Grails and hsqldb file in war deployment

This morning I've been trying to deploy my policy and rule driven distributed components governance proof of concept prototype onto a test server (as opposed to my development machine) for a colleague to be able to play with its RESTful API. Problem was, my data is in a hsqldb file and this won't be deployed together with the war.

You need to specify where you want your DB files ("prodDb.log", "prodDb.properties" and "prodDb.script") to be stored when the war is deployed.

in DataSource.groovy:

production {
  dataSource {
      dbCreate = "update"
      url = "jdbc:hsqldb:file:./apache-tomcat-7.0.14/webapps/YieldBRGS-1/WEB-INF/lib/prodDb;shutdown=true"
  }
}

Please note that in my case (apache-tomcat-7.0.14) the path is relative to the servlet container installation.

You also need to make sure your db files are copied to that location. For this, create a "_Events.groovy" script using the "create-script " command. This script should be placed in the "scripts" folder of your Grails project's root (there are other possibilities c.f. http://grails.org/doc/latest/guide/4.%20The%20Command%20Line.html#4.3%20Hooking%20into%20Events). This script will be automatically detected and triggered.

_Events.groovy

includeTargets << grailsScript("Init")
includeTargets << grailsScript("_GrailsEvents")

eventCreateWarStart = { warName, stagingDir ->
  if (grailsEnv == "production") {
     println "Copying hsqldb script into war"
     ant.copy(file: "prodDb.script", todir: "${stagingDir}/WEB-INF/lib/")
     ant.copy(file: "prodDb.properties", todir: "${stagingDir}/WEB-INF/lib/")
     ant.copy(file: "prodDb.log", todir: "${stagingDir}/WEB-INF/lib/")
  } else {
     println "grailsEnv != \"production\""
  }
}

The events are not documented so a bit of googling around is necessary. Alternatively, if you have more patience or want to know what's going on under the hood you can look for the event('...') in the Grails source code (e.g. https://github.com/grails/grails-core/blob/master/scripts/_GrailsWar.groovy).

I hope this helps!

This is the software I will use in my demonstration later this year at ServiceWave 2011 in Poznan (http://servicewave.eu/2011/). C.f. official announcement here: http://servicewave.eu/2011/demonstration-evening/

CFP: European Workshop on Practical Aspects of Service Oriented Computing Governance

Doing my job as organizer:

http://home.agh.edu.pl/~pdl/e-passing/

European Workshop on Practical Aspects of Service Oriented Computing Governance (E-PASSING 10)
December 1-3, 2010, Ayia Napa, Cyprus

Overview

The way enterprises conduct business today is changing greatly. The enterprise has become more pervasive with a mobile workforce, outsourced data centers, different engagements with customers, suppliers and distributed sites. In addition, companies seeking to optimize their processes across supply chains are implementing integration strategies that increasingly include their customers and suppliers. This amplifies the need for the governance of end-to-end transactions between business partners and the customer.

The advantages of Service Computing to allow organizations to integrate service oriented resource regardless of their origins, re-use these assets in different contexts and manage the required contextualization efficiently are well known. However, there are still many challenges to be solved in this important field of research. The wide variety of tools, techniques, and technological solutions that can be implemented render the domain of SOC governance difficult to manage. In particular, the aspects of policy definition and enforcement, service asset visibility and alignment of services to business objectives have seen a lot of hype in the past years but very few concrete and effective solutions.

The European workshop on practical aspects of service oriented computing governance (E-PASSING), collocated with the 2010 European Conference on Web Services (ECOWS), is meant to be an opportunity for academic and industrial communities to discuss innovative implementations and techniques advancing the state-of-the-art in Service Oriented Computing (SOC) governance.


Topics

The workshop invites original submissions from both researchers and practitioners in the following (non-exhaustive) list of topics:

* Mechanisms, tools and policies for developing, deploying, using, and evolving SOC assets; including service identification, service registration, SLAs, flexible exposition and versioning.

* Policy & rule types, languages and enforcement mechanisms for SOC governance.

* Interoperability and interchangeability between policy & rule languages and enforcement mechanisms.

* Management of policy & rule conflicts, policy combinations.

* Usability of policy & rule based service oriented systems.

* Design-time governance practices, which involves, for example, rules for the development of services that align with business goals and offer the greatest benefit at the lowest risk.

* Runtime governance practices, which, in part, involves the enforcement of rules to assure that services are executed legally and securely.

* SOC governance implementation descriptions and discussions.


Important Dates

Paper submission: September 20, 2010
Authors notification: October 30, 2010
Final paper submission: November 20, 2010


Paper Submission

Prospective authors are invited to submit papers in any of the topics listed above. All papers will receive a peer-review. Papers should be formatted according to the IEEE proceedings guidelines, between 4 to 10 pages (Templates: Word Template (ZIP), LaTex Package (ZIP)).

Papers should be submitted electronically via the web-based submission system at: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=epassing10


Publication

All accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings book, published by CEUR-WS (http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/index.html) under an ISSN reference, and on paper support. The best papers of the workshop will be considered for inclusion in a journal special issue.


Workshop Venue

Ayia Napa, Cyprus The workshop is to be held in conjunction with The 8th European Conference on Web Services (ECOWS2010)

Program Chairs

* Pierre de Leusse, AGH-UST (Poland)
* Nektarios Georgalas, BT (UK)
* Panos Periorellis, Microsoft (UK)
* Krzysztof Zielinski, AGH-UST (Poland)


Program Committee (to be completed)

* David Brossard, Axiomatics AB (Sweden)
* Nick Cook, Newcastle University (UK)
* Theo Dimitrakos, BT (UK)
* Mike Fisher, BT (UK)
* Howard Foster, City University (UK)
* Gabriela Gheorghe, University of Trento (Italy)
* Andrew Gordon, Unisys (USA)
* Aad van Moorsel, Newcastle University (UK)
* Pierluigi Plebani, Politecnico di Milano (Italy)


Contact

For more information and inquiries about the workshop, please contact Pierre de Leusse (pdl (at) agh.edu.pl).

Summer tour 2009 part 1, AFIN and ICWS

AFIN’09 [1], in Glyfada, earlier this summer was a blast. These IARIA conferences might have a bad reputation amongst the academic community but I keep having a good time. This time I hooked up with some old acquaintance from Luxembourg University and met Reijo Savola from VTT amongst other Finns. We talked a bit about the GEMOM project [2] which seem to share a set of common goals with what we are working on at BT [3]. Hopefully further discussions with Reijo and Habtamu Abie from the Norwegian Computing Center will happen and be fruitful!

At the very opposite, ICWS [4], one of the top event in SOA in the academic calendar was very disappointing…Organisation was poor and the sessions I went to were almost empty. In addition, how can a paper on federated identity such as [5] can even make it to a research conference (especially one like ICWS) is staggering. As far as I can see there is no innovation, XACML solutions have been out there for 2-3 years at least now. Works from industry leaders like Layer 7, Vordel, Microsoft, Axiomatics and academic organisations like Newcastle, Vrije Universiteit and plenty others have been completely missed…very poor choice of paper. A quick look at that paper and its related work section will, I think, shock any SOA security researcher.

[1] The First International Conference on Advances in Future Internet, AFIN 2009, June 18-23, 2009 - Athens/Glyfada, Greece, http://www.iaria.org/conferences2009/AFIN09.html

[2] Genetic Message Oriented Genetic Middleware (GEMOM), A FP7 European Project - January 2008 – June 2010, http://www.gemom.eu

[3] Dimitrakos, T., Brossard, D. and de Leusse, P., Securing the Service Oriented Infrastructure: research challenges and emerging solutions, Handbook on communications and information security, Stavroulakis, P, 2009, To be published

[4] IEEE 7th International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2009), July 6-10, 2009, Los Angeles, CA, USA, http://conferences.computer.org/icws/2009/

[5] Regina N. Hebig, Christoph Meinel, Michael Menzel, Ivonne Thomas, Robert Warschofsky, A Web Service Architecture for Decentralised Identity- and Attribute-based Access Control, Proc. 7th IEEE ICWS (Application and Industry Track), Los Angeles, USA, July 2009

SOA governance architecture at ICWS

Later this summer, at ICWS [1], I will be presenting some of the ideas developed during the last few months on SOA governance [2]. In our quest to find a way to render business capabilities (e.g. web services) exposure and management easier, we have developed an architectural model that describes how to go at it.

The main points covered are resource (e.g. a software artefact such as a service) contextualisation, visibility, adaptation and life-cycle management as well as policy administration and process management. I know, there is a lot to cover in just 8 standard IEEE style pages, but apparently we’ve managed to do a good enough job for the reviewers to accept the paper.

If you would like more information on the topic please do drop me an email.

[1] IEEE 7th International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2009) http://conferences.computer.org/icws/2009/

[2] de Leusse, P., Dimitrakos, T., and Brossard, D., A governance model for SOA, IEEE 7th International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2009), July 6-10, 2009, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Academic achievements

Workshop organisation
Burton Group & BT - SOA governance

Technical committee
MESH 2009, MESH 2010, AFIN 2010, SECURWARE 2011

Technical reviewer
Wiley Security and Communication Networks Journal - special issue on Security and Trust Management for Dynamic Coalitions
Third IFIP International Conference on Trust Management

Session Chair
MESH 2008, AFIN 09, SECURWARE 10

Book chapter
Dimitrakos, T., Brossard, D. and de Leusse, P., Securing the Service Oriented Infrastructure: research challenges and emerging solutions, Handbook on communications and information security, Stavroulakis, P, 2009, To be published

Journal article
de Leusse, P., Brossard, D. and Georgalas, N. (2010), Securing business operations in an SOA. Security and Communication Networks, 3: 456–485. doi: 10.1002/sec.188

Dimitrakos, T., Brossard, D. and de Leusse, P., Securing Business Operations in SOA, BT Technology Journal, vol.27, no.2 (https://www.btplc.com/Innovation/Journal/BTTJ/current/HTMLArticles/Volume26/22Securing/Default.aspx)

Conference/Worshop papers
de LEUSSE, P., Dimitrakos, T., SOA-based security governance middleware, SECURWARE 2010: the fourth international conference on Emerging security information, systems and technologies : 18–25 July 2010, Venice, Italy, eds. Reijo Savola, et al., IEEE, 2010, ISBN-13 978-0-7695-4095-5.

de Leusse, P., Dimitrakos, T., and Brossard, D., A governance model for SOA, IEEE 7th International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2009), July 6-10, 2009, Los Angeles, CA, USA

de Leusse, P., Panos Periorellis, Dimitrakos, T., and Srijith K. Nair, Self Managed Security Cell, a security model for the Internet of Things and Services, The First International Conference on Advances in Future Internet, AFIN 2009, IEEE Computer Society, June 18-23, 2009, Athens/Vouliagmeni, Greece, Best paper award

de Leusse, P., Periorellis, P., Watson, P. and Dimitrakos, T., A semi autonomic infrastructure to manage non functional properties of a service
In UK e-Science All Hands Meeting 2008, 8-11 September, Edinburgh, UK, National e-Science Centre, 2008

de Leusse, P., Periorellis, P., Watson, P. and Maierhofer, A., Secure & Rapid Composition of Infrastructure Services in the Cloud, In The Second International Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications, SENSORCOMM 2008, 25-31, August 2008, Cap Esterel, France, pp 770-775, IEEE Computer Society, 2008

de Leusse, P., Periorellis, P., Dimitrakos, T. and Watson, P., An architecture for non functional properties management in distributed computing, Doctoral Consortium on Software and Data Technologies - Proceedings of the Doctoral Consortium on Software and Data Technologies, DCSOFT 2008, In Conjunction with ICSOFT 2008
2008, Pages 26-37

Demo
de Leusse, P., Kwolek, B., Zielinski, K., A middleware infrastructure for multi-rule-engine distributed systems, Towards a service-based internet : third European conference, ServiceWave 2010 : Ghent, Belgium, December 13–15, 2010 : proceedings / eds. Elisabetta Di Nitto, Ramin Yahyapour. — Berlin ; Heidelberg : Springer-Verlag, cop. 2010. — (Lecture Notes in Computer Science ; ISSN 0302-9743 ; 6481). — ISBN-10 3-642-17693-2 ; ISBN-13 978-3-642-17693-7.

de Leusse, P., Kwolek, B., Zielinski, K., A common interface for multi-rule-engine distributed systems, RuleML-2010 Challenge : 4th international rule challenge : Web rule symposium, p. 21–23, 2010 : proceedings., eds. Monica Palmirani, et al. Washington, DC, USA, October. (http://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/Vol-649/)

de Leusse, P. and Brossard, D., Distributed systems security governance, a SOA based approach, Third IFIP International Conference on Trust Management, Springer, June 15-19, 2009, Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA

Technical reports
de Leusse, P., Periorellis, P., Watson, P., CS-TR No 1037 Enterprise Service Bus: An overview, School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Jul 2007

Self Managed Security Cell, a security model for the Internet of Things and Services (IoTS)

I'm delighted to announce that my paper with Panos [1] and Theo [2] on Self Managed Security Cell, a security model for the Internet of Things and Services (IoTS) has been accepted at AFIN 2009 [3].

This paper discusses what we feel is necessary for security to work efficiently in the IoTS. IoTS is such an exciting domain and this paper is a written version of dicussions on the topic we've had at work/coffee/home/in front of the XBox...:)

[1] http://periorellis.blogspot.com/

[2] http://labs.bt.com/cissr/People.html

[3] The First International Conference on Advances in Future Internet AFIN 2009

IFIPTM'09 SOA security governance demonstration

No post for ages as I've been kept very busy for the last few months.

But some results are starting to show up and to start: a demonstration proposal from David Brossard and myself has been accepted at IFIPTM 09 [1]. I'll present a prototype of SOA security governance I'm working on (the evaluation bit of my thesis). Some interesting (complex) middleware that allows to simplify and render security more dynamic for distributed systems. I cannot write much more about it since BT is attempting to patent it but it's both interesting and cool ;).

I've seen in the accepted papers that my ex colleague at Newcastle University Georgios PITSILIS is presenting his research. I hope I'll be able to catch up with him and see what he's up to now [2].

[1] The 3rd IFIP International Conference on Trust Management (IFIPTM'09) http://projects.cerias.purdue.edu/IFIPTM/

[2] Georgios PITSILIS. Trust-enhanced Recommender Systems for Efficient
On-line collaboration http://projects.cerias.purdue.edu/IFIPTM/apaper.html

Committee

It's now official, I'm member of the technical committee for the MESH 2009 event. This year's event was a blast, both in term of content, with some interesting work presented, and in term of networking with amazing researchers from a lot of big companies (Siemens, Nokia, Cisco, Thales, Atos Orgin...) and universities.

I got to know Andreas and Marcel, and I'm please to see they're both committees as well. I'm looking forward to more interaction with them.

Finally, a little advertising for my own paper :) Secure & Rapid Composition of Infrastructure Services in the Cloud (here).

UK e-Science ALL HANDS MEETING 2008

Last week I was present at the AHM in Edinburgh. Amongst other cool things were talks from Andrew Martin and from Ross Anderson. Andrew's defence of the fact that security specialists should work together to come up with practical solutions (e.g. patterns, guidelines, scenarios) rather than work in their own corner was spot on.

The AssessGrid project demo along with the poster by Karim Djemame were also interesting. I'm working on similar issues of negotiation of non functional properties and I hope to have the chance to discuss more of this with Karim in the futur.

John and Paul's talks [1, 2] went well and it was good to see what they've been up to in more details.

Finally, my talk [3] went rather well, although I was disapointed by the low attendence.

[1] A Peer-to-Peer Database Server based on BitTorrent
[2] An Adaptive Distributed Query Processor for e-Science using Dynamic Service Deployment
[3] A semi autonomic infrastructure to manage non functional properties of a service