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Get Tools and Whitepapers from the Nokia Knowledge Center IT Solutions for Enterprise Mobility Whitepaper: Advantages of SIP for VoIP Whitepaper: Extend Enterprise-wide Mobility Through Transformation of Your Content Whitepaper: Getting Started—Three Steps To Creating Your IT Mobility Strategy Whitepaper: The Anytime Anyplace World—Choosing the Right Mobile Connectivity Strategy for Your Enterprise Download: Nokia Mobile Connectivity ROI Tool A Winning Combination: Software-as-Services Plus Business Consulting and Process Services By Laurie McCabe January 30, 2004 Web services represent a new architectural paradigm for software applications. To utilize the Web services technology to the hilt, Web services should be developed from all various kinds of software components on various technologies, languages, and platforms. This is the reason why different kinds of software featured among the finalists when Developer.com held its annual contest for Web Service (or Related Tool) of the Year. This article will discuss each of the finalist products in Developer.com’s Web Service of the Year 2005 contest. We will also cover whether this selection shows any emerging trend or trends about the software industry. Developer.com’s Web Service of the Year 2005: The Finalists The finalists of the Web Service of the Year 2005 contest were (in alphabetical order): Apache Axis Java Web Service Developer Pack Microsoft® MapPoint® Web Service NuSOAP ParaSoft SOAPtestTM 1. Apache Axis Apache Axis is a widely popular implementation of the SOAP submission to W3C. Axis is essentially a SOAP engine — a framework for constructing SOAP processors such as clients, servers, gateways, and so forth. The current version of Axis is written in Java, but a C++ implementation of the client side of Axis is being developed. Provider Axis is an open source project. It is available at Apache Axis. Features of Axis 1.2 A simple standalone server SOAP engine A server that plugs into servlet engines such as Tomcat Extensive support for the Web Service Description Language (WSDL) Emitter tooling that generates Java classes from WSDL A tool for monitoring TCP/IP packets Documentation and sample programs Reasons for selection Speed Flexibility Stability Component-oriented deployment Transport framework Downloads Both source code and binaries can be downloaded from Axis Releases. 2. Java Web Service Developer Pack Java WSDP is a free, integrated toolkit developers can use to build, test, and deploy XML applications, as well as Web services and Web applications with the latest technologies and standards implementations. Java WSDP gives developers the ability to begin designing to the latest specifications and profiles from standards bodies and industry consortia, such as W3C, OASIS, and WS-I, even prior to the support becoming available in commercial Sun products. With the newest release (1.5) now available, developers will be able to create XML and Web services-enabled applications that are secure, interoperable, and portable across different platforms and devices. This release contains some exciting Web services security features, and with support for securing JAX-RPC applications, security operations can now be configured either at the level of a WSDL service, port, or operation. Java WSDP has been tested on the Sun Java System Application Server, Sun Java System Web Server, and Tomcat, and on Windows, Linux, and Solaris platforms. Provider Sun Microsystems Features of Java WSDP 1.5 XML and Web Services Security v1.0 XML Digital Signatures v1.0 EA2 Sun Java Streaming XML Parser v1.0 EA Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB) v1.0.4 Java API for XML Processing (JAXP) v1.2.6_01 Java API for XML Registries (JAXR) v1.0.7 Java API for XML-based RPC (JAX-RPC) v1.1.2_01 SOAP with Attachments API for Java (SAAJ) v1.2.1_01 JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library (JSTL) v1.1.1_01 Java WSDP Registry Server v1.0_08 Ant Build Tool 1.6.2 WS-I Attachments Sample Application 1.0 EA3 Reasons for selection Complete collection of tools for Java developers Easy to use Variety of implementations Stress on security Documentation and sample programs Downloads Java Technology and Web Services Download Page 2: Microsoft’s MapPoint Web Service