Section 10.4. Implementing J2EE 1.4 Web Services

10.4. Implementing J2EE 1.4 Web Services

To expose the InventoryFacadeBean's findAvailableCars( ) method as a J2EE 1.4-compliant Web Service, we need to do the following:

• Create a Service Endpoint Interface (SEI ) to expose EJB methods as Web Service operations.

• Add a <service-endpoint> element to ejb-jar.xml to tell JBoss that the InventoryFacadeBean EJB implements the InventoryEndpoint Service Endpoint Interface.

• Generate the webservices.xml to register the Web Service and tie the InventoryEndpoint Service Endpoint Interface to an implementation the InventoryFacadeBean.

• Create the JAX-RPC Mapping File to define JAX-RPC type mappings for the parameters and return values for the InventoryEndpoint's methods.

• Generate the WSDL to define the Web Service and tie it to XML Schema data types.

• Set the Web Service URL by modifying jboss.xml with the Inventory Web Service URL.

• Modify the InventoryFacadeBean:

  • Add Web Services-related XDoclet tags.

  • Add the findAvailableCars( ) method and use an XML Schema-compatible data type.%

• Upgrade Deployment by modifying the Ant build script:

  • Fix XDoclet-generated descriptors.

  • Modify the Web Service URL in jboss.xml.

  • Use JWSDP to generate the JAX-RPC and WSDL files.

As you'll see in the upcoming sections, the extra interface and descriptors required to deploy a Web Service are tedious and would be almost impossible to develop by hand. But don't lose heartwe can automate Web Service deployment with a combination of Ant, XDoclet, and JWSDP. However, before we show our new deployment process, it's important to know what we're automatinglet's start with the Service Endpoint Interface.