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I feel a bit naive for asking, but I'm trying to get a better understanding of web service frameworks.

Do you absolutely need a Jax-WS/RS reference implementation (like Axis/CXF) to run a web service application on a server like Tomcat? Is it at possible to get by with a collection of your own imports (Spring Framework libraries, Java EE libraries, JAXB, etc.), provided that you do not need things like wsdl2java auto-generation?

Are Axis/Axis2/CXF an essential part of any web service project, or just a nice to have?

I've used CXF and Axis in the past, but both were buried so deep beneath Spring and my IDE that I never got a clear picture of where the web service framework ended and the Spring framework/dependencies began.

The documentation on the web service frameworks also doesn't tell me much, as it focuses on what they frameworks can do, vs. how you might be able to get by without them.

Thanks

PrgrMerr
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  • Of course anything's *possible*. It would be helpful if you explained what exactly you mean by "Web service", as the typical use case has changed significantly since the "WS" days. – chrylis -cautiouslyoptimistic- May 08 '16 at 11:24
  • similar question here, most of this all still holds true: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1505393/java-web-services-is-axis-necessary?rq=1 – Mike May 08 '16 at 13:04

1 Answers1

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If you want to deploy a web application on Tomcat then the bare minimum you need to do is implement the javax.servlet.Servlet interface.

If, by web service, you mean a SOAP service, then there is more you will need to do (well, to be specific, you will need to implement a Servlet which behaves in a certain way). There are two primary features that frameworks like CXF/Axis provide (and a myriad of smaller features):

  1. Serialization/Deserialization

Bare HTTP requests are available as streams of bytes (InputStream/OutputStream). In many applications you will want to convert those byte streams into Java objects. With JAX-WS this is done by requiring the input/output be XML and using JAX-B. Other frameworks (e.g. JAX-RS) can work with other input/output formats (like JSON).

  1. Routing

An HTTP request consists of a URL (perhaps with query parameters), headers, an entity body, and various metadata around the call itself (e.g. IP address, session object, etc). Somehow this request has to get mapped into a method call in your service, with parameters. In JAX-WS this is done by mapping parts of the SOAP envelope with information about your service endpoint gleaned from reflection.

So...

If you want to skip using Axis/Axis2/CXF you will need to find some way to implement those two features yourself. You will almost certainly also be surprised by the amount of tiny details involved in solving those problems (e.g. SOAP RPC/encoded message format versus document/literal format, etc.)

CXF will also implement a number of SOAP extensions, the most prominent of those being ws-security (although many people end up using Spring security and bypassing formal SOAP security anyways).

Alternatives

Your question is a little vague so I'm not certain what you're after but there are some alternatives.to just using Axis/CXF...

  1. Different JAX-WS library

There are other JAX-WS providers out there. For example, you could use the JAX-WS RI although your experience is not likely to be too much different than CXF/Axis.

  1. Different web service technology

Rather than using SOAP you could use a RESTful framework like JAX-RS. This can be particularly helpful if you want to understand more the connection between HTTP and your calls. There are a myriad of articles discussing the benefits/drawbacks of SOAP vs. REST so I won't go into that here. In general JAX-RS is a lot more clear and customizable but requires more work to configure.

Pace
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