Java API for XML Web Services

The Java API for XML Web Services (JAX-WS) simplifies creating and deploying web services and web services clients.

The Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) includes JAX-WS 2.2.

Backward Compatibility

Two small source compatibility anomalies exist between JAX-WS versions 2.1 and 2.2. The changes in the API are as follows:

In the FaultAction annotation, the className element's type changed from being a plain vanilla java.lang.Class to being java.lang.Class<? extends java.lang.Exception>.
In the WebServiceRef annotation, the value element's type is now more specific. Instead of being java.lang.Class, the type is now java.lang.Class<? extends Service>.

Because of these changes, some applications that compile with Java SE 6 might not compile with Java SE 7. There will be a deployment error if incorrect types are used with JAX-WS 2.1 API. In Java SE 7, these type errors are caught at compile time instead of deployment time.

References

API reference
Building Web Services with JAX-WS , part of the Java EE 6 Tutorial
JAX-WS Reference Implementation project

Specification

JSR 224: Java API for XML-Based Web Services (JAX-WS) 2.0