ANSVER: After reading and reading and reading a little more documentation. I have decided to go with CXF. Both Axis and CXF are able to run in Tomcat. Axis seems to be faster to implement services in but also restricts the developer more through that simplicity. For example I have yet to figure out how to put my login information in the header of an AXIS service. So: CXF it is...
I have to develop a client/server system that uses tomcat(6) as a server and a client created in C#. The communication between then will be via SOAP.
My question is, what is a good library for the SOAP->Servlet mapping on the tomcat server? I was looking at apache axis but from what I can read about axis in their user guide http://ws.apache.org/axis/java/user-guide.html it maps from soap to java classes on a very high level without much control. What I need is a soap library where I can define a wsdl and map it to a method in a servlet on a slightly lower level. Does anyone know of any such library?
I am used to using SOAP webservices and I have a fairly good idea about this. I dont have any practical experience implementing a server. I understand that the SOAP engine exposes certain methods in a class, described in the wsdd. But when I read the axis documentation I keep running into java to java examples and serializers and deserializers. I am getting the distinct feeling that axis is a java to java framework using soap. Am I mistaken? Does axis do what I need it to do? I need to be able to control the WSDL, in the sence that I need support for controls like maxOccurs, sequence, choice and so forth. Does Axis give me the possibility to control these things or am I looking for another library?
Try Apache CXF : http://cxf.apache.org/
It is highly configurable :)