SOAP sucks, doesn't it?

"SOAP sucks, it's the root of all evil…" some may say. Whether we like it or not, however, a lot of endpoints still exists - live and kicking!

There is a plethora of Java frameworks supporting SOAP but most of them follow the paradigm of the explicit or implicit code (stubs) generation. Handy as it may seem at the beginning, it can also be redundant and cumbersome. After the 8 long years of having Web-Services on the JVM almost nothing has changed in the way we use them… Why do we still blindly follow the same (anti)patterns?

This session will be a critical whirlwind tour of SOAP Web-Services reviewing the existing solutions and emphasizing some of the biggest drawbacks of the frameworks based on the code generation. It will rethink the idea of Java Web-Services refuting widely-accepted concepts that nobody reflects on anymore. It will also offer people handy tools to overcome common problems (like endpoint versioning) and prevent them from following bad practices.

On the example of soap-ws, project authored by me, a completly different approach will be presented. soap-ws provides a lightweight Java Web-Services stack (based on Spring-WS) that handles the SOAP protocol "codelessly" on a purely XML level, adding a bit of Groovy flavor on the top of it! Using soap-ws enables handy generation, transmission and handling of SOAP messages without the usage of stubs, no matter what style the WS client and server are.

Do you want to consume and expose a fully-functional SOAP service in 10 minutes in runtime? Do you want to learn how to properly unit test SOAP endpoints? Or maybe you simply want to have some fun? Don't miss this talk mate!