JAX-WS vs SAAJ Style, Which to Use

Question

What is difference, philosophical or otherwise, between calling a web service from Java code using Service and Dispatch classes, vs a SOAPConnection class?

For example, something like this:

SOAPConnectionFactory scf = SOAPConnectionFactory.newInstance();
SOAPConnection soapConnection = scf.createConnection();
SOAPMessage reply = soapConnection.call(soapMessage, url);

vs something roughly along these lines?

svc = Service.create(url, serviceName);
Dispatch<SOAPMessage> dispatch = svc.createDispatch(portName, SOAPMessage.class, service.Mode.MESSAGE);
SOAPMessage reply = (SOAPMessage)dispatch.invoke(soapMessage);

What is the difference between these, and why select one approach over the other?

Answer 1

I have a feeling that at the end, the Dispatch simply delegates the actions to a SAAJ layer. However, I haven't been able to confirm that.

From the perspective of what's a better practice, then i feel the Dispatch methodology is more appropriate since it abstracts away some of the overheads of working with the lower level SAAJConnection API. Like - there's no need to do a close() on the connection instance, the dispatch reference need not be re-created unlike the SOAPConnection instance.