Deployment Descriptor - deploy.wsdd vs. web.xml

[Jason Etherton <je...@astro.livjm.ac.uk>]

Please,

When I added an Axis Ant task (war) to my build file it told me I needed 
the "webxml" atttribute.  Upon looking this up I found that it is the 
URL of the deployment descriptor, so I added the URL for the 
WSDL2Java-generated 'deploy.wsdd'.

I know this is wrong, but what I don't know is how to generate/write the 
web.xml deployment decriptor.

Will someone please tell me why 2 deployment descriptors and what the difference is?

Also, if the WSDD is not the deployment descriptor, why is it generated 
as such?

Please help,

Jason

Re: Deployment Descriptor - deploy.wsdd vs. web.xml

["matthew.hawthorne" <ma...@apache.org>]

Jason Etherton wrote:
> When I added an Axis Ant task (war) to my build file it told me I needed 
> the "webxml" atttribute.  Upon looking this up I found that it is the 
> URL of the deployment descriptor, so I added the URL for the 
> WSDL2Java-generated 'deploy.wsdd'.
> 
> I know this is wrong, but what I don't know is how to generate/write the 
> web.xml deployment decriptor.
> 
> Will someone please tell me why 2 deployment descriptors and what the 
> difference is?
> 
> Also, if the WSDD is not the deployment descriptor, why is it generated 
> as such?


It seems like there are a few distinct concepts that are being mixed 
together here.

web.xml and *.wsdd are 2 different descriptor types, with 2 different 
purposes.
As far as I know, the Ant "war" task has nothing to do with Axis -- it 
just provides a way
to build a standard war file.

To run the Axis server, you need to have the Axis war file deployed on 
your servlet
container somewhere.  If you were to jar up the webapps/axis directory 
of the Axis distribution, and
name it (for example axis.war), this would be a deployable Axis 
installation, typically reached at
http://localhost:8080/axis.

Now, in order to use the *.wsdd file, you need to send it to the Axis 
server and tell it to deploy.
I do it like this:

<axis-admin
             port="8080"
             hostname="localhost"
             failonerror="true"
             servletpath="axis/services/AdminService"
             debug="false"
             xmlfile="deploy.wsdd"/>

Any classes referenced in your wsdd must be visible to the Axis server. 
  I do this by bundling Axis
inside of my ear file, but a simpler way may just be to put your classes 
in axis.war/WEB-INF/classes, just
like it was your own war file.

I've touched a few different topics here, sorry if things are jumbled. 
Basically, you don't need a web.xml to use Axis,
but you do need a wsdd file.

You should take a look at http://ws.apache.org/axis/, especially 
"Installation" and "User's Guide".  They give more detailed
explanations of the things I've said here.