Maven for building SOA services and clients? - wsdl

Question

I changed the title to generalize this question which really isn't specific to Axis2. I eventually gave up on Axis2 altogether and switched to Metro/JAX-WS but am now seriously considering giving up on both and switching to OpenSAML. The real question I'm struggling to get answered here is, how to build complex standards-based SOA services that actually work.
The original phrasing was: Could someone paste in a working example of maven pom to invoke Axis2 java2wsdl with defaults I can live with? Here's a command line incantation that behaves sort of OK.
-o target/generated-sources/java2wsdl \
-l "http://localhost:9763/services/PolicyService" \
-tn urn:sesgg:sc:security:1.0.spec.PolicyService \
-tp ps \
-stn urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:protocol \
-stp samlp \
-of PolicyService.wsdl \
-sn PolicyService \
-cp "../../Schema/target/Schema-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar target/PolicyService-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar" \
-cn com.technica.pbac.ps.PolicyService \
Everything I do winds up with really squirrely results; e.g. weird reversed namespaces (http://xmldsig._09._2000.w3.org/xsd for example). Could you explain why this is and how to stop it?
There seems to be a lot java2wsdl's out there that expect entirely different arguments, with little consistency between command line and maven pom.

Answer 1

No responses so I'll post current results of my own experiments to help others with
similar problems. Can't guarantee this is correct until testing is finished but at least now I'm getting results I can bear looking at in Eclipse:
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.3.2</version>
<configuration>
<source>1.6</source>
<target>1.6</target>
</configuration>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.jvnet.jaxb2.maven2</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-jaxb2-plugin</artifactId>
<version>0.7.5</version>
<configuration>
<schemaExcludes>
<exclude>*saml*.xsd</exclude>
</schemaExcludes>
<strict>true</strict>
<extension>true</extension>
</configuration>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>generate</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.axis2</groupId>
<artifactId>axis2-java2wsdl-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.5.4</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>java2wsdl</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
<configuration>
<id>Generate WSDL based on PolicyService Interface</id>
<serviceName>PolicyService</serviceName>
<className>com.technica.pbac.ps.PolicyServiceImpl</className>
<targetNamespace>http://sesgg/sc/security/1.0/spec/PolicyService</targetNamespace>
<targetNamespacePrefix>sesgg</targetNamespacePrefix>
<schemaTargetNamespace>http://sesgg/sc/security/1.0/spec/PolicyService</schemaTargetNamespace>
<schemaTargetNamespacePrefix>sesgg</schemaTargetNamespacePrefix>
<elementFormDefault>qualified</elementFormDefault>
<extension>false</extension>
<package2Namespace>
<property>
<name>urn:sesgg:sc:security:1.0:spec:PolicyService</name>
<value>http://sesgg/sc/security/1.0/spec/PolicyService</value>
</property>
<property>
<name>com.technica.pbac.ps</name>
<value>http://com.technica.pbac.ps</value>
</property>
<property>
<name>oasis.names.tc.saml._2_0.protocol.xsd</name>
<value>http://oasis/names/tc/saml/2.0/protocol</value>
</property>
<property>
<name>oasis.names.tc.saml._2_0.protocol</name>
<value>http://oasis/names/tc/saml/2.0/protocol</value>
</property>
</package2Namespace>
<episodes>
<episode>
<groupId>Technica-PBAC</groupId>
<artifactId>Schema-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar</artifactId>
</episode>
</episodes>
<outputFileName>target/generated-sources/java2wsdl/PolicyService.wsdl</outputFileName>
<filename>target/generated-sources/java2wsdl/services.xml</filename>
<locationUri>http://localhost:9763/services/PolicyService</locationUri>
</configuration>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.axis2</groupId>
<artifactId>axis2-wsdl2code-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.5.4</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>wsdl2code</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<wsdlFile>target/generated-sources/java2wsdl/PolicyService.wsdl</wsdlFile>
<packageName>com.technica.pbac.ps</packageName>
<outputDirectory>target/generated-sources/wsdl2java</outputDirectory>
<unwrap>true</unwrap>
<allPorts>true</allPorts>
<databindingName>adb</databindingName>
<generateServerSide>true</generateServerSide>
<generateAllClasses>true</generateAllClasses>
<generateServicesXml>true</generateServicesXml>
<generateTestcase>true</generateTestcase>
<overWrite>true</overWrite>
<serviceName>PolicyService</serviceName>
<syncMode>sync</syncMode>
<backwardCompatible>false</backwardCompatible>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
</plugins>
<pluginManagement>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.axis2</groupId>
<artifactId>axis2-java2wsdl-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.5.4</version>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.axis2</groupId>
<artifactId>axis2-wsdl2code-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.5.4</version>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</pluginManagement>
</build>
One caution: I really doubt its right to be running jaxb, java2wsdl, wsdl2java and compile phases in a single pom. Currently java2wsdl runs after wsdl2java this way which obvously isn't right. This pom is doubly suspicious since java2wsdl needs a compiled jar to run, and seems to be using the one left over from previous runs. Its a bear to get working again after mvn clean. I'll probably wind up splitting it into several poms and will adjust this answer when I do.

Answer 2

I promised to extend this answer with something approximately "right". Here is progress to date, which I'm still not absolutely sure is 100% correct. More about that later.
This is all based on the stack of schema Oasis publishes to define the XACML and SAML-P for XACML standards. The XSD's have been gathered into a Commons-Schema module (not shown), tweaked to fix several Oasis errors, and compiled to Java classes with JAX-B. These classes are the foundation for the services described below. The schema.episode.path and schema.catalog.path properties point to files in this module.
I split each service (PolicyService in this case) into two maven modules. PolicyService-Svc is the service and its pom looks like this:
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>jaxws-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>Generate WSDL</id>
<phase>generate-resources</phase>
<goals>
<goal>wsgen</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<sei>com.technica.pbac.ps.PolicyService</sei>
<genWsdl>true</genWsdl>
<keep>true</keep>
<verbose>true</verbose>
<extension>true</extension>
<catalog>${schema.catalog.path}</catalog>
<xjcArg>-episode</xjcArg>
<xjcArg>${schema.episode.path}</xjcArg>
<xjcArg>-catalog</xjcArg>
<xjcArg>${schema.catalog.path}</xjcArg>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
PolicyService-Proxy is generic proxy code that any client or service can use to invoke that service (more about problems with this below). Its pom looks like this:
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>jaxws-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<!-- <phase>generate-sources</phase> -->
<goals>
<goal>wsimport</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<wsdlFiles>
<wsdlFile>localhost_8080/PolicyService-Svc/PolicyService.wsdl</wsdlFile>
</wsdlFiles>
<wsdlLocation>http://localhost:8080/PolicyService-Svc/PolicyService?WSDL</wsdlLocation>
<sourceDestDir>${project.build.directory}/generated-sources/jaxws</sourceDestDir>
<genWsdl>true</genWsdl>
<verbose>true</verbose>
<extension>true</extension>
<catalog>${schema.catalog.path}</catalog>
<xjcArg>-episode</xjcArg>
<xjcArg>${schema.episode.path}</xjcArg>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
Now for the problems, which I'd really appreciate advice on. Even though Commons-Schema provides compiled java classes for all schema, wsgen insists on producing a wsdl with newly-generated xsds, which are slightly different and slightly incorrect in various ways.
As one example of incorrect and different, SAML defines an Extensions element that conflicts with the same name in another schema. So I repaired it in the base Commons-Schema like this:
<element name="Extensions" type="samlp:ExtensionsType">
<annotation>
<appinfo>
<jxb:class name="Extensions-SAML"/>
</appinfo>
</annotation>
</element>
But wsgen/wsimport omits this correction so the conflict turns up again. Infuriating and absolutely fatal to the build.
Another is omitting required includes so eclipse validation reports them as errors until hand-corrected. My workaround is to periodically copy the generated wsdl and xsds from the target folder to src/main/webapp/WEB-Inf/wsdl, repair them by hand, and tweak the poms to use this folder instead of the generated one inside target. This works for invoking services from non-service clients. I copy the same wsdls and xsds to a similar client folder and ensure that the pom references these, not the ones jaxws generates in that module.
The problem I can't solve occurs when any service needs to invoke another service via its proxy. The calling service's proxy jar (with its slightly different versions of important foundation classes) is now mixed in with the calling service jars (based on Commons-Schema's JAXB-generated classes), which causes no end of trouble.
Can someone please advise? Thanks!

Answer 3

The ultimate answer to this question was indeed to give up on trying to fix busted schemas and tools and switch to OpenSAML, which has already done that. This worked fine for the XACML 2.0 compiler and web services based on it. But it fell flat for the XACML 3.0 compilers because OpenSAML doesn't support XACML 3.0 and has no plans to do so, so I had to handle that myself. But with experience with XACML 2.0 to build on, I eventually got both working. This project was far more painful than it had to be and "powerful" tools just made it harder.