It appears that for a service proxy to be instantiated that a value for the service's codebase be supplied. Not all services require a codebase. This causes problem and java.net.URL exceptions :-( when ServiceProxy::getUIFactory() is called.
The offending lines are as follows:
ServiceProxy line 40
urls[0] = new URL((String)serviceConfig.get("dbe_server_container_code_base"));
ServiceProxy line 50
clazz = urlLoad.loadClass((String)serviceConfig.get("dbe_client_service_UIFactory"));
Andy