Eclipse SSL XML communication

[pal]

I want to create an Eclipse app that acts as a client. I want Eclipse
to talk over HTTPS (using ssl) to a remote server via xml. The server
doesn't have to be a web server just a server that listens on HTTPS and
is able to perform actions giving the XML it receives.

However, I don't know what technology to use for the following -
1. Opensource packages on the Eclipse/Java client side to create XML
packets and compress them (perhaps something like wireless binary
xml...).
2. Opensource packages on the server side to uncompress the XML and
quickly search the XML (perhaps by making a fast hash table in memory)
3. Package to transfer the XML over HTTPS on both the client and server
side. I imagine some kind of wrapper over TCP/IP that is able to
handle SSL keys.

Does anyone have any suggesstions on what packages to use for a simple
client/server xml ssl transport? I'm thinking there might already be
opensource products that do just this that I can mimic.

Thanks for any advice!
-Pal

 

[Missaka Wijekoon]

I want to create an Eclipse app that acts as a client. I want Eclipse
to talk over HTTPS (using ssl) to a remote server via xml. The server
doesn't have to be a web server just a server that listens on HTTPS and
is able to perform actions giving the XML it receives.

By definition, by doing HTTP(S) makes it a web server.

However, I don't know what technology to use for the following -
1. Opensource packages on the Eclipse/Java client side to create XML
packets and compress them (perhaps something like wireless binary
xml...).

Create an HTTPS output stream (POST).
Create a GZIPOutputStream from the HTTPS output stream
Send your DOM through the GZIPOutputStream

2. Opensource packages on the server side to uncompress the XML and
quickly search the XML (perhaps by making a fast hash table in memory)

Do the above in reverse using a servlet with Tomcat or other web java
server.

Many web servers already support gzip compression of downloadable
content for HTTP/1.1. This also may be available transparently for
upload. I leave that research to you

3. Package to transfer the XML over HTTPS on both the client and server
side. I imagine some kind of wrapper over TCP/IP that is able to
handle SSL keys.

Most webservers (Apache and Tomcat) handle this transparently. You do
need to give it a keys when you install the servers to do HTTPS.

 

[pal]

I'm trying to stay away from web servers due to performance (maybe
that's just a bad idea..).

Any idea if there are secure lightweight tcp/ip packages in Java that
support encryption? I just need a fast and secure way to send over XML
reliably.

Thanks again

 

[Rogan Dawes]

I'm trying to stay away from web servers due to performance (maybe
that's just a bad idea..).

Any idea if there are secure lightweight tcp/ip packages in Java that
support encryption? I just need a fast and secure way to send over XML
reliably.

Thanks again

Sure, use SSLSocket or SSLServerSocket.

The data will be sent over SSL, but you won't necessarily be talking
HTTP (as defined by rfc2616) over SSL (HTTPS)

and you can format your data anyway you like, using XML, or whatever.

Rogan

 

[Missaka Wijekoon]

I'm trying to stay away from web servers due to performance (maybe
that's just a bad idea..).

What do you mean by performance? How many concurrent connections do you
need to handle? What are your bandwidth limitations? My guess is that
most of the resources consumed by your application will be in the
encryption/decryption of the data and XML parsing, not the web serving.

If performance is expected to be a *huge* issue, you would be better off
designing your server in C with asynchronous i/o. However, the cost in
terms of development time for a C based solution could easily be
countered by rapid development in Java with Web servers (using pre
existing standards) + horizontal scaling (load balancing across lots of
web servers); development time is expensive, computers are cheap.

 

[Roedy Green]

Any idea if there are secure lightweight tcp/ip packages in Java that
support encryption? I just need a fast and secure way to send over XML
reliably.

see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/ssl.html