There are a lot of modules in SOCKET, each providing different levels of functionality. This ranges from Pluto, a simple command line tool, to the Full Monty, Bodington plus SOCKET plus console plus jUDDI registry. Before consulting any of the more technical documentation, this is a simple guide to the different ways that you can use SOCKET.
Apart from QMShibb, they all have one thing in common. You start from a Web service WSDL document and you end with a WAR file that you can drop into an application server. There are basically six SOCKET ways.
This is the simplest option - a command line tool that takes as an argument a URL to a WSDL document. The return is a URL to a download of the consumer software WAR file. To go Pluto, read the Quick and simple consumers with Pluto document.
One step up from Pluto is Saturn, a Web application SOCKET client. It does exactly the same thing as Pluto except that you have an HTML form with which to submit the WSDL URL and an HTML hyperlink to the consumer WAR is returned. Plus you get a pretty picture of Saturn thrown in to boot.
To go Saturn you can read the Quick and simple consumers with Saturn document.
The console gives you a bit more sophistication. Using the console you can import WSDL files into the SOCKET file space and have a look at them before the socketization process. To create SOCKET war files using the console, consult the SOCKET console document.
The socketized version of Bodington has a new option in the Create Resource menu which can be used to place links to SOCKET resources in a Bodington page. The simplest way of doing this is to use the socket2bod application to produce a Java jar file into which one can embed the information to allow SOCKET links to appear in the Create SOCKET Link menu. To experiment with Quickstart SOCKET Bodington, see the Quickstart SOCKET-Bodington document.
This is the heavyweight, Full Monty combination of the following SOCKET resources:
Those brave souls wishing to set up and run this option should see the Full Monty SOCKET-Bodington-Console-jUDDI document.
Questionmark Perception is a Windows web application running within Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS). QMShibb is a set of Java servlets that provide single sign-on functionality from Bodington to Questionmark Perception. Instructions on how to set this up are given in the QMShibb document.
SOCKET, A JISC ELF Toolkit Project
b.p.clark@leeds.ac.uk, August 2006
Document last modified, 23 September 2006