Eskom specialised XMLVend

This page provides resources for Eskom’s specialised version of XMLVend. This specialised version of XMLVend must be implemented by all vendors who are authorized to sell prepayment electricity for Eskom but the generic version of XMLVend is also required because the specialsed requirements are only part of the complete XMLVend specification.

XMLVend specifications documents

XMLVend schemas

There are three schemas used in the Eskom design for XMLVend, namely the Base domain, Meter domain and Revenue domain. The design can either be done by using the three separate domain (XSD) files or the single WSDL file.

XMLVend supporting documentation

Eskom specialised test suite

The Test Suite comprises three independent components; the Server module, the Client module and the Message interceptor module. When testing your design, it is important to also use the message interceptor that will validate the request and response messages.

This test suite is used by Eskom to test and validate the designs for all prospective vendors. This means that any of the prospective manufacturers can already perform all the necessary validation tests before submitting a solution to Eskom for testing.

Test suite - Eskom specialised XMLVend server

  • Use the Generic XMLVend Server but update the Eskom Server Responses to specialize
  • Server Source Files (4.3 MB)
  • Original Server zipped War File (4.1 MB)
    (First delete the xmlvend-server directory (if exists) in your home directory. Then unzip and drop the .war file in tomcat webapps directory)
  • Update the generic responses with the Eskom Server Responses by replacing the default response messages in the “USER_HOME\xmlvend\test-server\responses\” directory
  • Stop and restart the server

Test suite - Eskom specialised XMLVend client

  • Client Source Files (4.7 MB)
  • Client zipped War File (4.5 MB)
    (First delete the eskom-xmlvend-client directory (if exists) in your home directory. Then unzip and drop the .war file in tomcat webapps directory)

Test suite - message interceptor

  • Install the generic Message Interceptor (5.2 MB)
    (Note that the interceptor cannot be used if encryption is enabled, but it does support Gzip compression)
  • Copy the Eskom Schema’s to the “xmlvend-messageInterceptor\resources\schemas\” directory.
  • Message Interceptor instructions

Test suite - supporting documentation

Resource software required

  • JAVA Software Development Kit. The Test Suite was developed on this JAVA 5.2 version (51.2 MB) but newer versions should also work. However, it must be the SDK release, not only the runtime environment.
  • Apache Tomcat web server. The Test Suite was developed on this Jacarta Tomcat 5.0.27 server (12.0 MB) but newer versions should also work.
  • XForms plugin for Internet Explorer to show the XML pages’ content. The Test Suite was developed on this version 1.7.233 (2.6 MB) but any XML capable browser like X-Smiles should also work.
  • Microsoft MSXML4 sp2 or later must be installed for XForms plugin to work
  • Apache Ant to compile the source files for the interceptor, test server and test client
  • Gzip to compress requests is optional but preferred to reduce bandwidth usage

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