Is it possible to deploy a SOAP server with Axis without using WSDD?

Question

In the project I am working I have deployed a SOAP server using Deployment Descriptors (WSDD) files. To do that a webserver (e.g tomcat, jetty) is started and then the following command is executed:

java -cp %AXISCLASSPATH% org.apache.axis.client.AdminClient deploy.wsdd

What I need is to skip the above command to avoid a call to the Axis AdminClient. Is it possible to deploy my webservice as war file?

Note: A solution with JWS can't be used due to its limitations.

Answer 1

Someone else on Stackoverflow has figured out a way to programmatically configure Axis. This might work for you, too.

The Axis project has some documentation on the EngineConfigurationFactory in its section on Integration.

Answer 2

If you're building with Maven, you could use maven-wsdd-plugin.

If your WSDL isn't changing (e.g., you're just fixing bugs inside the web service biz logic or you're building a web service to fit a given WSDL), you can skip the maven plugin. Just deploy the web service using AdminClient to a development servlet container as described in the question. This will generate a server-config.wsdd in the development servlet container's /{axis_context}/WEB-INF directory. Copy that server-config.wsdd and package it into the WEB-INF directory of your war. When you deploy the war to a different location, your web service should be included in the list of web services.

Tested with Axis 1.4 and Tomcat 1.7