Slow performance of web services

MediaBin 4.5.3
Java 1.4
Axis 1.4

I made a web services client package using axis 1.4 and the mediabin wsdl. I then looked at the sample java apps that are included with the SDK. I then created a simple standalone java application to test the functionality and ran it out of Eclipse.

I must not be doing something correct, because it takes an awful long time even to return the mediabin server name. Also, this seems atypical to me from other web services experience to have to do the following:

((Stub) service).setUsername("domain\\user");
((Stub) service).setPassword("pass");

Why is the above needed?

I see the begin persistent connection method, but I don't see that being used in the sample java application. It seems like retrying each command takes minutes to run, like it is waiting for something.

My program is this simple:


MediaBinServerLocator locator = new MediaBinServerLocator();
  try {
   MediaBinServerSoap service = locator
     .getMediaBinServerSoap(new URL(
       "http://myserver:80/MediaBinWebService/MediaBinServer.asmx?WSDL"));
   ((Stub) service).setUsername("domain\\user");
   ((Stub) service).setPassword("pass");
   System.out.println("server name = " + service.getMediaBinServerName());
  } catch (Exception ex) {
   System.err.println("Exception: " + ex.getMessage());
  }

Is there something else that needs to be done for this basic establishment of a connection and getting information?

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Comments

Migrateduser

We write all code in .NET Framework, so I can't help you on the java side of the house. However, I can say that we found that the web services are slow too. It takes roughly 30 seconds to process a call for us before we even start to return data.

We found that the actual web service call was fast however, the authentication and getting through the security checks took the most amount of time.

msnider recommended to use the MBPNetModel.dll which is the interop dll for mbpscriptmodel2.dll which talks directly to the COM objects rather than going through the web service.

I wonder if you have something similar in java, perhaps?

Bill Klish

I doubt such a thing exists, as I believe the only interface to access things in java is over web services. There is no corresponding java api locally, since this is written specifically in microsoft technologies.

msnider

Bill,

You're delay is probably caused by the amount of time it is taking to log into MediaBin. You can check the Net.log to see how long the log in takes.

Since your code does not include a call to beginPersistentConnection then each call you make into the web service is going to have the overhead of logging in. Add the call to beginPersistentConnection(false) before calling getMediaBinServerName() and each subsequent call should be much faster.

You can also use the Audit log of the MEM to view logon\logoff activity. Without the BeginPersistentConnection call, you will see a sequence of several pairs of logon\logoff entries (basically corresponding to each request made into the webservice). With the BeginPersistentConnection call, you should only see a single logon entry regardless of how many webservice requests (a logoff entry will eventually follow based on the PersistentTimeout value in the web.config)

Mark

Bill Klish

Thanks Mark, will add this to my proof of concept.

I posted this in response to your other post about getting the derivative details, but will ask here.

why do I need to do this:

((Stub) service).setUsername("domain\\user");
((Stub) service).setPassword("pass");

Seems like there should be a logon method or something else. I was having a hard time getting this to work at all with axis2 as I don't see a way that there is access to these methods.

Is this always needed at the start of every interaction with the server?

msnider

Those Stub methods for setting the username and password are the standard way the Axis project (at least for 1.4 and ealier) specify Basic login credentials to a secured web resource. I'm not familiar with Axis 2.

Because the MediaBin webservice supports both Basic and NTLM\Windows Integrated, there is no need to add the extra overhead of an additional Logon method that must be called when the login credentials can be gotten from the HTTP headers. This is also a way of keeping the web service stateless by default....BeginPersistentConnection provides a way to make the web service stateful.

If the web service is configured for anonymous access only (such as when using LDAP credentials), the webservice does provide a "Logon" type method called "CreateAuthenticationTicket" and in this case the Stub methods are not needed.

The username and password must be set thru the stub methods whenever you first create the Stub class but not with each call...once they are set, then the Stub class will pass them as HTTP headers each time you make a request to the webservice.

Mark