Bug in Weborb 3.6 for .NET prevents WDMF from generating server code

Here's an issue that could cost you lots of troubleshooting time to fix. While weborb is a stellar product IMO it is lacking in thorough support docs. Probably that is fine since a commercial client can purchase phone support, but I digress. The problem aka bug aka omission I refer to in weborb 3.6.0.3 results in:

Code Generation Failed

This is the result of an attempt to generate the all-important client-server serialization classes that weborb builds. The client classes are downloaded from the weborbconsole while the server classes are written to the bin directory assuming your permissions are properly set to allow this.

Permissions are easily set via Windows IIS or your webhost control panel. Permissions are also easily reviewed from your website of interest thanks to the diagnostics.aspx page provided. Potential issues are even coded red. Easy enough.

Problem is essentially the result of a wishlist item added to Weborb 3.6 and released 12/02/08, Visual Studio templates. I didn't even expect to find them, but did so and began enjoying the ease of deployment templates offer. Only problem is, they won't work unless you add the XSLT files in the ODBC directory from the original full vers of weborb30.

I tried other stuff for a while to fix the prob, then finally read the error text logs on my deployment and discovered the omission. As stated before, Weborb is the Barry Bonds of remoting, a real slugger for joining up RIAs for web and I can't say this enough. The fact that I could rely on the framework tools to hunt down the error and fix it is one reason why. Now, has anyone else had this problem? If so, I hope this helped.

Fig 1. Diagnostics aspx page for weborb









Fig 2. Creating a weborb-enabled website in Visual Studio 2008 using the weborb-provided template











Fig 3. The missing odbc folder, where it should be









Fig 4. What you should see if all goes well in the weborbconsole WDMF

Deploying WebORB for .NET

To deploy WebORB into an existing ASP.NET application, follow the steps below:

1. Copy the following files/folders from the default Weborb installation directory to the corresponding folders in the target virtual directory:

/weborb.config
/bin/weborb.dll
/bin/MySql.Data.dll
/bin/Mono.Security.dll
/bin/Npgsql.dll
/diagnostics.aspx
/WEB-INF
/weborb.js (required only for the AJAX clients)

2. Add the following XML configuration to web.config in the target virtual directory:

<configuration>
<system.web>
  <httpHandlers>
    <add verb="*" path="weborb.aspx" type="Weborb.ORBHttpHandler"/>
    <add verb="*" path="codegen.aspx" type= "Weborb.Management.CodeGen.CodegeneratorHttpHandler"/>
  </httpHandlers>
</system.web>
</configuration>

(Thanks to formatmysourcecode.blogspot.com for code formatting)


3. (Optional) To deploy console, example and code generator, copy the following folders with all files and subdirectories:

/weborbconsole.html
/console
/examples
/weborbassets
/all mdb files from the root

4. (Optional) Create /logs folder as the place where WebORB stores its log files

5. Grant Write permission to the user account ASP.NET uses for the following files and directories:

/weborb.config (required only if making configuration changes from the console)
/logs (required only if logging is enabled)
/weborbassets/codegen (required only if codegen is used in the console)
/weborbassets/uploads
/*.mdb (required only if writing data back on the server in some examples)

Additional steps may be required to configure logging and code generation features when deploying WebORB into another application. Generally the user account used by ASP.NET needs to have Write permission to the following files and folders:

/weborb.config
/logs
/weborbassets/codegen

Please direct any questions or comments to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flashorb/.

Original document.