Exposing Mahout recommender as a web service - web-services

I'm building an asp.net application that should recommend items to users. I decided to use Mahout for its popularity but I now want to expose Mahout recommender as a web service so I can use it in my web app or any mobile apps that could be developed later.
In Mahout Documentation (https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAHOUT/Recommender+Documentation) , I found this
A Mahout recommender can also be run as an external server, which may
be the only option for non-Java applications. It can be exposed as a
web application via org.apach.mahout.cf.taste.web.RecommenderServlet,
and your application can then access recommendations via simple HTTP
requests and response. See above, and see the javadoc for details.
What should I do in order to be able to expose mahout as a web service ? I don't have any knowledge in this field or in Java servlet but I writes Java SE. Can you help ?
Note : I don't want to use Hadoop as I'm not going to deal with millions of users and also this is my graduation project not a commercial product.

Related

WEB API's VS WEB SERVICES?

I have searched a lot upon internet but still i didn't get the clear difference between web services and web APIs? Somewhere I read that all web services are API's but all API' are not web services. How?
What all I know is both allow to utilize the functionality of other applications.Can someone describe me clear difference?
I have been on the same journey to learn the differnce between Web API (not JUST API) vs Web Services.
First, we know for a fact that both use the Web as the communication tool as stated by #Kris.
While looking at these 2 videos, both serve as the "middleman" (the waiter in the restaurant) for a client to ask a Web Server to process and deliver a response.
Web Service (From 0:35)
API (In general) (From 1:12)
When I was looking for an actual differnce between the two, usually most articles and videos go on an unrelated comparison between "Web Services vs API" as they exclude the "Web" out of "Web API".
See this article, for example, which contains the title "Web API Vs Web Service...." yet, contain sub-titles like:
"Differences of API vs Web Service"
"Pros and Cons of Web Services vs API Service"
"Web Service vs API: Fueling Both With Scraping Robot’s API"
The only difference I could find is if we were to discuss this in .NET context.
Here's a question post related to this.
To sum it up, Web Services are used in the SOAP protocal while Web API is usually created in the RESTful way. The more detailed answers are in the post but ultimatelly do not answer the main question that is asked.
Conclusion: The question raised in the public domanin has no clear definition to what is difference between the two, thus the 2 terms are ,for the most part,
interchangeable
All web services are APIs. An API is an Application Programming Interface. But there are offline APIs, which are not web services. There are APIs for all things from Office to Websites. The API is just a defined interface to be able to control/communicate with some software. Web Services just provide that means of connecting over the web.
There is more to discuss when you are talking about APIs which are communication protocols and data formats, but you get the basic idea.
An API (Application Program Interface) is the interface through which another program can communicate with a program.
A web service in this context is one of those programs with an API. 'Web' means that it is accessible via the web, mostly via HTTP. A service usually has a well defined purpose.
For instance a date web service's purpose could be to provide the current date. The API of my service would have a single 'endpoint': get the date. The service then implements this API. It somehow retrieves the date and sends it back.

Limitations of web service in Moodle

I'm going to integrate a Moodle-based application into my website wherein all data/activities being posted in this Moodle-based application can be retrieved by my website and vice versa.
So, is the Moodle web service enough to access all the data in that Moodle application?
Yes, you should be able to use web services. No, not all data is accessible out-of-the-box.
Things you can do with the webservices:
Retrieve a list of users, courses, assignments
Upload files
Create notes
Send messages
Enrol to courses, groups, cohorts
Check grades
On your Moodle site turn on web services and go to /admin/webservice/documentation.php to get a full list of existing functions you can call.
You can see some examples of this implemented in the Moodle Mobile App:
User: http://docs.moodle.org/26/en/Mobile_app
Dev: http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Moodle_Mobile
If these satisfy your requirements then yes web services should be sufficient as they are.
If they do not then you can extend the web services as a local plugin to provide richer functionality, which would be limited by your development capacity rather than the system itself. To port all of the features of some modules to web services would be a significant undertaking, but there are some low-hanging fruit to get activity lists, forum discussions/posts, choice polls, etc.
Web services is a better approach than exposing the database to an external system as it allows you to utilise the core APIs to improve integrity.

When to use standalone web service approach

I just started learning web services. In bottom up approach, I have found some examples without being deployed in any application server. I mean a standalone web service application.
Here is an example of such type.
I have also given a try and done a walk-through of deployable simple web service examples.
So far to my learning of web services, I got to know that firstly, bottom-up- approach is not recommended. Now, in bottom-up approach, this standalone web service. When is it applicable to follow standalone web service procedure?
Endpoint.publish();
I guess, this approach is provided just for beginners and not to follow as a real-time practice. Is my interpretation correct?
I would make my application as a standalone web service if it will have multiple clients like:
Web Client via a web browser
Mobile App Client
Desktop Client
Then I could build every one of them alone using whatever the technology I prefer, and make it consumes my standalone web service.
For example, You could imagine the guys behind Twitter started developing it by building their core system as web service, then they build an independent web interface application for it, then they built the Twitter Android and iPhone APP, and another one came and introduced a Twitter Desktop client like Tweetbot and TweetDeck ... etc

how to publish and discover a java web service

I am new to developing web services using java. I have an academic project where I need to do dynamic service composition. For that I can't directly create a service-client for a particular service because if I do so then that client will call that particular service only. Client need to search various web services and then out of those services select any one at run time and also call that service at run time.
I was able to develop the web service(JAX-WS) using Eclipse(indigo), I also created the client for that web service and every thing is working fine. Now my problem is that while creating the client I am hard coding the client to call that particular web service only(since I am creating the client using the WSDL file of the service). However I actually need to call any one of the searched service, but for that I need to publish the service some where then discover it and then call it.
I tried publishing the service to juddiv3. But on juddiv3 I could only publish the sample service supplied with the juddiv3. When I try to publish service created by me then it is not getting displayed in the group of published services.
Is there any other UDDI server which I could install on my local machine and then publish and discover the service from that. Also I was not able to figure out how to create a client that will modify itself at run time to call any one service out of various searched services.
Kindly provide the necessary steps and code.
Thanks
You can use jUDDI (http://juddi.apache.org/ ).
juddi is based on UDDI v2.0, v 3.0 .
Here, you can publish as well as discover your web service.
For integration, you have to make some application which integrates with jUDDI.
But I think for your academic project, and for your purpose, jUDDI is best suitable! ( :) )
jUDDI has a boat load of examples in the source code trunk. You may want to check them out. It's difficult to guess what the problem is from the little information you've provided. Consider contacting the jUDDI team for further assistance. http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/juddi/trunk/juddi-examples/. There's also additional document for working with UDDI in the jUDDI user's guide, which is at the jUDDI web site
You cannot directly publish on jUDDI. You need to create publisher entities in jUDDI server also. You'll find Rename4Sales and Rename4Marketing examples in 'Classes' folder in the standalone server's juddi application. Use these XMLs as your basis and create your own entity. You also need to configure the server's login credentials.
I suggest you follow the tutorials on jUDDI blog.

Standard web services API available in PeopleSoft?

I'm investigating integrating a 3rd party web application with PeopleSoft via web services. I'm not that familiar with PeopleSoft. After some initial investigation, it appears that in order to expose any PeopleSoft functionality as web services, you have to do some considerable configuration in the Integration Broker component of the PeopleTools module. It seems that you can either define internal PeopleSoft services with "service operations" and related "handlers" or you can create a PeopleSoft service for an existing "Component Interface." Then, you have to expose that PeopleSoft service as a web service.
Are there any standard, default, out-of-the-box web services available for a PeopleSoft system, or do you always need to go through the steps of defining them in the Integration Broker?
After looking at a system like Salesforce, which has a standard web services API, it seems like there might be something similar for PeopleSoft, but I'm not finding it. Am I on the right track in thinking that the Integration Broker is the only way to go, or am I just not aware of some standard web services API that exposes basic PeopleSoft functionaity as web services?
Integration Broker (IB) is what you need to expose business logic from peoplesoft and consume it with your 3rd party tool, or to consume a webservice from your tool in peoplesoft.
There are some out of the box messages, but most of them are made to have different PIA (PeopleSoft Internet Architecture) communicate.
Be aware, IB components were almost complemently remixed in peopletools version 8.47. So it's important to give your tool's version when talking about IB.
Never heard about a standalone API for implementing web services, outside of the IB framework. IB will use dedicated class to handle sending and reception of your messages. You mention it as the handler. And if a component interface need to be used it will be done throughout this class.
Integration broker is used to setup the basic configurations that will be used in exposing and using web services. this includes making nodes and its routing available for other system to use.
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B14099_19/integrate.1012/b14060/int_broker.htm
There are many web services available in peoplesoft. you can alsi expose any componemnt as a web services by executing very simple steps.
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E15645_01/pt850pbr0/eng/psbooks/tibr/chapter.htm?File=tibr/htm/tibr14.htm
Custom web services can also be build.