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Java Web Services Developer Pack 1.4 Released

The latest version of the Java Web Services Developer Pack (version 1.4) is now available and offers support for both the WS-I Basic Profile 1.1 and WS-I Attachments Profile 1.0. Support for the WS-I attachments profile now allows interoperable description and exchange of SOAP messages that include attachments based on the WSDL 1.1 MIME binding and the SOAP Messages With Attachments specification. In addition, the Java WSDP 1.4 also includes a full implementation of the OASIS Web Services Security (WSS) standards that provide message-level security for SOAP. This allows messages to be sent and stored securely independent of transport or storage security measures.

The Java WSDP 1.4 provides developer choice and flexibility by supporting deployement on the following containers: the Sun Java System Application Server Platform Edition 8, the Sun Java System Web Server 6.1, and Tomcat 5.0 for Java WSDP 1.4. The Java WSDP 1.4 and supported Web containers are all available for free download.

JAX-RPC 2.0 Early Draft

It looks like I've already been scooped by Eduardo but just in case you missed that, the first early draft of JAX-RPC 2.0 is now available for review. It addresses the following goals and requirements:

• Integration with JAXB
• Addition of client side asynchrony
• Improved support for document and message centric usage
• Improvements to the handler framework
• Default alignment with the WS-I Basic Profile
• Improved protocol neutrality

Of these, integration wih JAXB is the most significant departure from previous versions of JAX-RPC. Earlier versions defined their own mapping between XML and Java data structures but in JAX-RPC 2.0 all data binding functionality is delegated to JAXB 2.0 while JAX-RPC still handles mapping between Java and WSDL constructs. This separation of responsibilities allows a developer to resuse code between JAXB and JAX-RPC based applications or to easily extend an existing JAXB based application to use JAX-RPC facilities. It also provides JAX-RPC with full support for XML Schema where previously only a subset was required to be supported.

Other significant additions inlcude a new document-centric API for dynamic Web service invocation, support for dynamic and type-safe client side asynchrony and several improvements to the handler framework including protocol agnostic handlers.

This early draft is still a work in progress, subsequent versions of the specification will address the following additional goals and requirements:

• Support for WS-I Basic Profile 1.1 and Attachments Profile 1.0
• Support for SOAP 1.2
• Support for WSDL 2.0
• Versioning and evolution of web services
• Web services security
• Integration with JSR 181 (Web Services Metadata)
• Service endpoint model
• Runtime services

The expert group solicits your input on the current draft, details of where to send comments are included in the specification.

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