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How do I trigger Java Selenium Tests post deployment in VSTS

We are generating a Web Service for deployment to Azure. This includes four pipeline stages for Dev, Test, Full UAT and production. On initial deployment to Dev I want to perform a set of Selenium smoke tests. Then when deployed to UAT, a full set of automated tests should be triggered.
Our test team are happier using Selenium through its Java route. After a couple of days it became clear that the process was to generate a UI agent (really important to anyone who hasn't done this yet, as ChromeDriver does run without a session, but will just hang, making you think it must be close to running), assign a SELENIUM_TEST agent property, and set this flag as a build dependency (this helps it to find the correct agent), and ensure that you set the required java and maven variables in the VSTS settings (apart from the path), rather than the local machine environment. Finally to use the clean, update and -X parameters to force the environment to be configured as part of the test process.
Now I have the problem of how do I trigger these tests from the deployment pipeline. I have searched and found articles on a large number sites and cant find anything on how this may be achieved using the Maven Java Selenium combination.
Can anyone help?

For build and deploy Java Selenium Tests in VSTS, you can refer the document Testing Java applications with VSTS for detail steps:
Besides, you can also refer the blog Continuous Testing of a Java Web App in VSTS using Selenium for build and deploy Java Web App in VSTS.

I am not posting this as a full answer, but I wanted to respond to the kind input from Michele and Marina. I am not sure that there isn't a better way of approaching this but with the assistance of both I was able to at least get closer to an answer. I did prepare images, but apparently you need a reputation to do so.
So this is what I actually ended up doing.
Step 1 – the MVC web app was generated and appropriate deployment slots set up to receive the web build artefacts.
Step 2 – Created a CI process purely to generate code I could deploy into the WebApp CD pipeline.
Step 3 – Generated an empty “Smoke Test” environment in the WebApp Deployment pipeline, and added the new Artefact from step 1 into this.
Configured the Smoke Tests item
Configured it to only receive the _AutoTest-CI artefact
Set it to use the “default” pipeline
Added the “Demand” that specifies the machine configured for Selenium tests.
Added the Maven task, and pointed it at the Maven POM
At this stage it succeeded to run through the configured tests. The Maven deployment step seems to have the idea that it can generate test results, but the output gives warnings that no test results were generated. It will generate the output, and reports a success or failure, so this is a semi-success. The missing last piece is to report the full test results, which I have yet to achieve.

You can trigger the Tasks inside of an Environment by configuring the Triggers with this tools in the Release management UI.
If the trigger contitions are met the process will start automatically. Inside of your process you can do whatever Task you need.
Reference
Microsoft VSTS Docs

How to use SonarQube Maven plugins without running a(n explicit) server?

I'm getting started with SonarQube usage for JSF page static analysis[1] in Maven. I'm only really interested in using it in Maven since I don't like the idea to introduce another build command.
After going through Analyzing the source code and the specific Maven guide I gained the impression that the plugin can only be used after downloading, installing/unpacking and starting a SonarQube instance at localhost and specifying the connection information in the plugin declaration in the POM. The plugin configuration parameter confirm that.
While this workflow might have advantages it is painful to use on CI services and the necessity to start a service manually in order to be able to build seems not very user friedly (given the fact that other development tools like Selenium or Arquillian pull entire browser, driver and servers in the background without one single line of configuration). Am I missing something about a separate plugin or configuration which manages an embedded or otherwise temporary instance to perform the analysis with a single plugin declaration?
[1] I'm aware that there're other tools based on XML validation which could do the job, but setting up a much more powerful tools like SonarQube seems to be a more flexible approach which will probably pay off.

You don't have to install SonarQube on your build server, but it is necessary to execute analysis (results will be pushed to it). It means that you have a working server somewhere and next you have to set required parameters:
sonar.host.url (http://localhost:9000 is a default value)
sonar.login and sonar.password (if your SonarQube server is secured)
See all Analysis Parameters.

Dropwizard hot deployment

I'm looking for a simple to use system in Java which creates a REST service for me. So I found dropwizard but as far as I can use google it turns out it lacks hot deployment although jetty is able to do so. When using the maven-shade-plugin it takes at least 10 seconds to build the thing. Also my IDE reports that it cannot use compile on save feature (aka hot deployment) when the shade-plugin is involved.
Can I use hotdeployment somehow? Or what can I use instead?
Update: If nothing will fix this I'll probably use a combination of jersey&guice etc which is explained in this post

You don't have to use the shade plugin to run your service. You could just compile as a regular jar file and I think that would let you use your IDEs hot deployment features.

Have you ever tried JRebel ? They have JAX-RS support as well...

Not an answer, but I wrote up an article detailing how to use git to push a Dropwizard project to your server and for it to initiate a hot replacement. It relies on git hooks and running Maven via a script on the server.
You can find the details about it here: http://gary-rowe.com/agilestack/2013/02/14/how-to-deploy-dynamic-sites-with-git/

Efficient OSGi development workflow

I work on a product composed of many bundles running as features on top of karaf. Typically our developers work on one bundle at a time. Our normal development goes something like: code, compile, copy bundle to deploy folder, test. We've also found that hotdeploy just refuses to override certain bundles that are installed as features without a server restart or a feature uninstall/reinstall, so sometimes the cycle is longer.
My question is: does anyone in the community have a better way? The way we do things works, but I feel like it's pretty slow and inefficient and I'm betting someone has come up with something better!
EDIT: I realize that I was pretty unclear in my question... We are using Equinox underneath Karaf. We also use Eclipse and Maven, although I don't know that using Maven is relevant.

Sounds like you want the dev:watch command. From the documentation:
The watch command can be used to help at developement time. It allows you to configure a set of URLs that will be monitored. All bundles location matching the given URL will be
automatically updated. This avoids the need for manually updating the bundles or even copying the bundle to the system folder if needed. Note that only maven based urls and maven snapshots will actually be updated automatically, so if you run
dev:watch *
It will actually monitor all bundles that have a location matching mvn:* that have '-SNAPSHOT' in their url.
Doing "dev:watch --help" from the Karaf shell will list its available flags and args.
Something similar is the PAX plugin
Either of these will work quite nicely if you've got the m2 maven plugin for Eclipse.
UPDATED: In my company we strive to be as TDD as possible, therefore a lot a development is done without explicitly starting Karaf. In the normal mix of unit tests we're also using Pax Exam, which is largely fantastic even when run from within Eclipse =)
This helps ensure we're not too tided to any Karaf specifics as it runs with Equinox/Felix/Concierge (so I mock out various Karaf specifics we depend on like JAAS authentication). Along with many other cool tools/functionality, it's capable of provisioning Karaf features and using TinyBundles you can even create bundles on the fly (again useful for mocking/stubbing).
Pax Exam hooks into the JUnit framework by providing a JUnit #Runner, the latest version (2) is much faster and has DSL based API, so the tests are quite concise and readable.
Using Pax Exam gives us good test coverage and short development times. Where tests are less practical or we're hunting bugs that don't surface in tests, the dev:watch command is invaluable.
In summary; IMO you should definitely drive your developments with tests (Pax Exam will slot into your existing build nicely and once you get used to it you'll find development quicker). You can start using the dev:watch command immediately, it will certainly speed up your current situation.
UPDATE 2: In answering another question I've added a maven example Pax-Exam testing a ComponentFactory. Test Driven Development is arguably the most efficient workflow available to developers today. link to question: osgi: Using ServiceFactories? and link to sourcecode: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2465717/net.earcam.example.servicecomponent_2011-08-16_15-52.tgz

I've had excellent results using Equinox in Eclipse - even hot code replace works properly. granted, the target platform is small and we have only on the order of approx 50 bundles of our own, but workflow goes like this:
First, we have a target platform that contains all third-party and Eclipse bundles, Eclipse takes care of downloading & managing them. Then, the workspace has all the bundles of the project, grouped in 3-4 working sets. Compilation happens as usual on save, sometimes GWT needs to be recompiled, but even then the changes get picked up immediately because no deployment needs to happen - the running Equinox system uses the unpacked project folders as bundles. Running this from within Eclipse gives us hot code replace, on-the-fly changing template files, only MANIFEST.MF/plugin.xml changes need to refresh the bundle - and even then it's usually faster to just restart the framework than to type in the console.

if you use Eclipse Eclipse Libra may be useful for you. Libra can start Felix, Equinox and Knopflerfish inside Eclipse as any other server with WST. They have some youtube videos how to use it.
I also wrote some tools that can help:
An osgi bundle that picks up OSGI services that match the filter (osgitest=junit4). With that you do not write Junit classes but you can provide pre-configured objects (e.g. with OSGI Blueprint). JUnit than runs based on the annotations provided in the interface your service implements.
A maven plugin that has the following useful goals
Start a OSGI containers and deploy the bundle maven project with all of it's dependencies (which are OSGI bundles of course). The OSGI container starting is done with the help of PAX Exam but the JUnit tests are started with the help of the OSGI bundle I wrote (that runs the OSGI services you may provide).
Create a folder that contains a shortcut to all dependencies of the project (located at the maven repo or target directory of the folder)
If the projects are deployed onto the server (Eclipse Libra) I have to say only update X where the X is the id of the bundle and everything is refreshed rapidly. You do not have to re-compile the projects that are published to the server if you run Equinox in Libra as it points to the target classes folder which is refreshed as soon as you save your class or pom.xml.
If you do not publish your project onto the server but add it as a bundle in the container pointing to the shortcut folder you can also run the update command on the OSGi console after running mvn install (without the restarting of the server).
A step-by-step guide is available at http://cookbook.everit.org/
With the following method above it is possible to write tests as TDD tests and run them as part of a maven compile on the CI server.
I hope you will find these tools as useful as I do!

It depends on the platform under Karaf: Felix or Equinox.
Equinox
Eclipse has excellent (or almost excellent) support for launching Equinox with bundles of your choice. The two things you need to prepare are:
Bundles, being developed, available in the workspace as Plug-in projects
Target platform, containing the remaining bundles of the application
Such setup will allow you to easily make changes to your bundles, even runtime and easily restarting the runtime when this is required. I see Karaf as more suitable when you are developing on remote system, where the bundles are deployed via SSH or FTP or when you are using external build tools like Maven, which have ability to automatically copy the bundle in the runtime after it is built.
If you are using Equinox, this will give some extra edge over as the runtime will execute the code directly from the workspace.
Felix
Felix doesn't seem to have such support for launching from Eclipse (although there is a work toward this, tracked in this Jira issue). You can also launch it as normal Java application, but this is far from convenient. In this case, using Maven will be much better alternative. You can still setup Eclipse to take full advantage of the PDE other features, only launching will be done externally.
Summary
In summary, you can always automate everything through Maven and Karaf will greatly help you in this regard. Eclipse will give a little edge, if you are using Equinox. You should be able to have hot-code replace regardless of the method you are using, because the hot-code replace doesn't even consider OSGi at all (except in the only case, when you reload your bundle and fresh class loader is created).

Suitable web framework for the following scenario

I have the following scenario:
I have a view in an Oracle server and all Iwant is to show that view in a web browser, along with an input field or two for basic filtering. No users, no authentication, just this view maybe with a column or two linking to a second page for master detail viewing. The children are just string descriptions of the columns of the master that contain IDs. No inserts or updates.
The question is which is the JAVA based web framework of choice that can accomplish the above in the minimum amount of
code lines
code time(subjective but also kind of objective if someone has expirience with more than one or two frameworks)
configuration effort
deployment effort and requirements.
dependencies and mem footprint
Also:
6. Oracle APEX is not an option.
3,4 and 5 are maybe the same in the sense that they are everything except the functionality coding.
I want something that I can compile, deploy by just FTPing to the database host, run and forget. (e.g. For the deployment aspect, Hudson way comes in mind (java -jar hudson.war and that's all)).
Also: 3,4 have priority over 1 and 2. (Explanation with a rant: I dont mind coding a lot as long as it is application code and not "why do we still use javascript over http for everything" code)
Thanks.
EDIT 1: ROO attempt.
First I tried Spring Roo but here is what happened and it is exactly the kind of stuff i want to avoid:
Downloaded Roo (setup env vars, path, etc)
Saw that it requires Maven (1st smell)
Installed maven
Setup my project in roo shell
Tried to run it and it could not build because maven could not locate artifacts.
Searched the web and eventually found that I need to tweak the generated pom because of a problem between springsource repositories and maven central caused when Oracle is used because of a minor bug in ROO that includes the maven repo and not the spring one... etc...etc..
Abandonded Roo because:
I wanted a simple one page presentation of a table view in a locally installed database, and after 30 minutes I had no progress except for searching maven forums for why maven cant find sth called an "artifact" in a list of sth called "repository".

Take a look at Spring MVC and Spring Roo. the latter will generate you Spring application in a matter of minutes with the database access and then you can add your filtering.

The hudson-like deployment should be easy if you're happy with the features an embedded servlet container like jetty or winstone can provide. Just add a main class that fires up the server and sets a few config variables. That should be possible with any java web framework.
Here's how hudson did it:
http://weblogs.java.net/blog/2007/02/11/hudson-became-self-executable

try (µ)Micro and see if it works for you. It is Open Source, of course, and I also provided a couple of useful examples to start with. HTH - florin