Friday 13 July 2012

Axis-2 and Axis-1 compatibility issues

 Axis-2 and Axis-1 compatibility issues


Problem:

With ColdFusion 10 you can leverage power of Axis-2 WebServices. But you might get into issues if you are mixing Axis-2 with Axis-1. Axis-2 services are incompatible with Axis-1 services in ColdFusion because of the way their WSDL's are formed. Though by design Axis-1 and Axis-2 are compatible but in ColdFusion you might run into issues if you are using ColdFusion complex data types.

Since Axis-1 and Axis-2 are incompatible in ColdFusion, this means that if you are publishing your WebServices using Axis-2, then they should be consumed using Axis-2 only. Similarly if you are publishing your WebServices using Axis-1 then they should be consumed using Axis-1 only.

ColdFusion 10 Solution:

ColdFusion has taken all the measures to support backward compatibility with it's earlier versions. ColdFusion allows you to specify the version of Axis in which WebServices should be published or consumed. ColdFusion has given a control at three levels:

ColdFusion 10 WebServices - Axis2 vs Axis1

I have seen many people getting confused between Axis-2 and Axis-1 WebServices in ColdFusion 10. ColdFusion 10 has added the support for Axis-2 WebService, earlier till ColdFusion 9 only Axis-1 WebServices were supported.

So to begin with what exactly is this Axis-2 and Axis-1.

Intro Axis:
Apache Axis (Axis-1) is an open source, XML based Web service framework. ColdFusion internally uses Axis to publish and consume WebServices.  Apache Axis-2 is a complete re-design and re-write of the widely used Apache Axis but achieves same purpose. Axis-2 supports many new and flexible features over Axis-1 which means ColdFusion has implemented it not only to provide you latest features like Soap1.2 but also to give you more flexibility and power in your hand. You can always search for 'Axis-1 vs Axis2' if you want to study the advantages of Axis-2.


New in ColdFusion 10
 
 So let's see what ColdFusion 10 is offering with Axis-2