MBeans Server

Now that we have a virtual server back on the Internet and the SOAPServiceClient portlets are ready for testing, it's time to dig out the notes on creating a WSRP Producer from the portlets. Certain individuals have expressed an interest in demonstrating the capability to consume a WSRP producer from the enviroment we have on the virtual server.

Spent some time finding the notes and refreshing my memory. I know that I successfully did this once before when we had the other virtual server on line. Unfortunately, I didn't get too far along before I hit a brick wall.

On the second screen of the configuration process I noticed that the hostname was localhost and not the IP address of the server. I vaguely remembered that this could be changed by selecting the Edit mode for the WSRP Producer portlet. I selected the Edit mode, typed in the necessary information for hostname and port(wasn't real sure about what to use for port, but guessed at 80--it used to be port 8080) and then did the Submit. After a long delay the View mode displayed a red error message:

"The MBean Server has not been started for the following host. Please start the MBean Server and retry."

I spent all day researching, sending emails and trying to understand what was going on. Meanwhile, the portlet continued to display the error message and it was taking a very long time for the portal page to render whenever it was viewed in the browser. Finally, this morning there was a response from the forum at users@wsrp.dev.java.net I tried the suggestion and it worked!

The answer was simple enough. All I had to do was check the box that said isLocal--that means there is no remote MBean server to look up and everything is deployed locally on the same machine. I think the box was checked by default but I may have unchecked it, thinking that changing the hostname from localhost to the IP address meant it was no longer deployed locally.

I was able to get rid of the error message and the rendering time went back to normal. The WSRP producer is created and I can consume it from the PC I have on my local machine. The problem now is that neither SharePoint nor WebLogic can consume it. I think it's related to the fact that I had to put in a port number during the configuration or it would default to 8080. The way GlassFish was installed on the server, it is set up so that it can't be reached from 8080, only from 80. But that doesn't seem to work for the WSRP URL. Time now to see what I can find out about how the server was configured.