Apache Rampart nightly builds are up !!!

Apache Rampart nightly build distros are available here

Now rampart has 11 different samples (samples/basic) explaining the basic parameter based configuration.You can try the samples in the distro with axis2-1.1 nightly builds

Any comments, issues or bugs : please fire a mail to the axis-dev@ws.apache.org list with the [Rampart] prefix in the subject.

Easywords

Ok ... I finally started studying for my GRE ... :-) and I spent a couple of hours creating this !!!

The plan is to recognize as many words that we are most familiar with and prompt meanings and synonyms of words that are probably new.

I also started a new Google project called "Easywords" and hosted the simple Javascript code.

Out of all words available in a give paragraph I remove any of known words (these known words is a simple list of words that I compiled within the code itself). In doing this I remembered a nice feature in Ruby that used to popup among the code snippets shown in main page of the Ruby web site.
The code snippet from the Ruby site is shown below:

cities  = %w[ London
              Oslo
              Paris
              Amsterdam
              Berlin
              Colombo]

visited = %w[Berlin Oslo]
 
puts "I still need " +
     "to visit the " +
     "following cities:",
     cities - visited

The output of the above snippet is :

I still need to visit the following cities:
London
Paris
Amsterdam
Colombo

I'm not an expert in Javascript and I had to implement this manually to use the known list of words to search in the given paragraph to find occurrences of those words and remove them. But I'd love to find a better way to do this (like in what we can do in Ruby) in Javascript. If anyone of you out there have a better way... do send a patch :-) !!!

New Rampart Configuration

Apache Rampart is going through some changes these days. It is being modified to work on WS-SecurityPolicy. But we had a slight problem - the WS-SecurityPolicy spec does not provide all information required for rampart to be configured properly to produce and consume secured messages.

The proposed solution was to come up with a Rampart specific policy assertion that will hold all configuration information. This will be a top level policy assertion and will not be exposed through MEX interfaces such as ?wsdl.

An example Rampart configuration assertion we are using is as follows:

<ramp:RampartConfig xmlns:ramp="http://ws.apache.org/rampart/policy"> 
    <ramp:user>alice</ramp:user>
    <ramp:encryptionUser>bob</ramp:encryptionUser>
    <ramp:passwordCallbackClass>org.apache.rampart.TestCBHandler</ramp:passwordCallbackClass>
  
    <ramp:signatureCrypto>
        <ramp:crypto provider="org.apache.ws.security.components.crypto.Merlin">
            <ramp:property name="org.apache.ws.security.crypto.merlin.keystore.type">JKS</ramp:property>
            <ramp:property name="org.apache.ws.security.crypto.merlin.file">interop/interop2.jks</ramp:property>
            <ramp:property name="org.apache.ws.security.crypto.merlin.keystore.password">password</ramp:property>
        </ramp:crypto>
    </ramp:signatureCrypto>
</ramp:RampartConfig>

Secure Message Exchanges with Multiple Users

This is a tutorial on Apache Rampart configurations in setting up a service to be able to receive and respond with encrypted and signed messages with multiple clients.

Bad day !!!

Yesterday 21st August 2006 was probably the worst day in my life... How about some crazy driver hitting your car on your way back home after work and then getting your home robbed in the same night...Well ... it happened :-(.

The thief stole my 2 wrist watches and mobile phone without which I feel crippled. The feeling that an unknown person was in my home going through my stuff is a very bad feeling. Sigh ... :-(

Apparently the same guy has robbed three more houses last night.

UsernameToken Authentication with Rampart

This article explains how Apache Rampart can be used in UsernameToken authentication with Axis2.

Travelin' Soldier - Dixie Chicks

I was browsing through a my youngest brother's song collection and stumbled upon this very nice song (Travelin' Soldier) by Dixie Chicks. I guess this is going to be one of my all time favourites :-). Check it out !!

Setting Up Keystores for a Client and a Service

There were a lot of queries on setting up keystores when using Apache WSS4J/Rampart with Axis1.x and Axis2. This is a step-by-step how to guide that will help one setup the keystores properly.

Got my flickr pro account !!!

I upgraded my flickr account to a pro account today ... it seems like a pretty good deal ...
The pro account allows unlimited photo sets, unlimited storage and a whopping 20 GB monthly upload limit.

Now I can use this as my pic backup :-)

ApacheCon Asia in Colombo, Sri Lanka in August!

ApacheCon Asia is the first ever Asian offering of the popular ApacheCon Conference of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). ApacheCon Asia provides an excellent opportunity to experience first-hand what ASF technologies and development communities can do for you and your enterprise.

The program consists of two technical tracks in the main conference and a large number of tutorials. In addition a "hackathon" will be held the day before the conference where attendees can interact with various Apache project developers and learn and contribute!

Priced at a very affordable level, the conference will be held in Colombo, Sri Lanka from August 14th to 17th at the Trans Asia Hotel.

See http://www.asia.apachecon.com/ for further details. On-line registration will open shortly.

Register by Friday, August 4th and receive a 10% early bird discount!

Interested in sponsoring? See:
http://asia.apachecon.com/conference/sponsor/

The ApacheCon Asia Organizing Team.

Understanding Web Services Policy

This is a very good paper on WS-Policy by Asir and Dan. Nice work guys !

Hello World with Apache Axis2

Here's a simple tutorial of 6 steps to create an Axis2 service and a client to interact with it.

ApacheCon EU 2006 - Secure Web Services with Apache Axis2 and Apache WSS4J

Want to find out how to secure Apache Axis2? Apache Rampart is the
ideal module for the job !!!

If you are anywhere near Ireland on the 26th of June or really want
to know how it all works, come on over to ApacheCon EU 2006 where I
will be presenting a tutorial on "Secure Web Services with Apache
Axis2 and Apache WSS4J". see here for details.

Early bird registration is now open till the 6th of June. So hurry and
register now!

Apache Rampart 1.0 Released

We are happy to announce the 1.0 release of Apache Rampart.

Apache Rampart is the Apache Axis2 module that implements the WS-Security
specification based on Apache WSS4J 1.5.0 and the Apache AXIOM-DOOM
implementation.

In addition to the WS-Security features listed in the WSS4J web site

rampart provides:

* Ability to MTOM optimize parts of the message
* Convenient and intuitive configurations
* Mechanism to dynamically configure the module
* Experimental WS-SecurityPolicy support

This module was successfully tested for interoparability with other
WS-Security implementations.

You can download the rampart-1.0.mar from:

http://www.apache.org/dyn/mirrors/mirrors.cgi/ws/axis2/modules/rampart/1_0/

For documentation on configuration please refer

http://ws.apache.org/axis2/modules/rampart/1_0/security-module.html

Let "rampart" secure your messages !!!

Apache Rampart Team

Apache WSS4J 1.5.0 Released

We released WSS4J 1.5.0 today. Release note:

The WSS4J team is happy to announce the 1.5.0 release of
Apache WSS4J, the Web service security implementation.

You can download the releases from:

http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/ws/wss4j/1_5_0

The distributions to the mirror(s) sites will be available in the next
few days.

Apart from the binary and source distributions, We have an additional
ZIP file that contains other required JAR files to install and run WSS4J.

Please refer to the *readme.* files in the distribution for
further information regarding implemented features, additional
information, links to the Wiki pages, etc.

Note that major refactoring from the 1.1.0 to 1.5.0 is mentioned in
the wiki :
http://wiki.apache.org/ws/FrontPage/WsFx/refactor

More information about WSS4J and related projects is available
on the WSS4J homepage:

http://ws.apache.org/wss4j

We hope you have fun with this new WSS4J :-)

The WSS4J team

01:02:03 04/05/06

I just got this from one of my friends :

Just in case you wanted to know this - that tomorrow it will be, at two
minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will
show
01:02:03 04/05/06.


That won't ever happen again in our lifetime.

In fact it will be approx. 400 generations before it happens again.

:-)

UsernameToken with JavaScript

This is a simple sample that demonstrates a wsse:Usernametoken with plain text password and password digest.

SHA-1 function was imported from here and some util functions were imported form here.

Search Apache axis-dev mail archives using firefox search box

Inspired by this post in the LK LUG mailing list, I came up with a Mozilla Search Plugin to search Apache Axis-dev mailing list archives at http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/.

This will add 'Axis-dev' into the list of available search engines in the Mozilla Firefox search box. Microft search plugin code can be found here

New found Love !!!

This Tuesday (11th October) I got my very first car.

It's a two door Nissan FB14 Lucino with a 1500 CC Engine and it has a nice rear spoiler as well. :D

Here are some images of the car.





I drove to work today (on my own for the first time !!!) and it was a very nice ride.

I was able to find the spec at alljapanesecars.com

Password Safe

A nice way to manage passwords...
http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net