Web Service Platforms

The platforms (a.k.a. stacks) supported for web services are Apache Axis2 and Apache Axis 1.4, for legacy IBM Cúram Social Program Management web services.

Legacy web services represent an older generation of web services support in IBM Cúram Social Program Management, that is no longer actively maintained by Apache and is thus not viable as a technology base going forward. This feature should only be used if you have a pre-existing IBM Cúram Social Program Management web service that utilizes Axis 1.4.

Legacy web services are still supported in IBM Cúram Social Program Management, but since Apache is not actively maintaining this older Axis 1.4 software it is strongly recommended that you begin using the new Axis2 -based infrastructure for your web services and begin converting any existing legacy web services. Unfortunately, Apache does not provide any specific migration path between their older and newer Axis2 web service platforms.

There are also a number of other web service platforms available besides Axis2 (or Axis 1.4) that you could potentially adapt for use with IBM Cúram Social Program Management; however, some of the benefits of Axis2 web services include:

• Complete redesign of Apache Axis 1.4 - Axis2 represents a complete redesign of the Apache Axis 1.4 web service engine, which allows for significant improvements in flexibility due to the new architecture and improved performance. Performance improvements come, in part, from a change in XML parser changes using the StAX API, which gives greater speed than SAX event-based parsing that is used in the previous web services implementation.
• New message types available - This third generation of web service support makes new message exchange patterns (MEPs) available. Rather than just in-out processing, in-only (a.k.a. fire-and-forget) and other MEPs are now available.
• Support for new and updated standards such as SOAP (1.2 & 1.1) and WSDL (2.0 & 1.1) - you will see that the Axis2 distribution included with IBM Cúram Social Program Management includes many new and updated jar files.