Axis2 Release Notes

May 4th, 2006

After nearly two years of development, we are very proud to announce the release of Apache Axis2 1.0!

http://ws.apache.org/axis2

Apache Axis2 is a complete re-design and re-write of the widely used Apache Axis SOAP stack to build on the lessons learnt from Apache Axis.

Apache Axis2 is more efficient, more modular and more XML-oriented than the older version. It is carefully designed to support the easy addition of plug-in "modules" that extend its functionality for features such as security and reliability.

A module supporting WS-Security (Apache Rampart) is available immediately and a module supporting WS-Reliable Messaging (Apache Sandesha) will be available within days.

Apache Axis2 not only supports SOAP 1.1 and SOAP 1.2, but it also has integrated support for the widely popular REST style of Web services: the same business logic implementation can offer both a WS-* style interface as well as a REST style interface simultaneously.

Apache Axis2 is built on Apache Axiom, a new high performant, pull-based XML object model that was released two days ago.

Features

Programming Model

• Improved, XML-centric client API including full WSDL and policy support
• Support for any message exchange pattern
• Synchronous and asynchronous calls
• Archived service deployment model supporting full service encapsulation with versioning support
• Archived module deployment model supporting controlled extensibility with versioning support
• Hot deployment
• WS-Policy driven code generation extensions
• Flexible service lifecyle model
• Support for querying service's WSDL (using ?wsdl), schema (using ?xsd) and policies (using ?policy)

Supported Specifications

• SOAP 1.1 and 1.2
• Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM), XML Optimized Packaging (XOP) and SOAP with Attachments
• WSDL 1.1, including both SOAP and HTTP bindings
• WS-Addressing (submission and final)
• WS-Policy
• SAAJ 1.1

Transports

• HTTP
• SMTP
• JMS
• TCP

Supported Data Bindings

• Axis Data Binding (ADB)
• XMLBeans
• JibX
• JaxMe

Tools

• WSDL2Java: Generate Java stubs and skeletons from a WSDL document.
• Java2WSDL: Generate a WSDL document from a Java class.
• Eclipse Plugins
• Intellij Idea Plugins
• Web application for administering Apache Axis2

Extension Modules

• Apache Rampart: Supporting WS-Security (and soon WS-Policy)
• Apache Sandesha2: Supporting WS-Reliable Messaging

Known Issues and Limitations

• Recursive schemas (A includes B which includes A) may cause problems
• JaxMe data binding support is experimental
• Axis2-595: Hot redeployment in Apache Tomcat has problems
• Axis2-666: AddressingSubmissionInHandler does not deserialize EPR extensibility attributes and elements
• AXIS2-667: Operation dispatch based on message body has a known issue
• Axis Data Binding (ADB) does not cover all of XML Schema; its an 80-20 design point. Unsupported XML Schema features include:
  1. Simple content extension and restriction
  2. Complex content restriction
• ADB does not support xsi:type based deserialization at runtime
• No support yet for unwrapping of doc/lit WSDL files (in stub generation)
• No support yet for rpc/encoded style WSDL documents (in stub generation)

Thank you for your interest in Axis2.