Apache Axis - Necessary Evil for JBoss
Excerpt from J2EE 1.4 Specification:
The primary focus of J2EE 1.4 is support for web services. The JAX-RPC and
SAAJ APIs provide the basic web services interoperability support. The Web
Services for J2EE specification describes the packaging and deployment
requirements for J2EE applications that provide and use web services. The EJB
specification was also extended to support implementing web services using
stateless session beans. The JAXR API supports access to registries and
repositories.
Here are list of specifications:
- J2EE.6.12 Web Services for J2EE 1.1 Requirements
- J2EE.6.13 Java™ API for XML-based RPC (JAX-RPC) 1.1
Requirements - J2EE.6.14 SOAP with Attachments API for Java™ (SAAJ) 1.2
- J2EE.6.15 Java™ API for XML Registries (JAXR) 1.0
Requirements
Related projects at Apache Web Services and elsewhere:
- Apache Axis - Implements JAX-RPC and SAAJ
- Apache jUDDI - Working on JAXR
- Enterprise Web Services (at sf.net) - working on JSR 921
Choices for JBoss:
- Contribute significantly to Apache Axis
- Fork Apache Axis
- License RI's from SUN
- License Impl's from another vendor
- Implement everything from scratch
My VOTE would be for #1 ("Contribute significantly to Apache Axis"). But given the bad blood, your guess is as good as mine as to what they will do next. Even now, they claim to make "significant contributions" to Apache Axis and who knows what they will claim if they do contribute to Axis (Hint: See what they say about Apache Tomcat)
-- dims