Don't understand how Axis works if I haven't installed it?

Question

Forgive my ignorance - still learning here.

I am using Eclipse Ganymede (Java 1.5) and have been experimenting with web services - I have mangaged to get a simple web service up and running and the nice wizard you get in Eclipse generates all the necessary bits and pieces e.g. wsdl file etc - and you can test the service and everthing else.

Now it seems to use axis.jar and all other axis related stuff and when I run the web service, everything is good - but how is this even working in Tomcat, if I haven't even installed Axis? I can't find anything in my Apache installation or Ganymede about anything to do with Axis??

Answer 1

You will probably find that when you export the application as a WAR archive for installation into Tomcat that the axis jars are included inside the archive. Check in the WebContent/WEB-INF/lib directory and it is likely they'll be there.

Alternatively, Eclipse could well be doing clever things with deployment and linking to the Axis jars when you run your service in test mode within Eclipse.

Answer 2

In the eclipse ganymede distribution if you chose the "J2EE" version or just add the "Web Tool Platform" plugin you will have the axis jar(s) in something like eclipse/plugins/org.apache.axis_version/lib