Java API for XML-based Web Services, known as JAX-WS (http://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/mrel/jsr224/index2.html), is a W3C standards-based technology for communicating between services and clients using XML over the HTTP protocol. Some of the W3C standards that JAX-WS Web Services support are HTTP (http://www.w3.org/Protocols/), SOAP (http://www.w3.org/TR/soap/), and Web Service Description Language (WSDL) (http://www.w3.org/TR/wsdl). JAX-WS is a platform-independent standard; JAX-WS Web Services may communicate with non-Java clients, for example a .NET client, and a JAX-WS client may communicate with non-Java Web Services, a .NET Web Service for example. JAX-WS makes use of XML in the following artifacts:
- The WSDL is an XML document that describes network services as a set of endpoints operating on messages; an endpoint being a URL location representing a web service
- A client and a web service communicate using SOAP messages, which are in the XML format
A JAX-WS web service consists of the following components:
- A non-final, non-abstract Java class that is annotated with
javax.jws.WebServiceannotation. The web service endpoints, the Java class consists of business methods. A web service client creates a proxy of the web service to invoke its methods (operations). The web service optionally returns a response. The web service request and response are SOAP messages over HTTP. - An optional Java interface that defines the methods implemented in the web service implementation class.
This chapter has the following sections:
- Setting up the environment
- Creating a Java EE web project
- Creating a web descriptor
- Creating a JAX-WS Web Service
- Creating a web service client
- Deploying the JAX-WS application with Maven
- Running the JAX-WS application
We need to download and install the following software:
- WildFly 8.1.0.Final: Download
wildfly-8.1.0.Final.zipfrom http://wildfly.org/downloads/. - MySQL 5.6 Database-Community Edition: Download this edition from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/. When installing MySQL, install Connector/J too.
- Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers: Download Eclipse Luna from https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/release/Luna/SR1.
- JBoss Tools (Luna) 4.2.0.Final (or the latest version): Install this as a plugin to Eclipse from the Eclipse Marketplace (http://tools.jboss.org/downloads/installation.html).
- Apache Maven: Download version 3.05 or higher from http://maven.apache.org/download.cgi.
- Java 7: Download Java 7 from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html?ssSourceSiteId=ocomcn.
Set the environment variables, JAVA_HOME, JBOSS_HOME, and MAVEN_HOME. Add %JAVA_HOME%/bin, %MAVEN_HOME%/bin, and %JBOSS_HOME%/bin to the PATH environment variable.
Create a WildFly 8.1.0 runtime as discussed in Chapter 1, Getting Started with EJB 3.x.