In some views SOA is represented as a series of 4 layers: Presentation Layer (SOA 1), Business Process Layer (SOA 2), Business Service Layer (SOA 3) and Technical Layer (SOA 4). Typically each layer higher up in the hierarchy consumes services exposed by the layer under it. So the Presentation Layer would consume services provided by the Business Process or Business Service Layers. Service interfaces are described using Web Services Description Language (WSDL), sheltering service consumers from details of service implementation. Web Services are seen as the technical means to implement the decoupled functional layers in a SOA development. Decoupling allows implementations of business functionality at different layers to be swapped in and out without disturbing other layers in the stack.
The business idea is that patients are looked after in various healthcare facilities. Frequently applications need to allow selection of a facility and to access facility details for display to human operators. A relational database is used to hold the details of facilities which are a part of the healthcare enterprise. To shelter application developers from the details of the data store facility list and details are made available as a multi-operation web service. This web service will be used to construct the web application that provides a user view into the facilities and facility details.
The previous document in this series, “GlassFish ESB v 2.1 Creating a Healthcare Facility Web Service Provider”, walked the reader through the process of implementing a GlassFish ESB v2.1-based, multi-operation web service which returns facility list and facility details. In this document I will walk through the process of developing a Visual Web Application which will use the Web Service as a data provider. We will use the NetBeans 6.5.1 IDE, which comes as part of the GlassFish ESB v2.1 installation. The application will be implemented as a Visual Web JavaServer Faces Application using JSF component provided by Project Woodstock. This application will introduce the technology in a practical manner and show how a multi-operation web service can be used as a data provider, decoupling the web application from the data stores and specifics of data provision.
Note that this document is not a tutorial on JavaServer Faces, Visual Web JSF, Project Woodstock components or Web Application development. Note also that all the components and technologies used are either distributed as part of the NetBeans 6.5, as part of the GalssFish ESB v2.1 or are readily pluggable into the NetBeans IDE. All are free and open source.
It is assumed that a GlassFish ESB v2.1-based infrastructure, supplemented by the Sun WebSpace Server 10 Portal functionality and a MySQL RDBMS instance, are available for development and deployment of the web application discussed in this paper. It is further assumed that the web service, developed using instructions in “GlassFish ESB v 2.1 – Creating a Healthcare Facility Web Service Provider”, is available and deployed to the infrastructure. The instructions necessary to install this infrastructure are discussed in the blog entry “Adding Sun WebSpace Server 10 Portal Server functionality to the GlassFish ESB v2.1 Installation”, supplemented by the material in blog entry “Making Web Space Server And Web Services Play Nicely In A Single Instance Of The Glassfish Application Server”.
Here is the document – 01_FacilityService_WebApplication.pdf
