WS-*

Sanjiva Weerawarana, Founder, Chairman & CEO of WSO2, the open source SOA company, takes apart the WS-* vs. REST debate and clearly separates the facts from the myths and the lies.

The Web Services Metadata Exchange specification describes a standard way to encapsulate services metadata and a protocol to retrieve it. It allows the client to interact with the service automatically, fetch all relevant metadata and aids the client in self-configuring.

Among the most popular open source stacks for implementing a SOAP/WS-* based solution in the Java space are Apache Axis2, Apache CXF, Spring Web Services and Sun’s Metro.

Stefan Tilkov posed a number of questions to the lead developers of these stacks – Paul Fremantle (Axis2), Dan Diephouse (CXF), Arjen Poutsma (Spring Web Services), Thomas Diesler (JBossWS) and Kohsuke Kawaguchi (Metro) – about their design goals, their approach towards Java and Web services standards, data binding, accessing XML, interoperability, REST support, and framework maturity :

In this presentation made at JavaPolis 2006 Paul Fremantle covers how the OASIS Web Services Reliable Messaging standard allows Web services interactions and messages to be reliably delivered. Web Services ReliableMessaging (WSRM) is a protocol that supports MQ or JMS like levels of reliable delivery on a completely open basis, with interoperability between systems including WebSphere, Apache Axis2 and Microsoft .NET.