This tutor-marked assignment (TM352 TMA01) must be submitted by 12noon (UK local time) on
22 November 2018.
If you foresee any difficulty with submitting your assignment on time, you should contact your tutor well in advance of the cut-off date.
This module requires all assignments to be submitted electronically. To submit an assignment, please follow the link(s) provided from your StudentHome page to the online TMA/EMA service.
This tutor-marked assignment will make up a third of your continuous assessment score for this module. For more details about how your score for this module is calculated, refer to the
Module Guide.
For further information about policy, procedure and general submission of assignments, please refer to the
Assessment Handbook, which can also be accessed via your StudentHome page.
Your answer to this question will be in the form of a written
Solution Document, part of which will also contain screenshots from a NetBeans project.
If you need further guidance on any assignment questions, please ask your tutor who will be happy to help.
Plagiarism
It is imperative that you avoid plagiarism, as it is a form of cheating. If you do plagiarise, then you won’t simply lose marks: instead, your work will be referred for further disciplinary action. If you are in any doubt as to what constitutes plagiarism, please refer to the University guidelines or see the
Module Guide.
Scenario
The Megamax Corporation sell widgets to clients across the UK as well as worldwide. They sell widgets both through the web and through a mobile sales force.
The mobile sales force are given broad responsibility for:
- taking orders from existing clients
- recruiting new clients
- negotiating deals with new and existing customers.
You have been approached by a Megamax executive, Mike, to present a short three-part report on the possibility of providing the Megamax mobile sales team with a mobile application to assist them with orders. It is envisaged that the application would provide for the real-time orders of widgets from a mobile device connected via the internet direct to the company's servers. Megamax are proposing that such a web service would be accessed by sales staff from remote locations using a client on any type of connected device, such as a tablet, a laptop or a smartphone. Sales data would then be submitted direct from the client and in real-time to the company servers. Mike believes that it is this flexibility that could fine-tune the Megamax business model in terms of response to orders, stock levels and delivery times.
When the web service is fully developed, the view is that it will facilitate the submission of form data from sales staff about clients and their orders to the company server using secure HTTP headers from remote locations. When received by the company servers, it is envisaged that the data will then be processed by a simple RESTful web service.
This TMA will take the form of a report presented to Megamax executive, Mike. Mike would like the report to be brief, but to cover an introduction to web services and what is meant by architecture. Mike would also like you to address the concerns he has about security for a remote client accessing the Megamax servers over the Internet.
Finally, you are asked to provide a simple explanation of the NetBeans environment and how simple web services can be developed using the IDE.
Your report for the Megamax web service will therefore be structured in three distinct parts, as shown in the following pages.
Note that any diagrams you use won’t count towards the total word count.
Part1: An introduction to web services (500 words) 35 marks
In this part write a short report for Mike addressing the following questions:
What do you understand by the term web service? What are the fundamental differences between the SOAP and REST approaches? Of the two types of web service what are the advantages of choosing a RESTful approach over that of SOAP in terms of empowering Megamax sales staff and the company’s response to orders, stock levels and delivery times? What benefits and problems in general will such a service have for Megamax?
Part 2: Security (500 words) 35 marks
Mike at Megamax has expressed some concern about the security of company and customer data exchanged from a remote client in the hands of a salesperson to the company servers via the internet. You have been asked to outline how security concerns could be addressed in terms of authentication, authorisation and confidentiality. Your report should also address security in terms of secure protocols.
Part 3: Demonstrate how to create, deploy and test a simple web service using the NetBeans IDE with Glassfish Server (400 words) 30 marks.
Mike has heard about the NetBeans IDE as a development tool, and he wants to know a little more about how it can be used to develop projects and services. In this part, you are simply asked to demonstrate to Mike in a practical way how you might deploy and test a simple RESTful Web Service using the NetBeans IDE and supported by the Glassfish server. For this part you will create a very simple “Welcome to the World, Megamax Corporation!!” web application, customised from the Hello World Project you encountered earlier in the block. For each stage of the application development, you will briefly describe what you are doing within the IDE and a little of what is going on in terms of developing your project. Finally, you will deploy and test this web service for the executive.
Note: You are not expected to submit a completed NetBeans Project; rather, you should include unique screenshots incorporating your OUCU, as described in the ‘Method’ section below. As evidence of the demonstration you should place a set of images, one from each stage of the demonstration, into your written report.
There are three parts to the following method, and for each stage you should describe to Mike what you are doing and why, providing some contextual description around the steps in creating the simple web service. The following method is provided to guide you through the practical activity.
The method
- i.In NetBeans IDE, create a New Project. From the Categories, choose Java Web and select WebApplicationProject. Click Next.
Under name and location type the following project name: oucuMikedemo, where oucu is your own personal oucu of the form abc123. Once you are satisfied with this step, click Next.
Make sure that GlassFish Server is selected. Click Finish.
The new project is now created. In NetBeans, expand the structure, and then take a snapshot of the NetBeans window, making sure that the title and your unique Project name is captured. This is the first of three figures that you'll need to support this part of the report.
- ii.Create the Resource Package name helloWorld.
Right click the project and choose New - RESTful Web Services from patterns..., make sure Simple Root Resource is selected and click Next.
Inside the Resource Package field enter helloWorld
Replace generic with helloworld in the Path field and enter HelloWorld in the Class Name field.
For the MIME Type. make sure you select text/html.
Click Finish.
A new resource, HelloWorld.java, has been added to the project and displays in the Source Packages. This file provides a template for creating a RESTfulwebservice. At this point, take a snapshot of the NetBeans window, making sure that the title and your unique Project name is captured. This is the second of three figures you'll need to support this part of the report.
- iii.In HelloWorld.java, locate the getHtml() method and replace the //TODO comment and the exception with the following text, so that the finished product resembles the following method.
/**
* Retrieves representation of an instance of
helloWorld.HelloWorld
* @return an instance of java.lang.String
*/
@GET
@Produces("text/html")
public String getHtml() {
return "
Welcome to the World, Megamax
Corporation!!";
}
Right-click on the project node, select Deploy and wait until the GlassFish output window reports that the project has deployed. Test the web service by right-clicking either on the project node or the RESTful Web Services node, and select Test RESTful Web Services. When the 'Configure REST Test Client' window appears click OK.
This step deploys the application and brings up a test client in the browser. When the test client appears, select the helloworld resource in the left pane, and click the Test button in the right pane.
The words Welcome to the World, Megamax Corporation!! should appear in the Response window.
At this point, take a snapshot of the NetBeans window, making sure that the title and your unique Project name is captured. This is the third and final of the three figures you'll need for this part of the report.
What to submit
When you have completed the TMA, you need to submit your report as a single .zip file called TMA01.zip to the online TMA/EMA service.
Your
Solution Document
will comprise a written report, which should be a .doc, .docx or .rtf file that can be opened in Microsoft Word. You will need to zip and submit this as a .zip file. Your zipped TMA file will contain screenshot images, but must be no larger than 10 MB in size. If your zip file is bigger than this, then you should compress any images you have used in order to reduce the overall size of the zip file.
You should put your name, your personal identifier, the module code, the assignment number and the date on the title page of your report. It is also useful to your tutor if you include this information as part of the header or footer in your report.
Place your report in a single folder called TMA01 and then zip it up as TMA01.zip before submitting it to the online TMA/EMA service. Please note that the cut-off for this assignment is 12noon (UK time) on 22November2018. Your tutor will mark your work and send it back to the online TMA/EMA service for you to collect. You can find guidance on using the online TMA/EMA service via StudentHome.
Make sure that you are familiar with the online TMA/EMA service and also with how to zip files in good time for your submission. You should not leave this until the last moment. To locate the online TMA/EMA service, follow the links from StudentHome. The service contains instructions on using it, including how to check that the system has received what you intended to submit. It is also possible to practise submitting a TMA using a dummy TMA (TMA00).
Breakdown of marks