Apache Axis2 - Looking into Axis2

Looking into Axis2

Flexibility and extensibility are two main design criteria that software designers would like to have in their applications. When it comes to Axis2, its architecture is extremely flexible and extensible. Axis2 has a modular architecture. In this chapter, we will learn more about Axis2 architecture, its core components, and its main features.

Axis2 Architecture

Axis2 is built upon a modular architecture that consists of core modules and non-core modules. The core engine is said to be a pure SOAP processing engine (there is not any JAX-PRC concept burnt into the core). Every message coming into the system has to be transformed into a SOAP message before it is handed over to the core engine. An incoming message can either be a SOAP message or a non-SOAP message (REST JSON or JMX). But at the transport level, it will be converted into a SOAP message.

When Axis2 was designed, the following key rules were incorporated into the architecture. These rules were mainly applied to achieve a highly flexible and extensible SOAP processing engine:

• Separation of logic and state to provide a stateless processing mechanism.
  (This is because Web Services are stateless.)
  
• A single information model in order to enable the system to suspend and resume.
  
• Ability to extend support to newer Web Service specifications with minimal changes made to the core architecture.

The figure below shows all the key components in Axis2 architecture (including core components as well as non-core components).

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