This very brief article will demonstrate a very useful feature of Java 6 Standard Edition – that means: the Java as it is running in any stand-alone application. It is possible – and even extremely simple as it turns out – to have a Java SE application publish a (SOAP) WebService. That is: without using a Web Server or Application Server, your Java application can receive WebService calls. I had heard about this but could not actually believe that I understood correctly. When I met Gerard Davison this week – a very nice and knowledgeable guy working on web services tools for the JDeveloper IDE – he confirmed and explained it to me. 

Through the EndPoint class – part of the JAX-WS implementation – we can instruct the JVM to start receiving SOAP calls on the URL we tell it to listen to and have those calls forwarded to our Java class. Thus it is very simple all of a sudden to for example provide mock implementations of services our BPEL process or ESB needs to invoke. This mechanism makes interoperability between for example .NET and Java very easy – especially in terms of the infrastructure required. And of course in situation where a Java application running outside any More >