users@jersey.java.net

Re: [Jersey] JAX-RS Question

From: Casper Bang <casper_at_jbr.dk>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:00:09 +0100

JAX-WS:
The classic web service style that became popular earlier in this decade,
revolving around an RPC nature and SOAP envelopes. It's relatively heavy and
complex, but very flexible and offer "type-safety" though schemas (WSDL).
JAX-WS was actually called JAX-RPC due to it's inherent RPC nature, but as
it adopted a more document centric style, I seem to remember JAX-RPC 1.6 was
renamed to JAX-WS. It also entails a whole lot of associated WS-* standards
for secutiy, attachments etc. which is often referred to by KISS zealots as
WS-deathstar.

JAX-RS:
The reference impl. for JSR-311, which defines a RESTful webservice
standard.
It's a more recent and simpler approach the representational state transfer
architecture, where *everything* is a resource, and which takes advantage of
what the HTTP protocol already specifies in regard to CRUD actions.
It's fundamentally schemaless (although there's WADL) in that
interoperability and simplicity is favored. It means that you can make calls
from Flash, JavaScript etc. without requiring specialized toolkits as you
typically need with JAX-WS.

/Casper


2009/3/25 Ted Kallmeyer <tkallmeyer_at_sbcglobal.net>

> Hi,
>
> Could you tell me the difference between JAX-RS and JAX-WS?
>
> Thanks
>
>
>