Keep-alive SSL Web Service connections

[bi...@effectnet.com]

   I am designing a web service based application the will require a work
flow of web service calls. SSL will be used for transport security. I
am concerned about the SSL handshake overhead if each of the web
service calls use a new SSL connection. I would like reuse the SSL
socket across several calls thus accruing the handshake overhead only
once.

   The Axis JavaDoc indicate that the org.apache.axis.transport.http...
invoke methods create a new socket. So it seems that the current
implementation does not support using a single HTTP socket across
several web service calls.

   Is there a workaround?

Thanks
Bill Andrews
billa@effectnet.com