“Sun moving away from SOAP to embrace REST” is the misleading title of an article recently published in SD Times. The article provides a good introduction to JAX-RS and Jersey. But I really wonder what motivated the author of this article to use this title. This blog, hopefully, provides a better context.
Jersey is the Reference Implementation of Java API for RESTful Web Services (JAX-RS, JSR 311) and was released earlier this week. The headline indicates that Sun is leaving SOAP and will support REST. The debate between REST and SOAP is not new and there are religious camps on both sides (even within Sun). And that’s completely understandable because each technology has its own merits and demerits. But just because a new JSR aimed to make RESTful Web services easy in the Java platform is released, it does not mean Sun Microsystems is leaving existing technology in trenches.
The addition of Jersey to Sun’s software portfolio makes the Web services stack from GlassFish community a more compelling and comprehensive offering. This is in contrast to “moving away” from SOAP as indicated by the title. As a matter of fact, Jersey will be included as part of Metro soon, the Web Services stack of GlassFish. And then you can use JAX-WS (or Metro) if you like to use SOAP or JAX-RS (or Jersey) if you prefer RESTful Web services. It’s all about a offering choice to the community instead of showing a direction.
Here are some data points for JAX-WS:
- The JAX-WS 2.0 specification was released on May 11, 2006. There have been couple of maintenance releases since then and another one brewing.
- Parts of Metro, the implementation of JAX-WS, are currently baked into GlassFish, embeddable in JBoss WS Stack, and also part of Oracle Weblogic and IBM Websphere.
- The implementation stack is mature and used in several key customer deployments.
- JAX-WS is already included in Java SE 6 and hence available to a much wider audience.
- As opposed to “moving away”, JAX-WS 2.2 (currently being worked upon) will be included in Java EE 6 platform, as will Jersey be.
So I believe both SOAP and REST are here to stay, at least in the near future. And Sun Microsystems is committed to support them!
You still think Sun is moving away from SOAP ?
It seems a personal preference is interpreted as Sun’s disinvestment in SOAP. It’s good to have increased readership but not at the cost of misleading headlines 
Technorati: jax-ws rest webservices metro sdtimes glassfish
"…I really wonder what motivated the author of this article to use this title."
On most magazines and newspapers, including SDTimes, (I am a columnist for them), the author of the article does not write the headline. It’s written by magazine staff.
A small point, but a common misperception.
Comment by Andrew Binstock — October 17, 2008 @ 4:53 pm
Controversy sells
– eduard/o
Comment by Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart — October 17, 2008 @ 4:57 pm
Andrew – thanks for the reminder! – eduard/o
Comment by Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart — October 17, 2008 @ 4:59 pm
Really nice summary Arun – and good to hear Jersey will make it into Metro for .NET interoperability.
Comment by Daniel Coward — October 17, 2008 @ 5:20 pm
Arun ,
Does Jax-ws 2.0 support wsdl 2.0 and soap 1.2 spec ?
Comment by Ashok — October 20, 2008 @ 4:52 am
Ashok,
SOAP 1.2 yes, WSDL 2.0 No. AIU no customers have been asking for WSDL 2.0 yet. Are you aware of any strong usecases ?
Comment by Arun Gupta — October 20, 2008 @ 5:43 am
Arun , we had use case wher our customer asked a support for wsdl 2.0 . On evaluating java frame works found the Apache Axis2 folks are supporting it.
Just wanna know whether Jax-ws supports it or not.
If i’m correct wsdl 2.0 supports rest style invocation too rite?
Comment by Ashok — October 20, 2008 @ 11:27 pm
Ashok, JAX-WS does not support WSDL 2.0 and yes WSDL 2.0 do support REST style description as well.
Comment by Arun Gupta — October 24, 2008 @ 3:35 pm
bilgilendirme için çok teşekkürler başarılar diliyorum
Comment by çiçekçi — January 16, 2009 @ 5:05 am