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WSDL documentation missing imported files

Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 2:35 pm
by andrewclegg
Afternoon all,

I've just started using Oxygen to help with top-down document/literal web service development. I'm particularly interested in automatic generation of docs from WSDLs and XSDs.

The WSDL I'm working on lives in a file called Services.wsdl, which contains no schema definitions itself. It imports a file called MessageTypes.xsd which defines the high-level types corresponding to the elements which are immediate children of the wsdl:message elements.

MessageTypes.xsd in turn imports another file, GridTypes.xsd, which includes definitions for the fine-grained data types corresponding to the actual fields in the input and output messages.

Now when I use Tools -> Generate Documentation -> WSDL Documentation from Services.WSDL to produce HTML documentation, it doesn't seem to be aware of the definitions in MessageTypes.xsd (let alone GridTypes.xsd). The Type column for each message just says "N/A". Ideally I'd like to see the correct type from MessageTypes.xsd in here, and have the ability to click through to that type's actual definition.

Am I missing something here? Or does the whole schema really have to be stored in the WSDL in order for the doc generator to pick up the types correctly? This seems like a pretty serious limitation since storing everything in the WSDL is pretty bad practice for non-trivial services.

Anyone know a workaround, or an alternative way to achieve this?

Cheers,

Andrew.

Re: WSDL documentation missing imported files

Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 5:50 pm
by sorin_ristache
Hello,

The tool for generating HTML documentation for a WSDL definition file is more limited than the one for generating documentation for an XML Schema. One limitation is that the XML Schema definitions referenced in the WSDL file are not documented in the final HTML result. We plan to remove this limitation in a future version of Oxygen. It is possible that one of the Oxygen versions that will be released before the end of this year will implement that. Unfortunately I do not know a tool that is able to document also the XML Schema types included in the WSDL file.


Regards,
Sorin

Re: WSDL documentation missing imported files

Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 6:32 pm
by andrewclegg
Thanks, I'll keep checking back for news.

There is this alternative, but it doesn't have the graphical elements of your XSD viewer. And it only allows one level deep of file nesting:

http://tomi.vanek.sk/index.php?page=wsdl-viewer

Cheers,

Andrew.

Re: WSDL documentation missing imported files

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 2:43 pm
by sorin_ristache
Hello,

Yes, it allows only one level of including a WSDL file or an XSD file and it does not take into account namespaces. We will look at the WSDL viewer to see how we can improve the embedded tool of Oxygen or improve the WSDL viewer and include it in Oxygen. The WSDL viewer included in the Apache Woden project has an Apache license.


Thank you,
Sorin