While trying to figure out how to deploy my XML/X beans as a SOAP Web Service, I discovered Bruce Scharlau's great little EJB Axis Hello World Example.

Basically it boils down to packaging the required files into a .wsr file, with a web-services.xml using Axis's WSDD (Web Service Deployment Descriptor) format. He has an example using Ant, which I've managed to integrate quite easily into my own ant buildfile.

While I understand all the simple WSDD file's used in the examples that come with AXIS I see that it might be worth delving into code. The WSDD file used with JBOSS EJB's doesn't use the className parameter. Rather it uses a <parameter name="handlerClass" value="org.jboss.net.axis.server.EJBProvider"/> .

This of course makes sense, because we don't necessary know the final implmenting class name when we deploy an EJB. So this bit needs to be App server specific, until someone defines a standard way of mapping an EJB to SOAP.

This is pretty cool, it should be exceptionally easy to deploy EJB's as SOAP using this method. Lets see if I agree when I'm finished. One question I have is that AFAIK JBoss uses Axis beta 1 and Axis is now on beta 3. Some of the messages I've seen indicate that there are some big incompatibilities here, allthough I'm trying to ignore the specifics. I'm guessing that it will be updated soon, if it hasn't already been in CVS.

Talking about CVS, I discovered that they have some XDoclet tags in there to automatically generate the WSDD file, if the class has a @jboss-net:web-service in it's javadocs. I'll investigate further. This would speed development up even further. Of course, it's not mentioned anywhere but in the source.

(Currently listening to the excellent group Koop out of Sweden)