Axis2's wsdl2java fails on RPC/Encoded style web services.

Question

Is there any alternative to Axis2? Or the way to make it work (different data binding, for example)?

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Exception in thread "main" org.apache.axis2.wsdl.codegen.CodeGenerationException: java.lang.RuntimeException: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
        at org.apache.axis2.wsdl.codegen.CodeGenerationEngine.generate(CodeGenerationEngine.java:271)
        at org.apache.axis2.wsdl.WSDL2Code.main(WSDL2Code.java:35)
        at org.apache.axis2.wsdl.WSDL2Java.main(WSDL2Java.java:24)
Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
        at org.apache.axis2.wsdl.codegen.extension.SimpleDBExtension.engage(SimpleDBExtension.java:53)
        at org.apache.axis2.wsdl.codegen.CodeGenerationEngine.generate(CodeGenerationEngine.java:224)
        ... 2 more
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
        at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
        at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
        at org.apache.axis2.wsdl.codegen.extension.SimpleDBExtension.engage(SimpleDBExtension.java:50)
        ... 3 more
Caused by: org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompilationException: can not find type {http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/}Array from the parent schema ...        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.copyMetaInfoHierarchy(SchemaCompiler.java:1296)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.processComplexContent(SchemaCompiler.java:1258)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.processContentModel(SchemaCompiler.java:1153)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.processComplexType(SchemaCompiler.java:1097)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.processNamedComplexSchemaType(SchemaCompiler.java:1017)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.processSchema(SchemaCompiler.java:931)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.processElement(SchemaCompiler.java:766)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.processElement(SchemaCompiler.java:552)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.process(SchemaCompiler.java:1991)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.processParticle(SchemaCompiler.java:1874)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.processComplexType(SchemaCompiler.java:1081)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.processNamedComplexSchemaType(SchemaCompiler.java:1017)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.processSchema(SchemaCompiler.java:931)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.processElement(SchemaCompiler.java:766)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.processElement(SchemaCompiler.java:552)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.process(SchemaCompiler.java:1991)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.processParticle(SchemaCompiler.java:1874)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.processComplexType(SchemaCompiler.java:1081)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.processAnonymousComplexSchemaType(SchemaCompiler.java:980)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.processSchema(SchemaCompiler.java:934)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.processElement(SchemaCompiler.java:592)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.processElement(SchemaCompiler.java:563)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.compile(SchemaCompiler.java:370)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.SchemaCompiler.compile(SchemaCompiler.java:280)
        at org.apache.axis2.schema.ExtensionUtility.invoke(ExtensionUtility.java:103)
        ... 8 more

NOTE: Apache CXF fails as well :(

Answer 1

Try Axis 1, I've used it for this exact reason.

Answer 2

I've had issues with SimpleDataBinding in axis2 too. I resolved them by using the AxisDataBinding option. Which is bit more heavy weight from a coding perspective, but works after all.

ADB in detail

Furthermore I'd agree to Robert, stating that axis1 is an interesting option too.

Answer 3

I'm not going to get in depth with this, but since you asked for alternatives:

Java 6 SE and Java 5 EE ship with the Metro JAX-WS (reference) implementation.

It lives in the javax.xml.ws namespace.

Sun's Developer Network has an article Introducing JAX-WS 2.0 With the Java SE 6 Platform that might be useful.

Having said all this, Eclipse is not very JAX-WS friendly.

Answer 4

There are only 3 optins that I have found that can be used in Java for old-style rpc/encoded web services:

1) SUN's reference implementation of JAX-RPC (wscompile)

2) WebLogic's clientgen (I used 8.1 version)

3) Axis1 v1.4 wsdl2java

Originally we used Axis 1.4 for that and it showed quite poor performance on relatively large service responses (>20k) i.e. client processing time increased more than twice comparing to plain HTTP request without parsing. And the time grows if response gets bigger. It took more than 30s to just deserialize 1MB large respose.

SUN's generated client didn't really work and it failed on request with the message:

unexpected element name: 
   expected=getSubscriberInfoReturn, 
   actual={ws.generated.api}getSubscriberInfoReturn

I have tried using WebLogic's 8.1 clientgen, and compared client code to Axis 1.4 generated client's performance. And Axis won the race. So, even though Axis client is performing not that good on relatively large responses it still is the best option out there for old rpc/encoded web services :(.

Answer 5

RPC encoding is not supported on Axis2. Source: http://wiki.apache.org/ws/StackComparison