Our company wants to expose some of the API through web services. There are many open-source implementations out there - axis 1.x, axis 2, glassfish, xfile, etc.
I would appreciate if someone can share his/her first hand experience. Please comment on feature richness, conforming to standards, "bug-free" code, performance, good documentations and ease of development.
Thanks in advance.
I recommend you implement your web service with JAX-WS 2.0
Axis (both version) are good but why do you want to use something that is not included in JEE API, when Java provide same thing with better performance.
personally try to prevent non standard technologies despite they can be better than core java implementation sometimes.
I don't know Xfire.
the good:
-JAX-WS performance is better than axis,
- you can create your web service simply with annotation.(this means write class and then make it as a service easily)
- support every kind of service invocation(callback,Asynchronous,...)
- architecture is nice (you can operate on SOAP level)
the Bad:
- It is JEE 5 or JSE 6 dependent.
- there is seriously lack of documentation and examples for it, on java web sites and internet.
I have recently been researching the same thing and found the following link very useful:
http://wiki.apache.org/ws/StackComparison
Currently I am planning on using Glassfish with JAX-WS 2.1 and OpenESB because of the completeness of features in the WS-* area and the ease of developement in the NetBeans IDE.
Currently developing with:
NetBeans 5.5.1 (2/14 nightly build)
NetBeans Enterprise Pack 5.5.1 (2/14 Nightly build)
Glassfish (build 36)
JDK 1.5.0.11
Good luck.
