Developing SIP Applications

Developing Custom Profile Providers

The following sections describe how to use the profile service API to develop custom profile providers:

Overview of the Profile Service API

Oracle Communications Converged Application Server includes a profile service API, com.bea.wcp.profile.API, that can be used to create profile provider implementations. A profile provider performs the work of accessing XML documents from a data repository using a defined protocol. Deployed SIP Servlets and other applications need not understand the underlying protocol or the data repository in which the document is stored; they simply reference profile data using a custom URL, and Oracle Communications Converged Application Server delegates the request processing to the correct profile provider.

The provider performs the necessary protocol operations for manipulating the document. All providers work with documents in XML DOM format, so client code can work with many different types of profile data in a common way.

You can also use the profile service API to create a custom provider for retrieving document schemas using another protocol. For example, a profile provider could be created to retrieve subscription data from an LDAP store or RDBMS.

Note:

The Diameter Sh application also accesses profile data from a Home Subscriber Server using the Sh protocol. Profile. Although applications access this profile data using a simple URL, the Diameter applications are implemented using the Diameter base protocol implementation rather than the profile provider API.

Figure 7-1 Profile Service API and Provider Implementation

Each profile provider implemented using the API may enable the following operations against profile data:

Creating new documents.
Querying and updating existing documents.
Deleting documents.
Managing subscriptions for receiving notifications of profile document changes.

Clients that want to use a profile provider obtain a profile service instance via a Servlet context attribute. They then construct an appropriate URL and use that URL with one of the available profile API methods to work with profile data. The contents of the URL, combined with the configuration of profile providers, determines the provider implementation that Oracle Communications Converged Application Server to process the client’s requests.

The sections that follow describe how to implement the profile service API interfaces in a custom profile provider.

Implementing Profile API Methods

A custom profile providers is implemented as a shared Java EE library (typically a simple JAR file) deployed to the engine tier cluster. The provider JAR file should include, at minimum, a class that implements com.bea.wcp.profile.ProfileServiceSpi. This interface inherits methods from com.bea.wcp.profile.ProfileService and defines new methods that are called during provider registration and unregistration.

In addition to the provider implementation, you must implement the com.bea.wcp.profile.ProfileSubscription interface if your provider supports subscription-based notification of profile data updates. A ProfileSubscription is returned to the client subscriber when the profile document is modified.

The Oracle Communications Converged Application Server JavaDoc describes each method of the profile service API in detail. Also keep in mind the following notes and best practices when implementing the profile service interfaces:

The putDocument, getDocument, and deleteDocument methods each have two distinct method signatures. The basic version of a method passes only the document selector on which to operate. The alternate method signature also passes the address of the sender of the request for protocols that require explicit information about the requestor.
The subscribe method has multiple method signatures to allow passing the sender’s address, as well as for supporting time-based subscriptions.
If you do not want to implement a method in com.bea.wcp.profile.ProfileServiceSpi, include a “no-op” method implementation that throws the OperationNotSupportedException.

com.bea.wcp.profile.ProfileServiceSpi defines provider methods that are called during registration and unregistration. Providers can create connections to data stores or perform any required initializing in the register method. The register method also supplies a ProviderBean instance, which includes any context parameters configured in the provider’s configuration elements in profile.xml.

Providers should release any backing store connections, and clean up any state that they maintain, in the unregister method.

Configuring and Packaging Profile Providers

Providers must be deployed as a shared Java EE library, because all other deployed applications must be able to access the implementation. 
Creating Shared Java EE Libraries and Optional Packages in the Oracle WebLogic Server 10g Release 3 documentation describes how to assemble Java EE libraries. For most profile providers, you can simply package the implementation classes in a JAR file. Then register the library with Oracle Communications Converged Application Server using the instructions in 
Install a Java EE Library in the Oracle WebLogic Server documentation.

After installing the provider as a library, you must also identify the provider class as a provider in a profile.xml file. The name element uniquely identifies a provider configuration, and the class element identifies the Java class that implements the profile service API interfaces. One or more context parameters can also be defined for the provider, which are delivered to the implementation class in the register method. For example, context parameters might be used to identify backing stores to use for retrieving profile data.

Listing 7-1 shows a sample configuration for a provider that accesses data using XCAP.

Listing 7-1 Provider Mapping in profile.xml

<profile-service xmlns=”http://www.bea.com/ns/wlcp/wlss/profile/300”

                 xmlns:sec=”http://www.bea.com/ns/weblogic/90/security”

                 xmlns:xsi=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema=instance”

                 xmlns:wls=”http;//www.bea.com/ns/weblogic/90/security/wls”>

 <mapping>

   <map-by>provider-name</map-by>

 </mapping>

 <provider>

    <name>xcap</name>

    <provider-class>com.mycompany.profile.XcapProfileProvider</provider-class>

    <param>

       <name>server</name>

       <value>example.com</name>

    </param>

...

 </provider>

</profile-service>

Mapping Profile Requests to Profile Providers

When an application makes a request using the profile API, Oracle Communications Converged Application Server must find a corresponding provider to process the request. By default, Oracle Communications Converged Application Server maps the prefix of the requested URL to a provider name element defined in profile.xml. For example, with the basic configuration shown in Listing 7-1, Oracle Communications Converged Application Server would map profile API requests beginning with xcap:// to the provider class com.mycompany.profile.XcapProfileProvider.

Alternately, you can define a mapping entry in profile.xml that lists the prefixes corresponding to each named provider. Listing 7-2 shows a mapping with two alternate prefixes.

Listing 7-2 Mapping a Provider to Multiple Prefixes

...

<mapping>

   <map-by>prefix</map-by>

      <provider>

          <provider-name>xcap</provider-name>

          <doc-prefix>sip</doc-prefix>

          <doc-prefix>subscribe</doc-prefix>

      </provider>

   <by-prefix>

<mapping>

...

If the explicit mapping capabilities of profile.xml are insufficient, you can create a custom mapping class that implements the com.bea.wcp.profile.ProfileRouter interface, and then identify that class in the map-by-router element. Listing 7-3 shows an example configuration.

Listing 7-3 Using a Custom Mapping Class

...

<mapping>

   <map-by-router>

      <class>com.bea.wcp.profile.ExampleRouter</class>

   </map-by-router>

</mapping>

...

Configuring Profile Providers Using the Administration Console

You can optionally use the Administration Console to create or modify a profile.xml file. To do so, you must enable the profile provider console extension in the config.xml file for your domain.

Listing 7-4 Enabling the Profile Service Resource in config.xml

...

<custom-resource>

    <name>ProfileService</name>

    <target>AdminServer</target>

    <descriptor-file-name>custom/profile.xml</descriptor-file-name>

    <resource-class>com.bea.wcp.profile.descriptor.resource.ProfileServiceResource</resource-class>

    <descriptor-bean-class>com.bea.wcp.profile.descriptor.beans.ProfileServiceBean</descriptor-bean-class>

  </custom-resource>

</domain>

The profile provider extension appears under the SipServer node in the left pane of the console, and enables you to configure new provider classes and mapping behavior.