Java and SOAP

Chapter 11. JAX-RPC and JAXM

With most software technologies, standardization occurs when the technology has gained a certain amount of momentum. Well, SOAP and web services have gained the requisite momentum, and standards (and their resulting acronyms) are sprouting up. There are a slew of API standards evolving for manipulating XML in Java, all of which fall under the umbrella of the Java APIs for XML (JAX). JAX is not a product — it’s an API definition, and as such, it’s no different from many of the countless API specifications associated with Java. However, since XML is such a wide-ranging area, JAX is made up of many components. Two of these are of particular interest to us: JAX-RPC and JAXM. JAX-RPC is the Java API for XML-based RPC. This is the API that, over time, I’d expect most significant SOAP RPC implementations to follow. JAXM is the Java API for XML Messaging, and, like JAX-RPC, it will likely become widely accepted.

These two APIs are new, and are not yet ready for the production world. The specifications for JAXM and JAX-RPC are in public review, and therefore are expected to change before they’re complete; however, at this stage, the changes should be relatively minor. Nonetheless, Sun has produced a reference implementation that allows you to start working with these technologies. This reference implementation is included in the Java Web Services Developer Pack (Java WSDP) available at http://java.sun.com/webservices/webservicespack.html. You can treat this ...