department of the Australian Government. I have uploaded the pictures of this trip to flickr.

Although Canberra is the capital of Australia its strange that international flights don't land in there (Although it is an International Airport). Hence our route to Canberra was via Sydney with a transit in Singapore. The transit in Singapore was not a problem at all cause its one of the best Airports to be on transit. The transit at Sydney was a shocker though. When we boarded the flight from Colombo we had checked in our bags directly to Canberra. Yet at Sydney we had to take our baggage's, go through immigration and recheck it in. Well the procedure is the same in the US but rechecking in your baggage is not a big issue. We had to wait for nearly a hour (We were lucky that we had a transit of around 4 hours) in the queue to check our baggage's in. Mind you Quantas had around 8 terminals serving passengers (So you could imagine how slopy they were. Or how slopy there procedure is).

Our 5 day onsite engagement was split into 2 days on consulting and 3 days of training covering WSO2 ESB, WSO2 Registry and WSO2 Data Services. (I wont be covering any details of our consulting engagement in this post :)). The guys we worked with were humble and friendly and were prepared to change there architecture according to the advice we provided them with. In my opinion this was an important step in making this project a success. These were not decisions based on our products alone but taking there whole SOA project into account. Hi guys I know you must be reading this post :)...

Back to Canberra. As a whole I would say Canberra is a pretty boring city (Any city is boring compared to New Orleans). Almost all the shops close by 6.00 PM baring a few restaurents. They do have late night shopping on Friday night and not suprisingly that too ends at around 9.00 PM :).

Been in Canberra we did take the opportunity to visit the Australian Parliment, thanks to Hai. It was a nice experiance expecially considering that you have not visited the parliment in your own country :). Back here in Sri Lanka the Parliment is not open to the public to visit at there leasure.

On our way back we had a 10 hour transit in Singapore. Our initial plan was to head out of the Airport and spend some time in the city but we decided aginst it. So it was 10 hours in the Singapore Airport again. IIRC the third time for me.

As a whole our visit to Canberra was a success. It would have been nice if we spent a night in Sydney or Melbourne though :). Having said that it was a trip that we had challenges and fun. BTW visiting a boring city such as Canberra with a buddy is much better that visiting a active city such as New York alone.

WSO2 Developer Portal (wso2.org) gets a new look

Last week the WSO2 Library got a new look. Now its the chance of the home page to get a new look.

WSO2 Developer Portal is a good resources for users looking for information on WSO2 products as well as SOA and Web Services as a whole.

UNIX Time will be 1234567890 on Valentine's Day

What a co-incidence, the Unix time would read 1234567890 at 00:31:30 CET on Valentines Day. That would translate to 05:00:30 on February 14th for us in Sri Lanka.

WSO2 BPS (Business Process Server) 1.0 Released!

The 1.0 version of the WSO2 BPS (Business Process Server) is now available for download. The WSO2 BPS is built on the revolutionary WSO2 Carbon Framework which brings compartmentalization into SOA.

Key features in this release include,

• Deploying Business Processes written in compliance with WS-BPEL 2.0 Standard and BPEL4WS 1.1 standard.
• Managing BPEL packages, processes and process instances.
• Data Sources support.
• External Database support for BPEL engine.
• WS-Security support for business processes.
• WS-RM support for business processes.
• Caching support for business processes.
• Throttling support for business processes.
• Transport management.
• Internationalized web based management console.
• System monitoring.
• Try-it for business processes.
• SOAP Message Tracing.
• Web Services tooling support such as WSDL2Java, Java2WSDL and WSDL Converter.
• Customizable server - You can customize the BPS to fit into your exact requirements, by removing certain features or by adding new optional features.

The WSO2 BPS is released under the Apache Licence version 2.0. Download it tryit out and give us your feedback.

WSO2 WSAS (Web Services Application Server) 3.0 Released!

The 3.0 version of the WSO2 WSAS (Web Services Application Server) is now available for download. This version of the WSAS is built on the revolutionary WSO2 Carbon Framework which brings compartmentalization into SOA.

New features in this release include,

• Enhanced admin UI
• Extensible server admin framework
• WS-Eventing support
• Policy editor
• Separable frontend & backend - a single frontend server can be used to administer several backend servers simultaneously

WSAS supports a number of WS-* specifications and standards which include,

• SOAP 1.1/1.2
• WSDL 1.1
• WSDL 2.0
• MTOM, XOP & SOAP with Attachments
• WS-Addressing
• WS-Security 1.0/1.1
• WS-Trust
• WS-SecureConversation
• WS-SecurityPolicy
• WS-ReliableMessaging
• WS-Policy
• WS-PolicyAttachment
• WS-MetadataExchange
• WS-Transfer
• WS-Eventing
• XKMS

WSO2 WSAS is released under the Apache Licence version 2.0. Download it tryit out and give us your feedback.

WSO2 ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) 2.0 Released!

The 2.0 version of the WSO2 ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) is now available for download. This version of the ESB is built on the revolutionary WSO2 Carbon Framework which brings compartmentalization into SOA.

New features in this release include,

• Transactional JMS transport and the Transaction mediators
• Integrated graphical user management
• Integrated graphical key store management
• Configurable logging through the management console
• Graphical data source declaration
• WS-Eventing support and Event Sources making it an event broker
• Enhanced sequence and proxy service editor
• Module management capability
• Transport configuration management through the graphical console
• Graceful/Forced shutdown/restart
• Enhanced integrated registry and search functionalities
• User permissions support
• Enhanced monitoring tools for statistics and tracing
• Try-It tool to try an existing service
• Graphical policy editor
• Administration console fully internationalized
• Better modularity and extendability through OSGi component architecture

The ESB is the product that gained the most from the carbonization effort. With this new release proxy services can be secured using a common set of security scenarios with a click of a button. The ability to try proxy services has also been added.

The WSO2 ESB is released under the Apache Licence version 2.0. Download it tryit out and give us your feedback.

OSGI and SOA - Slides

Those who missed the webinar on OSGI and SOA can go through the slides which were used for the webinar.

Osgi Webinar

View more presentations from wso2.org.

This is the start of a series of webinars which will show how OSGI, SOA and WSO2 products go hand in hand.

An interesting Blog - How to make Fresh Fruit Juices

This evening Azeez stumbled upon an interesting blog that is maintained by one of our colleagues. It contains valuable information on making fresh fruit juices. I'm sure you will enjoy it, Well I did and so did my wife.

WSO2 Carbon - An Amazing effort

Samisa, the Director of Engineering at WSO2 emphasizes on the effort that went into making WSO2 Carbon a success. Much of the success should go to Samisa himself for handling the Engineering resources very well. There were many a days when Samisa (and a bunch of others) spent numerous nights in office helping fellow members fix issues.

Samisa has been blogging quite a bit about carbon all the way along.

What is WSO2 Carbon?

Paul has put an excellent post about WSO2 Carbon. In this he explains the advantages of using WSO2 Carbon. In a previous post Samisa had blogged on why one would want to use WSO2 Carbon.

What is WSO2?

For those of you who do not know what WSO2 is here is an Elevator Pitch that tries to explain it in a couple of minutes.

Sri Lanka Celebrates Her 61st Independence Day

Sri Lanka today celebrates her 61st Independence Day. It was on a day like today in 1948 that Sri Lanka gained its independence from the British. And it wont be long before she regains her full Independance by crushing the LTTE.

WSO2 Mashup Server Resources

If you are looking for resources on the WSO2 Mashup Server, make sure you pay a visit to its library page on wso2.org. It summaries all the available resources.

WSO2 Carbon hits the Home Straight

The team has been pushing hard to make WSO2 Carbon a success. We've done several betas and RC's in the past few months and now we've hit the home straight. We've cut a branch for the 1.5 release of carbon and are in the process of creating the final packs for testing. The following WSO2 Carbon based products will be released next week,

• WSO2 ESB (Enterprice Service Bus) 2.0
• WSO2 WSAS (Web Services Application Server) 3.0
• WSO2 Registry 2.0
• WSO2 BPS (Business Process Server) 1.0

I hope to blog more about WSO2 Carbon and the related products in the following weeks.

WSO2 Library gets a new look

The WSO2 Oxygen Tank has been going through numerous iterations in order to provide a better user experience. The newest component to be upgraded is the Library where you could find articles, podcasts, demos, Case Studies... etc on WSO2 products as well as Apache products such as Apache Axis2, Apache Synapse and Apache Axiom.


The new library has made it easy to find resources based on product as well as category. Do check it out.

Nadal wins an Epic Final

It was just two days ago that Rafael Nadal was involved in a 5 hour marathon match with Fernando Verdasco. That cracker of a match was worthy of been a final and who would have thought that there could be a match that could better that. Well it happened in the final of the Australian Open when Nadal beat Roger Federer in a match that lasted 4 and a half hours.

This match was arguably between one of the best tennis players of all time against the best player at the moment. Nadal's stamina is extraordinary and some of the points he pulled off was a mere treat to watch. In a post match interview Verdasco stated that a point against Nadal is worth 3 points against any other player. This time I made sure that I didn't miss a game and watched the whole match right to the end.

Federer who was very emotional after the match was on the brink of equaling the record for the most Grand Slams which is held by Pete Sampras. This wasn't Federers moment but I'm sure he will get that record in time to come. I'm also certain that Nadal will break that record before he hangs his boots. Nadal who is just 22 has already won 6 Grand Slams.

It was fitting that the awards were presented by Rod Laver who is one of the greatest tennis players. It is said that to be a real champion you need to win all four Grand Slams in a single calendar year. Only 5 people in the history of the game have achieved this feat, and Rod Laver has done it twice. It was also nice to see the four people he beat at the Australian Open, French Open, US Open and Wimbledon at the presentation.

Australia's supremacy in Cricket is dead and gone

With Australia loosing one day series 4-1 to South Africa they are no more at the top of the ladder. South Africa now take the top spot and they sure deserve it.

Its been a magical tour for South Africa, nobody would have bet that they would defeat Australia in both forms of the game. Australia's supremacy is dead and gone. I don't see them making a come back in the near future. It wont be long before they loose the top spot in the test ranking as well

A few busy weeks

I've been out of blogging for the past couple of weeks. Its been mainly because of the work we've been putting into the Carbon based releases as well as some other stuff.

In the third week of January, when Paul and Jonathan were down in Sri Lanka we were busy with planning for 2009. A group of us (A big group at that) spent three days offsite planning things out for 2009.

Last week I was out in Canberra on a consultancy engagement. It was my first visit to Australia and my first overseas trip in 2009. More on Canberra to folow...

Nadal Vs Verdasco - A Cracker of a Match

The Semi-Final match between Rafael Nadal and Fernando Verdasco in the Australian Open was one of the best tennis matches that I have witnessed. The match lasted for over 5 hours and the intensity in the final set was a testimont to the fitness of the two players. Sadly I could not watch the whole match.

For those who missed it, just have a look at this "Shot of the day" from day 12 of the Australian Open. It shows the quality of the tennis that these guys played. The celebration from Nadal at the end of the match showed how much he respected his fellow countrymen Verdasco.

WSO2 Carbon & Axis2 Cluster Configuration Guide

Clustering for high availability and scalability is one of the main requirements of any enterprise deployment. Afkham Azeez, Architect and Product Manager of WSO2 WSAS has written a couple of articles that explain how WSO2 Carbon based products (This articles apply to Apache Axis2 as well) can be clustered.

In the first article titled "Introduction to WSO2 Carbon Clustering" he explains the core concepts of clustering an in the second article titled "WSO2 Carbon Cluster Configuration Language" he explains in detail as to how WSO2 Carbon based products can be clustered.

Free Webinar - OSGI and SOA

As you might have already heard we at WSO2 and building a complete revolutionary SOA platform which is based on the OSGI framework. Using OSGI to build the WSO2 Carbon Framework has given our products the ability to add new functionality with ease.

In this Webinar Paul Fremantle, Co-founder and CTO of WSO2, will introduce the OSGi framework. He will also talk about how OSGI fits in with SOA and how it has enabled WSO2 build the revolutionary Carbon framework.

This Webinar will be held on Thursday, 20th January 2009 09:00 AM (PST), so Register now.

A brave journalist (Lasantha) silenced

"The pen is mightier than the sword" was a phrase that we learnt at school and it used to be that way but in the modern era that phrase should be changed to this "The gun is mightier than the pen". The truth is bitter and there aren't many who can digest it. Some group who could not stand the bitter truth that Lasantha exposed, decided to silence him.

Lasantha Wickramatunga was a brave journalist who fought against injustice. He was the Editor of The Sunday Leader. Apperently he had received several death threats in his time and the sunday leader press was burnt down in 2007 by an armed gang. Lasantha was most influencial in bringing to light many currupt deals of the government. These include the alleged MIG deal and details of Mihin Air which has been a total failure.

This attack comes just 2 days after a leading media station in the country was attacked and destroyed by an armed gang. This gang had used a claymore weighing 8 Kgs to destroy the MCR (Main Control Room) of this media station.

The current security situation in Colombo is that there are many road blocks in the city and vehicles are searched at most locations. In the instance where the media station was attacked, it was carried out at 2.15 AM in the morning by a white van which did not have a number plate. At that time in the morning you don't get too many vehicles on the road and its surprising that this vehicle was not checked at a single checkpoint as such. Even in the case of Lasanthas shooting, it was carried out at 10.30 AM in the morning in broad day light.

The government who condemns the attack says that they will conduct a broad investigation into this matter. Can the people believe the government? Not really. Not when ministers in this country can brake into media stations and assault its officials. This alleged minister is still free and is still a minister. One could say that the people are to be blamed for electing such ministers. But thats not the case, this alleged minister did not go into parliament by votes cast by voters. Apparently he got the least number of votes in Colombo (something around 2200 votes and Colombo has over 1 million voters) and was rejected by the people. But made it into parliament from the national list. The president who is the leader of this political party should take the full responsibility of this appointment.

In a society where people have diverse ideas, its a fact that not all will agree with what a person has to say. That does not give the right to anybody to silence another person.

Mahela please learn a lesson from Ponting

I'm a great fan of cricket but I'm not a great fan of the Aussies. I do like the way they play attacking cricket but I do not like there approach to the game. Cricket is supposed to be a gentleman's game and I'm sure that sledging is not a part of it. I hate the way the Australians try to intimidate the oppositions by sledging. Why not show your authority with the bat and ball rather than using dirty tricks.

Having said that I very much appreciate the way the Australians make sporting decelerations. This (The current match been played against South Africa) is not the first time they have done it either. Both Steve Waugh and Mark Taylor used to do it as well. sporting decelerations makes the match much more interesting and Mahela please take note of that. Sri Lankas declaration today against Bangladesh (setting them a target of 624) was a mere joke. Its true that today was just the fourth day of the test but why do you need to set Bangladesh such a big target? This is something that Mahela should learn from Ponting.

This is not just a problem with Mahela, we see this same problem with other asian cricketing nations too. Asian nations (cricketing) do not want to give anything away, they do not want to take the risk of loosing the odd match in favour of winning a bunch. That is the very reason as to why sub-continent matches end up been drawn more often.

Invoking secured services couldn't be easier

A key feature of the 1.5.1 version of the Mashup Server that we released mid last year is that it can invoke services secured using complex WS-Security scenarios with ease. Hear is an example of it,

The service securedService running up on mooshup.com has been secured such that the request sent to this service should be encrypted and all requests should contain the username and password in a SOAP header (requires Username Token). Hence all registered user on mooshup can access this service. A client for this scenario would be simple as,

invokeSecuredService.inputTypes={"firstParam" : "string" , "secondParam" : "string"};
invokeSecuredService.outputType="string";
function invokeSecuredService(firstParam, secondParam) {
  var request = new WSRequest();
  var options = new Array();
  options.encryptionUser = "keithspublickey";
  options.username = "yourUsername";
  options.password = "yourPassword";
  var payload = {firstParam}{secondParam};
  var result;
  try {
      var service = new QName("http://services.mashup.wso2.org/securedService", "securedService");
      request.openWSDL("http://mooshup.com/services/keith/securedService?wsdl", false, options, service, "SOAP12Endpoint");
      request.send("demo", payload);
      var response = request.responseE4X;
      result = response["return"].toString();
  } catch (e) {
      system.log(e.toString(),"error");
      return result = e.toString();
  }
  return result;
}

You could follow the "Invoking Web Services from a Mashup" tutorial to get a feel of how easy it is to access web services using the WSO2 Mashup Server.

Invoking Web Services from a Mashup

An article written by me titled "Invoking Web Services from a Mashup" has been published on the WSO2 Oxygen Tank. Invoking external web services is a popular mechanism to get information to mashup with and this articles explains how this could be done on the WSO2 Mashup Server. The article covers the following,

• Mechanisms that the WSO2 Mashup Server provides to invoke web services
• The pros and cons of each mechanism
• An example showing how each of these mechanisms could be used to invoke a web service in a synchronous as well as asynchronous manner. It also gives an example as to how a secure service could be accessed.

How to deploy services on the WSO2 ESB

Whether or not an ESB should host services is a debatable topic and there is no right answer to it. Some do like to host services on their ESB while the others like to have their service deployment separated from service mediation. I personally like the idea of having my services separated from the mediations.

The WSO2 ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) did not allow deploying services on it right up to the 1.7 release. But we did have a few customers who wanted that feature. Now with the revolutionary WSO2 Carbon framework (Which all future generations of WSO2 products will be built on) users can have their ESB just the way they want. The traditionalist who prefer to have there services separate from mediations could use WSO2 WSAS and the WSO2 ESB. For those who want service deployment on their ESB, its just a matter of grabbing the service deployment components and dropping it into your ESB. Charitha has written a nice little blog post that explains how this could be done.

Missing bits of the Carbon team

In his last post for the year 2008 Azeez had posted a picture of the Carbon team (Mind you the picture shows just a part of the Carbon team, there are more people who contributed to its success). The picture wouldn't be complete without the leader of the Carbon team himself. So here are a couple of pictures that were taken when Azeez was taking photographs of the Carbon team.

Figure : Azzez taking photographs

Figure : The White board on the background is what we used to track daily progress.

Visits to this Blog in 2008

I've been using StatCounter to track visits to my Blog since June 2008. I came to know about StatCounter from Charitha who was using it to track visits to his blog. The following image shows the visits to this blog for the year 2008.

The graph looks like the city of Colombo with one huge sky scraper. That was the month that I started blogging extensively about Axis2. Its nice to see that these posts did help quite a few readers in sorting out there issues. I plan to blog more extensively in 2009, so stay tuned. And a big thank you to the readers of this blog.

A look back at a Fantastic 2008

2008 was a busy and successful year. It was also a year that I traveled a lot. I traveled to the US 6 times and spent about 2 months out of the country.

To start the year off we had the 1.0 release of the Mashup Server in January. Soon after the release I traveled to the US to deliver a talk titled “Mashups, Social Enterprise, Javascript and Open Source: A real mashup! “ at the Open Enterprise 2.0 Mashup Summit: Expanding Customer Value Networks held at NYC Seminar and Conference Center, NY. That was my first visit to the US and it was quite a long one. During this visit I spent a weekend in New York city and took the opportunity to visit the Statue of Liberty and Elis island. After a weekend in New York city I headed down to California to spend a week in the Mountain View office. During this period I also went down to Jonathan's place in Auburn and spent a few days there. We spent time planning out the future features we needed for the Mashup Server. During the weekend we did some hiking looking for a few geocaches and some kayaking as well. It was my first time on a kayak and it was fun. The next week I headed out to New York back again to attend the Web services on Wall street conference.

After a 2 week visit to the US I spent 2 weeks at home before heading out to the US again. This time it was to conduct a few training at SDWEST 2008 which was held in the Santa Clara convention center in California.

This time I had one week at home before heading out to the US again. This time it was to attend the Microsoft Web Services Interop Plug-fest held at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA. On our way to Redmond we were gonna spend a day in the Mountain View office as well. The good thing that time around was that I was not traveling alone. Actually this is the only time that I have traveled to the US with my colleagues. It was an unforgettable trip too with us missing our connecting flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco, this was after spending about 40 hours from Colombo to Los Angeles. We spent the night in Los Angeles and headed out to San Francisco the following morning. We then headed off to Seattle later that evening. Been there along with quite a few friends meant that we had a good time.

My next visit to the US was in May and it was back to New York city. It was a consulting engagement and it was for a large stock broker in Wall Street. They were gonna use WSO2 WSAS and WSO2 ESB as a solution to there requirement. We were able to get then started off within just 5 days of work there. Now they are using this solution in production and is one of our good customers.

In between all these travel arrangements I was working on the next release of the WSO2 Mashup Server as well. We were able to release the 1.5 version of the Mashup Server in July. This was a major accomplishment for us.

My next visit to the US was in August to conduct a four day training course on Apache Axis2. This time around I was in the scorching heat of Phoenix, Arizona.

It was just about this time that we were seriously starting work on WSO2 Carbon and the rest of the year was spent on making WSO2 Carbon a success. But my traveling for the year wasn't over, my last visit to the US last year was to attend ApacheCon US 2008 which was held in New Orleans. This was by far the best trip I've had to the US.

To finish off a fantastic year we had a few beta releases of WSO2 Carbon based products. This year will be spent solidifying the products built on the WSO2 Carbon platform. I will be also looking forward to releasing the 2.0 version of the Mashup Server which will be based on WSO2 Carbon.

Experiance at ApacheCon 2008 in New Orleans

I uploaded photos that I took in New Orleans last November. I was there for ApacheCon 2008 and it was freaking awesome. To start things off I was on a A380 for the first time. ApacheCon 2008 was held in the Sheraton Hotel in New Orleans which is located beside the Mississippi river. I had a great view of the Mississippi river cause I was on the 47th floor. The view from there was simply amazing.

ApacheCon itself was a great event with several good talks and keynotes. A highlight of the event was the "Funeral march for proprietary software".

This was a really fun event where we marched along the streets of New Orleans with the world famous Rebirth Brass Band and ended up in the "Howling Wolf Music Hall". I did upload quite a few photos of this event too :).

New Orleans was a fun place to be in and it sure was a city that never sleeps. It was late nights on a daily basis with us walking from one club to another. Baring a couple of days where I went to bed early the earliest I slept was 3.00 AM which there were a couple of days that I slept at 6.00 AM as well. It was all about getting to know each other in the Apache community and having fun together. It was the best trip I had to the US.

I also took the opportunity the walk around New Orleans. I did visit the famous French Quarter area as well as Cafe Du Monde which is famous for there French Donuts. And yes I didn't forget to get a pack of Cafe Du Monde Bignet Mix. I also visited the Aquarium down there and it was an amazing experience. It was the first time I had visited an aquarium of this magnitude and I made sure that I got plenty of pictures so that I could share the experience with my family.

Its official - Sri Lankan troops capture Kilinochchi

What a start to 2009 its for Sri Lanka as a country. Within an hour before the dawn of the new year troops captured Paranthan and a few minutes ago the Sri Lankan government made an official news release stating the fall of Kilinochchi. I would like to thank all those who shed there blood and laid down their lives during this endeavor.

Well it was like the dawn of another year with fire crackers firing all over the place. That shows how much the public embraces this important moment.

Now to the other side of the story, in Sri Lanka everything has a political influence. And I'm sure the government will use this to there utmost advantage. Even during the speech made by the President he asked all people of this country to make a sacrifice so that this war could be finished soon. Well thats a fair enough statement but why cant the government make a sacrifice too?. The government is maintaining over 100 ministries (Mind you Sri Lanka is a small country with just over 20 million people) and no moves have been made to cut down the waste made by these ministers. They keep spending our tax money and enjoy a luxurious life and expect the poor tax payers of this country to make sacrifices.

Well a good example is the fuel crisis in Sri Lanka. A few weeks ago the supreme court ordered that petrol be sold at Rs. 100 a liter and that the tax charged on petrol should not exceed a 100%. At the time of this verdict petrol was Rs. 122 a liter. The response of the government to this situation was turning a blind eye on the verdict of the supreme court. On the eve of the new year the government announced that they would reduce petrol by Rs. 2 and that it cannot reduce it further due to the high expense incurred on the war. Well true enough, the expenditure on defense matters is high and we can see the benefits of it, but has any measures been taken to cut down on the unnecessary expenditures made by the government? Is it just the poor tax payers of this country that should make all the sacrifices? Motor vehicles in Sri Lanka carry a tax of around 300%-400%, and all ministers are given tax permits to bring down luxury vehicles. These luxury vehicles are very high in fuel consumption and even the fuel is provided by the government (or by tax payers money). Now Mr President, why not cut down on those cost? Why not get your ministers to make sacrifices?