standards questions...

[Tony Dean <To...@sas.com>]

Hi axis-dev,

I'm new to axis, but not to web services.

I was reading the standards that are supported by axis 1.2:
SOAP 1.2
WSDL 1.1
JAX-RPC 1.1
SAAJ 1.2

I have a few further inquiries on standards that would help me out.

- You say that you are WS-I Basic Profile compliant.  What version 1.0 = or 1.1?
- You say that you have preliminary support for SOAP with Attachments = specification.  What does this mean exactly?
- Are you compliant with WS-I Attachment Profile 1.0?
- Appear that everyone is moving towards MTOM attachment support, are = you looking into this?
- Do you expect to have WS-Security built-in support for Axis one day?

In the list of companies that use Axis, you list BEA Weblogic and Jboss. =  What versions of the containers are using the Axis engine?  In = particular, is Weblogic 8.1 using your engine?  Also, why was there a = divergence in IBM Websphere from using Axis since it is used by  = ETTK/WSTK.  How different is the Axis soap engine from the Websphere = soap engine?  Seems like all the major vendors are finally acknowledging = that jws (annotation) is a good idea... the Axis engine has had jws = deployment for sometime.

I just want to be assured that the Axis engine is forging ahead and has = plans to keep up with emerging standards/technologies before I invest = time in understanding and utilizing this soap engine.  I am = contemplating your engine for the simple fact that I would like to = develop/test against a single engine that can be embedded anywhere = (tomcat, weblogic, websphere... I hope I can do this safely) to ensure = interoperability in the Java world.  Then if you are WS-I compliant, I = am better assured to be interoperable with .Net as well.

Thanks for your time and any information you can throw my way.

-Tony

Tony Dean
SAS Institute Inc.
919.531.6704
tony.dean@sas.com

SAS... The Power to Know
http://www.sas.com

Re: standards questions...

[Anne Thomas Manes <at...@gmail.com>]

Tony, 

I can't answer all your questions, but I'll answer what I can.

Although Axis does support SOAP 1.2, it's primarily intended for use
with SOAP 1.1 (which is required for WS-I BP compliance). It also
supports both SOAP with Attachments (MIME) and WS-Attachments (DIME).
It complies with WS-I Basic Profile 1.1 (which is basically identical
to WS-I BP 1.0, except that the SOAP message binding rules have been
refactored into a separate profile, the Simple SOAP Binding Profile).

The WS-I Attachment Profile defines an interop profile for attachments
based on SOAP with Attachments, but Microsoft does not and will not
support SOAP with Attachments. So don't be swayed by a WS-I profile
into thinking that attachments are interoperable. Today, if you want
interoperable attachments, you should use DIME. In the future, I
anticipate that everyone will adopt MTOM, but I think it will be
another year or more before MTOM use become pervasive. Axis 2 supports
MTOM.

Axis currently supports WS-Security using WSS4J
(http://ws.apache.org/ws-fx/wss4j/).

I believe that BEA used Axis 1.1 as the embedded JAX-RPC engine in
WebLogic 8.1. They may have forked the code, but I don't know. You
should ask BEA for definitive information. JBoss also used Axis 1.1 as
the embedded JAX-RPC engine in the last release of JBoss App Server.
JBoss has forked the code, and the upcoming release will contain a
significantly different SOAP engine.

IBM was a major contributor to Axis through the release of Axis 1.0.
At that point, though, they took the code and forked it. The IBM
JAX-RPC engine is now a very different code base from Axis. You'll
have to ask IBM why it chose to fork the code rather than continue to
invest in Apache Axis. (IBM still does contribute to Axis, but not at
the level it once did.)

Other vendors that use Axis include Sonic, Macromedia, Borland, and
Sybase. I don't think these companies have forked the code.

Note that Axis "jws" is not the same as BEA's "jws", which is the
basis of JSR 181 - Web Services Metadata for Java. Axis does not
support JSR 181. Apache Beehive supports JSR 181
(http://incubator.apache.org/beehive/).

Although the Axis dev team is still actively supporting Axis 1.2, most
new efforts are being invested in Axis 2 -- a completely redesigned,
next generation web services engine.

Anne

On 6/24/05, Tony Dean <To...@sas.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi axis-dev,
> 
> I'm new to axis, but not to web services.
> 
> I was reading the standards that are supported by axis 1.2:
> SOAP 1.2
> WSDL 1.1
> JAX-RPC 1.1
> SAAJ 1.2
> 
> I have a few further inquiries on standards that would help me out.
> 
> - You say that you are WS-I Basic Profile compliant.  What version 1.0 = or 1.1?
> - You say that you have preliminary support for SOAP with Attachments = specification.  What does this mean exactly?
> - Are you compliant with WS-I Attachment Profile 1.0?
> - Appear that everyone is moving towards MTOM attachment support, are = you looking into this?
> - Do you expect to have WS-Security built-in support for Axis one day?
> 
> In the list of companies that use Axis, you list BEA Weblogic and Jboss. =  What versions of the containers are using the Axis engine?  In = particular, is Weblogic 8.1 using your engine?  Also, why was there a = divergence in IBM Websphere from using Axis since it is used by  = ETTK/WSTK.  How different is the Axis soap engine from the Websphere = soap engine?  Seems like all the major vendors are finally acknowledging = that jws (annotation) is a good idea... the Axis engine has had jws = deployment for sometime.
> 
> I just want to be assured that the Axis engine is forging ahead and has = plans to keep up with emerging standards/technologies before I invest = time in understanding and utilizing this soap engine.  I am = contemplating your engine for the simple fact that I would like to = develop/test against a single engine that can be embedded anywhere = (tomcat, weblogic, websphere... I hope I can do this safely) to ensure = interoperability in the Java world.  Then if you are WS-I compliant, I = am better assured to be interoperable with .Net as well.
> 
> Thanks for your time and any information you can throw my way.
> 
> -Tony
> 
> Tony Dean
> SAS Institute Inc.
> 919.531.6704
> tony.dean@sas.com
> 
> SAS... The Power to Know
> http://www.sas.com
> 
>