How to call a SOAP web service using wget linux tool

First you have to store an xml file containing the input data, to be posted to web service as the input.
Say for example that the file is named input.xml

Then call the wget command as follows:

wget --post-file=input.xml --header="Content-Type: text/xml;charset=UTF-8" \

--header="SOAPAction: \"THE_SOAPACTION_AS_IS_IN_WSDL"" \

http://URL_TO_THE_WEB_SERVICE -O response.xml

If everything is ok, response.xml will contain the web service result

tip: for creating a correct input.xml, use SoapUI and after call the web service see the raw tab to get the raw xml which is the input of the web service.

Multihop ssh tunneling from Windows to Linux

Suppose that you need to connect to a remote PostgreSQL Linux server and you have:
* a Local Windows Machine as a workstation
* an intermediate Linux ssh gateway to which we have a legitimate ssh access.  This machine happens to have its own PostgreSQL server running on port 5432.
* that remote Linux server running the targeted PostgreSQL instance you try to connect to.

You can use the following way to connect to the remote PostgreSQL instance - as a local host Windows service:


1. Install Putty plink.exe. This is just a simple program permitting raw ssh commands.
2. Open a command line and execute this:

plink -t -X -A -L 5432:127.0.0.1:5433 root@gatewayServer -P 22 ssh -L 5433:127.0.0.1:5432 -X -A root@remotePostgresqlServer

This essentially:
a. connects to the gateway in port 22 (change it using that -P parameter if port is different) and also port forwards the 5433 port to windows 5432 server. Notice that I used 5433 because I will port forward the remote PostgreSQL to the intermediary where an existing PostgreSQL is running on 5432. So, we need a different port

b. connects from intermediary to the remote server, forwarding remote 5432 to the intermediary's 5433 port

Running the above single line you have to enter two passwords: one for the intermediary, one for the remote.

Once entering the passwords, just use pgAdmin or your favorite PostgreSQL clientto connect to 127.0.0.1:5432.

Background download of Oracle products in linux

Based in the excellent work in http://only4left.jpiwowar.com/2009/02/retrieving-oracle-patches-with-wget/ here is a way to download Oracle products in background (that means you can leave the Linux overnight and find the files ready next morning).

1. create a bash file downloadOra.sh and paste the following:

#!/bin/bash
function getOraPatch {
fname=`echo $1 | awk -F"=" '{print $NF;}'`;
wget --no-check-certificate --http-user YOURLOGIN --http-passwd YOURPASSWORD $1 -O $fname;
}
getOraPatch $1

2. chmod +x downloadOra.sh


3. to start downloading just call the script in NOHUP and background mode with only one argument: the URL you get when you are in OracleSupport (right click in the download button of each file -- see http://only4left.jpiwowar.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/downloadpatch-300x129.png). For example:
Pls note the quotes (') around url...

nohup ./downloadOra.sh 'PASTE_HERE_THE_URL'&

Call that script multiple times for every file to have a parallel background downloading.

Ok, shameless plug, the only innovation of this post is about hardcoding the Oracle Support credentials (so the whole process does not need to ask them from user) and calling the script in the background and executing even when you are logged out.

Grails: Configure JNDI datasource for both development and production mode

Datasource.groovy hard coded JDBC connection data are ok for quick and dirty apps, but what about a scenario where:

• you need to setup a common DBCP datasource
• to use it when setting up BOTH development and production?

For a Tomcat and Oracle environment, here is a solution working ok for me:

Step 1: META-INF/context.xml

<Context path="/proteys" debug="5" reloadable="true"> <Resource auth="Container" name="jdbc/db" type="javax.sql.DataSource" driverClassName="oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver"

url="jdbc:oracle:thin:@127.0.0.1:1521:orcl" username="XXXX"

password="YYYY" maxActive="100" maxIdle="30" maxWait="10000

</Context>

Step2: Config.groovy

alter the environment sections as follow:

environments {
    development {
        grails.logging.jul.usebridge = true
//the following is for development mode only
//not needed to alter when deploy for production
//in production just configure meta-inf/context.xml
grails.naming.entries = [
"jdbc/db": [
type: "javax.sql.DataSource", //required
auth: "Container", // optional
description: "Data source for Proteys", //optional
driverClassName: "oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver",
url: "jdbc:oracle:thin:@127.0.0.1:1521:orcl",
username: "XXX",
password: "YYY",
maxActive: "8",
maxIdle: "4"
]
]
    }
    production {
        grails.logging.jul.usebridge = false
        // TODO: grails.serverURL = "http://www.changeme.com"
    }
}

Step3: Alter the default templates in order to finetune the web.xml file and include there the necessary JNDI link:

1. run grails install-templates

2. in src/templates/war edit the web.xml template - appending the JNDI link reference:

  
 <resource-ref> <description>Datasource</description> <res-ref-name>jdbc/db</res-ref-name> <res-type>javax.sql.DataSource</res-type> <res-auth>Container</res-auth> </resource-ref>

This way, in every running or creation of war, automatically the produced web.xml will contain the above xml snippet.

Step4: config Datasource.groovy

The only content needed here is:

dataSource {
jndiName = "java:comp/env/jdbc/db"
dialect= 'org.hibernate.dialect.OracleDialect'
}

Although I don't use Hibernate / GORM / Scaffolding etc, because I needed to access an existent DB through GroovySQL, the second line regarding dialect was necessary to make grails stop complaining during building / running (or perhaps should I just drop hibernate plugin...)

From this point on, (hopefully) you can develop AND generate production WAR files using JNDI setup. And not to mention that you can now alter the db connection parameters in production, without the need of a special build

Hotel Property Management Systems (Software as a Services, SaaS)

I did a small research recently to discover any solutions for small hotels and the needs of those hoteliers.
Some findings so far:

http://www.clerkhotel.com/, probably the most shining UX

http://www.instamanager.com/

http://www.roomsy.com/

http://www.planyo.com/

http://www.keepmebooked.com/