Hi!
The annotation WebServiceProvider is used in endpoint classes implementing the javax.xml.ws.Provider<T> to associate the class with a <wsdl:service> element and a <wsdl:port> element in specified WSDL document. Such an endpoint works directly with (
SOAP) messages or (SOAP) message payloads.
Note that the Provider<T> interface only has one single method, which in an implementing class will provide all the different messages received by the endpoint, while a class annotated with the WebService has one method for each kind of message the endpoint class can receive.
A class can either be annotated with the WebService or the WebServiceProvider annotation, but not both.