WCF Web Services security in PB12.5 Classic

[Former Member]

Bruce Armstrong mentioned in his PowerBuilder TV session on "Creation and Consumption of Web Services with PowerBuilder - Part 2" that implementing WS-security in PB 12.5 classic was "difficult".

Has anyone actually done it and care to share the how tos?

Thanks

Matt

[former_member190719 · Accepted solution]

"Difficult" was a euphemism.  What I wanted to say was "impossible", except that I imagine that somebody might come up with a way to do it, I just don't know how.

The .Net engine that Classic uses is based on the System.Web namespace, the same one that Visual Studio uses by default.  However, when Microsoft realized they needed to support WS-Security, they came up with an add-on to Visual Studio called WSE.  WSE uses classes out of a completely different namespace Microsoft.Web.Services3.

What PB Classic uses to generate the web service proxy is wsdl.exe from the .Net Framework.  That, by default, will create classes using the System.Web namespace.  Supposedly, if WSE is installed on the machine and "enabled" it will also create a second class using the Microsoft.Web.Services3 namespace.  However, because WSE3 is an add-on to Visual Studio, you would need to have Visual Studio installed on the machine to get it to install.  WSE is also supposed to come with it's own version of wsdl.exe, called wsewsdl3.exe that can be used instead of wsdl.exe to create the proxy classes.

So, you'd need to:

•      Get WSE installed somehow.
•       Get PowerBuilder to call the appropriate executable or recognize the second class created.
•       Ensure that PowerBuilder actually exposed the methods in the WSE based class that implement WS-Security.

Frankly I think it's easier to create a WCF proxy in the PB.Net IDE and wrap it in a CCW so Classic an call it.  (Hence the second PowerBuilder.TV session).

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Bruce.

I figured as much based on earlier explorations I have done on this topic.