Axis and Apache soap

[Roy Huang]

Who can tell me the major difference betw. the Axis soap (JAX- RPC) and Apache soap? Thanks.

[William Brogden]

Apache SOAP builds on code from IBM. In working on the SOAP version, the Apache developers discovered lots of inefficiencies and conceptual problems, such as working with all SOAP messages as DOMs. Way too many problems to fix by modifying SOAP - therefore the AXIS project got started.
Supposedly it is much more efficient and faster.
Although a lot of people are making use of SOAP, the developers are apparently planning to do no more major improvements, instead all new work will go into AXIS. Incidently, the developers now seem to be looking for a new project name and are planning to incorporate some other Apache project.
Bill
------------------
author of:

• Java 2 Exam Prep
  
• Java 2 (Exam Cram)
  
• Java Developer's Guide to Servlets and JSP
  
• Java Developer's Guide to E-Commerce with XML and JS
  

[Roy Huang]

Thanks Bill, I have noticed that the Axis XML Parser uses more SAX , but not the complete DOM tree.

[Kyle Brown]

The major difference is in the architecture. AXIS is a lot better at handling SOAP headers and doing things in the appropriate places in the SOAP handling structure. So, for instance, if you used XML Encryption following the proposed standard, AXIS could easily handle that with a handler for encryption in front of (handling input) and behind (handling output) the basic message handler.
A little more history is here: http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/excerpt/java_xml_2_ch2/index.html?page=3
Kyle
------------------
Kyle Brown,
Author of Enterprise Java (tm) Programming with IBM Websphere
See my homepage at http://members.aol.com/kgb1001001 for other WebSphere information.

[Frank Lin]

Is anyone using AXIS alpha3? I had hard time to get it work with Weblogic 5.1? I kept getting following errors on the server side when I tried to access the Administer Axis or Visit the Axis Servlet from the main index. Soap 2.2 is running fine on the same server.

Must include type attribute for Handler deployment!
at org.apache.axis.deployment.wsdd.WSDDHandler.<init>(WSDDHandler.java:9
5)
at org.apache.axis.deployment.wsdd.WSDDDeployment.<init>(WSDDDeployment.
java:128)
at org.apache.axis.deployment.wsdd.WSDDDocument.<init>(WSDDDocument.java
:102)
at org.apache.axis.configuration.FileProvider.configureEngine(FileProvid
er.java:129)
at org.apache.axis.AxisEngine.init(AxisEngine.java:176)
at org.apache.axis.AxisEngine.<init>(AxisEngine.java:162)
at org.apache.axis.server.AxisServer.<init>(AxisServer.java:121)
at org.apache.axis.transport.http.AdminServlet.getEngine(AdminServlet.ja
va:87)
at org.apache.axis.transport.http.AdminServlet.doGet(AdminServlet.java:9
6)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:740)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:865)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletStubImpl.invokeServlet(ServletStubIm
pl.java:120)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletContextImpl.invokeServlet(ServletCon
textImpl.java:922)