Question

Using CXF to create contract-last web services seems like an efficient and effective way to rapidly create either SOAP or REST based web services. However, I’m unclear/unsure of the following and I’d appreciate insight/feedback:

1. Are there any significant pitfalls of contract-last that I should be aware of?
2. Are there any significant issues/pitfalls of CXF I should be wary of?
3. Between REST and SOAP which makes the most sense when using CXF?

Answer 1

1. The problem with contract last is
   that there is a tight coupling
   between your code and the WSDLs you
   produce. It means that you are
   limited by the impedance mismatch
   between Java and what an XSD
   supports. The major issue we’ve
   faced is around versioning. If you
   want to support two parallel
   versions, how do you do that with
   contract-last? We found a cunning
   way to do it with XStream and
   separate wars but the solution is
   too large for this margin.
2. CXF works pretty well. We haven’t
   hit any major problems but it’s a
   big project and the variations of
   what you can do with it are also
   pretty big.
3. That depends on the consumers of
   your API. I’d advocate REST if at
   all possible because it’s simpler, doesn’t rely on incompatible SOAP libraries and scales better but some B2B
   organisations I’ve worked with
   prefer SOAP. The argument can be
   made that there is more tooling for
   creating SOAP clients automatically
   vs. REST. That said, most large
   organisations (Google, Amazon etc.)
   prefer REST for a reason.