I am in a situation where I need to expose a Java method as a web service, and I need to choose the technology to do so and I am basically a bit bewildered.
The requirements are:
- Must be runnable in an IBM Java 5.
- Must be deployable as a web application inside an embedded Jetty (currently version 6)
- Must be detachable from an IDE (has previously used the XFire in MyEclipse 5, I’d like a stand-alone version)
- Must be well supported, reasonably fast, and preferrably Open Source.
- Would be really really nice if it was simple to use.
I’ve seen a multitude of possibilities, CFX (and XFire), Axis 1 and 2, Netbeans 6 (wants Glassfish), JAX-WS (apparently have features with Java 6 which are nice but probably not an option unless it can be retrocompiled), JDeveloper has something, and Eclipse, and I have a hard time getting enough information to make a decision.
I’d appreciate pointers, experiences, recommendations and warnings.
The chosen approach is to use Metro 1.4 which works well.
I have told others about my experiences with it in http://archive.midrange.com/java400-l/200902/msg00074.html and in more detail on http://archive.midrange.com/java400-l/200904/msg00071.html
The information is valid for any Servlet 2.4 compatible container (this is probably the most important single technological decision taken in the whole Metro project IMHO 🙂 )
The JAX-WS Metro stack (the same one that ships with J2EE 1.5+ or J2SE 6+) can be downloaded and used independently of Glassfish. It makes it fairly easy to expose services, as it uses the @Webservice annotation.
The Metro site also has a page about using it with Eclipse. I also found a blog post about getting it to work with Jetty… apparently Jetty embedded can still be used with jetty.xml