Getting Started with ServiceMix

[Albert Strasheim <fu...@gmail.com>]

Hello all

I'm a new ServiceMix user and I have a few questions.

For my first ServiceMix experiment, I would like to configure it to route
messages between two services, both implemented in Python. Later I'll add
some Java and C/C++ services to the bus.

>From the examples I've figured out (correct me if I'm wrong) that I want to
set up two JMS components. One or both of these components will refer to
some ActiveMQ ConnectionFactory which I will configure to use a TCP or UDP
transport. To start with, I'll configure this transport to use the STOMP
wire format. I can then use the existing Python STOMP code or possibly roll
my own.

Assuming this sounds sensible, I have a few questions about how to get this
configuration working.

1. How do I figure out what options to set and what values to use? For
example, I read the TCP transport configuration reference here:

http://www.activemq.org/site/tcp-transport-reference.html

There is a wireFormat option, which I probably want to set to something like
"stomp" or "STOMP". Where is the best place to read about what exactly to
configure here? The code? Javadocs? Anywhere else?

2. How do I validate a ServiceMix configuration? Since the configuration is
in XML, I'm guessing there might be a way to check various parts of the
configuration against XSDs for the ServiceMix parts, the XBean parts and
maybe other parts.

3. How do I debug a ServiceMix setup? Assuming I've got a valid
configuration file, and I fire up ServiceMix and it throws an exception,
what do I do? Should I run inside Eclipse? Some other way?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Regards,

Albert

P.S. By the way, quite a few links to documentation and examples on the
ServiceMix and ActiveMQ sites link to locations that no longer exist. Is
there any way this can be fixed? Someone who knows the ServiceMix layout on
the Apache servers might want to run a "find broken links" tool through the
site.

Re: Getting Started with ServiceMix

[Bruce Snyder <br...@gmail.com>]

On 8/21/06, Albert Strasheim <fu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all
>
> I'm a new ServiceMix user and I have a few questions.
>
> For my first ServiceMix experiment, I would like to configure it to route
> messages between two services, both implemented in Python. Later I'll add
> some Java and C/C++ services to the bus.
>
> From the examples I've figured out (correct me if I'm wrong) that I want to
> set up two JMS components. One or both of these components will refer to
> some ActiveMQ ConnectionFactory which I will configure to use a TCP or UDP
> transport. To start with, I'll configure this transport to use the STOMP
> wire format. I can then use the existing Python STOMP code or possibly roll
> my own.
>
> Assuming this sounds sensible, I have a few questions about how to get this
> configuration working.

I don't see anything wrong with what you're proposing above.

> 1. How do I figure out what options to set and what values to use? For
> example, I read the TCP transport configuration reference here:
>
> http://www.activemq.org/site/tcp-transport-reference.html
>
> There is a wireFormat option, which I probably want to set to something like
> "stomp" or "STOMP". Where is the best place to read about what exactly to
> configure here? The code? Javadocs? Anywhere else?

Starting with a default configuration is always good. From there you
can begin to experiment with additional options. In addition to the
intial configuration that is included with ActiveMQ, the initial
configuraiton is also available here:

http://activemq.org/site/xml-configuration.html

There's also documentation for the XML configuration, the latest of
which is available here:

http://people.apache.org/maven-snapshot-repository/incubator-activemq/incubator-activemq/4.1-SNAPSHOT/activemq.xsd.html

I suggest reading up on each option and then asking more
option-specific questions.

> 2. How do I validate a ServiceMix configuration? Since the configuration is
> in XML, I'm guessing there might be a way to check various parts of the
> configuration against XSDs for the ServiceMix parts, the XBean parts and
> maybe other parts.

The XML can certainly be validated with the XML schema, but that will
only test well-formedness and validity. ServiceMix is very lightweight
and it's startup doesn't take very long and it's best to let
ServiceMix parse the configuration and tell you if there are any
problems.

> 3. How do I debug a ServiceMix setup? Assuming I've got a valid
> configuration file, and I fire up ServiceMix and it throws an exception,
> what do I do? Should I run inside Eclipse? Some other way?

We all debug ServiceMix via the Eclipse debugger.

> P.S. By the way, quite a few links to documentation and examples on the
> ServiceMix and ActiveMQ sites link to locations that no longer exist. Is
> there any way this can be fixed? Someone who knows the ServiceMix layout on
> the Apache servers might want to run a "find broken links" tool through the
> site.

Yeah, we're still trying to fix these from the migration of the
website. Any help in pointing them out by filing JIRA issues would be
wonderful.

Bruce
-- 
perl -e 'print unpack("u30","D0G)U8V4\@4VYY9&5R\"F)R=6-E+G-N>61E<D\!G;6%I;\"YC;VT*"
);'

Apache Geronimo - http://geronimo.apache.org/
Apache ActiveMQ - http://incubator.apache.org/activemq/
Apache ServiceMix - http://incubator.apache.org/servicemix/
Castor - http://castor.org/