1. Membrane SOA Monitor and Router FAQ
1.1 General
Q: What is the difference between Membrane SOA Monitor and Membrane SOA Router?
A: The Monitor adds a graphical user interface on top of the Router. So you can experiment
with and test the Monitor. Once you have a working configuration, you can load it into the Router.
Because the Router comes without the GUI it is much faster and can be deployed almost everywhere.
Q: We are behind a firewall. We need to access a proxy server to access the Web. Does Membrane support a HTTP proxy?
A: Yes. You can specify a HTTP proxy in the preferences. Click on Window - Preferences.
You will find the Proxy Preferences when you expand the Membrane Monitor tab.
1.2 Monitor
Q: Can I execute the Monitor on Linux or Mac OS?
A:Yes. Windows is our main platform, and from time to time we release a Linux version.
Mac OS is planned for the future. However, you can build Membrane Monitor from source at any time.
Q: How is Membrane different to TCPMon?
A: The Apache TCPMon tool is a nice tool
with a very small footprint. The size of the executable jar file is only a few kilobytes. TCPMon
uses Swing as user interface and can be executed on any platform that supports Java. The footprint
of Membrane Monitor is much bigger and it uses the Rich Client Platform from the Eclipse project.
At the moment there is only a Windows distribution of Membrane Monitor.
TCPMon can monitor any TCP Socket connection. Membrane is a specialized tool that can only monitor
HTTP and SOAP connections. The reason for this limitation is that Membrane Monitor knows a bit about
HTTP and SOAP. So for instance, Membrane allows you to intercept a message and then to change the
SOAP request. Before sending the request to its destination, Membrane Monitor can adjust the
Content-Length HTTP header to match the length of the modified message.
Q: Can I monitor HTTP connections?
A: Yes. Besides SOAP you can use Membrane Monitor also for other HTTP connections. You can learn more about HTTP Monitoring in a short tutorial.
Q: Can I use Membrane Monitor without the GUI?
A: Yes. You can start the Monitor from the command line. If you do not need the graphical
user interface you can use the Router distribution. It is just the plain Router without the GUI.
1.3 Router
Q: Where do I find the source code of the router?
A: The router is the core project of the monitor. It is an Eclipse RCP plugin named com.predic8.membrane.core.
The project contains an ant build file named build-router.xml. By using this ant file you can build the router distribution.
You'll find the source code via svn on the Download page.
Q: Can Membrane SOAP Monitor be used as SOAP Firewall?
A: Yes. Place Membrane SOAP Monitor inside your DMZ. Then configure a rule to forward SOAP
requests from the outside to an internal server. How to do that is described in the firewall tutorial.
Q: How big is the time delay caused by the Router?
A: It depends on the configuration and what the router should do with the messages.
Used as a simple Router, Membrane has a latency that is lower than 1 ms (3 KByte message size on a Pentium Centrino Notebook).
Q: The Router keeps crashing after consuming all available memory. Is this a bug?
A: Membrane Router cannot detect circular requests. The Router calling itself over and over again floods the memory with requests that cannot be completed. Make sure that no rule accidentally calls itself.