AXIS vs. JWSDP ?

Question

Hello,
While I might be an experienced Java developer, I am going CRAZY trying to figure out all of these web service paradigms and acronyms. Specifically, I have yet to find a whitepaper that explains the differences between:
Axis2
Java WSDP 2.0
Can anyone help me there?
What I need to do is set up a web service that allows private clients to submit data, and either get back a synchronous response, asynchronous response, or an email at a later time. Now, the data is formatted in XML, however, I don't think I necessarily need it passed via SOAP (the raw XML is fine with me).
Finally, I do NOT want to have to install Tomcat or other application server. Can anyone tell me if I need to use Axis2, JWSDP2, or a combination of both of them to achieve my goals, which are:
- define a web service to transfer xml data (doesn't NEED to be in SOAP envelope)
- do not want to be forced to use Tomcat or any other J2EE application server (i.e. standalone)
- do not need to call remote methods (RPC)
In fact, the more I think about this, the more I see all these new technologies as overhead. Having a public web service defined in some type of registry is useful, but isn't there a ton of overhead with the SOAP envelop and all of the communication mechanisms back/forth?
What above technolog(ies) would I need to use if I wanted to implement my own web service client and server and transfer raw XML, without needing Tomcat?
Thank You,
Eric

Answer 1

I can't speak for Axix, but I can tell you what JAX-WS is capable of.
JAX-WS can deal with any XML based message, it doesn't have to be SOAP.
You can use the Dispatch interface on the client and Provider on the Server to
have direct access to the message.
JAX-WS can proxies can be generated with asynchronous call methods. These methods let the client application use either polling or callback when the response is returned. Currently the response still comes on the transport back channel. The next release of JAX-WS will be more flexible and will allow WS-Addressings non-anonymous replies.
JAX-WS and and Endpoint interface that one can use to publish a lightweight
endpoint that can be used as a callback if necessary. This interface does not require a web container such as tomcat.
Best of all, JAX-WS will be part of Java 6 and you can get all of this functionality without additional jar files. However, it does also run on Java 5.
You can read more about JAX-WS at http://jax-ws.dev.java.net.