Welcome to Apache Axis2/C

Apache Axis2/C is a Web services engine implemented in the C programming language. It is based on the extensible and flexible Axis2 architecture. Apache Axis2/C can be used to provide and consume Web Services. It has been implemented with portability and ability to embed in mind, hence could be used as a Web services enabler in other software.

Apache Axis2/C supports SOAP 1.1 and SOAP 1.2, as well as REST style of Web services. A single service could be exposed both as a SOAP style as well as a REST style service simultaneously. It also has built in MTOM support, that can be used to exchange binary data.

Apache Axis2/C is efficient, modular and is designed with extensibility. The extensible design allows it to support the full WS-* stack with the concept of modules. Apache Axis2/C is the Web services engine that supports the most number of WS-* specification implementations in C, with guaranteed interoperability. This enables using C in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) implementations, and would be very useful when integrating legacy systems into SOA.
The following WS-* specifications are supported, either as built in modules or as separate Apache projects:

• WS-Addressing - Built in to Axis2/C
• WS-Policy - Built in to Axis2/C
• WS-Security - Implemented by Apache Rampart/C project
• WS-SecurityPolicy - Built in to Axis2/C
• WS-ReliableMessaging - Implemented by Apache Sandesha2/C project
• WS-Eventing - Implemented by Apache Savan/C project

Latest Release

30th September 2007 - Apache Axis2/C Version 1.1.0 Released

Key Features

1. Support for one-way messaging (In-Only) and request response messaging (In-Out)
2. Client APIs: Easy to use service client API and more advanced operation client API
3. Transports supported: HTTP
   • Inbuilt HTTP server called simple axis server
   • Apache2 httpd module called mod_axis2 for server side
   • IIS module for server side
   • Client transport with ability to enable SSL support
   • Basic HTTP Authentication
   • libcurl based client transport
4. Module architecture, mechanism to extend the SOAP processing model
5. WS-Addressing support, both the submission (2004/08) and final (2005/08) versions, implemented as a module
6. MTOM/XOP support
7. AXIOM, an XML object model optimized for SOAP 1.1/1.2 messages; This has complete XML infoset support
8. XML parser abstraction
   • Libxml2 wrapper
   • Guththila pull parser support
9. Both directory based and archive based deployment models for deploying services and modules
10. Description hierarchy providing access to static data of Axis2/C runtime (configuration, service groups, services, operations and messages)
11. Context hierarchy providing access to dynamic Axis2/C runtime information(corresponding contexts to map to each level of description hierarchy)
12. Message receiver abstraction
    • Inbuilt raw XML message receiver
13. Code generation tool for stub and skeleton generation for a given WSDL (based on Java tool)
    • Axis Data Binding (ADB) support
14. Transport proxy support
15. REST support (more POX like) using both HTTP POST and GET
16. Comprehensive documentation
    • Axis2/C Manual
17. WS-Policy implementation called Neethi/C, with WS-SecurityPolicy extension
18. TCP Transport, for both client and server side

Major Changes Since Last Release

1. WS-Policy implementation
2. TCP Transport
3. Improvements to Guththila parser to improve performance
4. Improvements to Java tool, WSDL2C, that generates C code
5. Basic HTTP Authentication
6. Memory leak fixes
7. Many bug fixes

Archived News

Refer to information on the previous release.