Hi Jeremy: When Axis was born it was meant to be multi-protocol, and the "core" architecture (handlers, messages) was designed that way. Unfortunately, since we didn't have a strong set of user requirements to support other protocols, a lot of SOAP-specific warts ended up being bolted in to Axis.
As I've watched the WSIF effort from afar, I've been wishing that we could have taken Axis' basic architecture and simply cleaned it up to separate out the SOAP-specificity and had a single framework instead of two. Both Axis and WSIF need: - WSDL processing / Java binding capability - Schema processing / databinding capability - A useful metadata model of a service/operation/parameter/etc - "bindings" to actual concrete protocols / underlying systems It's a bit of a bummer we don't simply share all this stuff. I would also think that WSIF would be able to greatly benefit from Axis' Handler pattern to arbitrarily extend the engine, but I admit I haven't looked at the WSIF code enough to know if they have a similar mechanism already. Anyway, the point here is just to get on the radar that there is probably a good bit of overlap and that we should talk at some point about how best to usefully share models and code. --Glen > -----Original Message----- > From: Jeremy Hughes [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 6:10 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: WSIF - Is it dead? > > > Dug, > > WSIF isn't trying to compete with Axis. It is at a higher > level where the > premise is "web services are described by WSDL and may be > accessed via any > protocol". It is my understanding Axis has the premise "the > web service is > accessed via the SOAP (protocol)". > > Of course WSIF relies on Axis when the protocol is SOAP. So > you're right, > when the access protocol is SOAP there is nothing you can do > with WSIF that > you can't do with Axis alone (now that there is a DII in > Axis). Where an > application (eg middleware) needs to invoke a web service > described by WSDL > which isn't accessed via SOAP (and btw it only found out > which protocol was > needed at runtime), WSIF is the answer ... as long as the protocol is > supported by WSIF :-) > > Jeremy > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Doug Davis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 5:15 PM > Subject: Re: WSIF - Is it dead? > > > > > > > > I'd be interested in knowing what you can do with WSIF that > you can't do > with Axis - w.r.t. SOAP I haven't seen anything. > -Dug > > > easter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on 12/02/2002 11:52:00 AM > > Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > cc: > Subject: Re: WSIF - Is it dead? > > > Actually that's what I started off with, till I realised it's > limitations. > I wouldn't mind seeing some of the WSIF stuff integrated into the axis > code base.... > > WH > > > > Doug Davis wrote: > > > > > > > > > > >WH wrote: > > > > > >>The current axis implementation is limited to working with > hard coded > >>web services at the source code level (unless you do some > >>awesome code gymnastics), wsif provides a way to > generically invoke web > >>services at runtime. > >> > >> > > > >You obviously haven't used the DII interfaces in Axis. > >-Dug > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >
