[jbossws-dev] Endpoint configuration - jbossws descriptors

[Alessio Soldano]

Folks,
jbossws-native comes with the @org.jboss.ws.annotation.EndpointConfig 
annotation for referencing a given endpoint configuration file. The 
schema for that configuration file (well, it's actually for both clients 
and endpoints, but let's stick to the endpoint case for now) is at [1] . 
Basically, the configuration covers handlers, features and properties 
(plus some native specific ws-rm stuff) and is used both for the 
"default" configurations [2] and for custom user provided 
configurations, perhaps even coming within a deployment. The same 
configurations files can also be referenced on client side through 
jbossws-native specific api. As of today, the most common usage is 
probably for enabling WS-Security on native stack.

Now, as part of [3] and considering the AS7 efforts around isolating 
APIs from implementation stuff at runtime, I'm thinking about what to do 
with @EndpointConfig.
Moreover, we currently have a feature request regarding the need for 
defining global endpoint handlers [4] as well as the will for allowing 
WS-Security endpoint configuration with JBossWS-CXF stack without the 
need of spring bean descriptors. Especially after my changes for using 
Apache CXF 2.4 [5], the latter basically means being able to simply set 
string properties into the endpoint, as CXF / its policy engine / WSS4J 
are then able to deal with everything else.

So, considering this all, with the aim of further unifying the jbossws 
configuration, I'm proposing to:

- add @EndpointConfig annotation to the public api in jbossws-api; 
extend the jaxws endpoint "configuration" that was a native aspect only 
to be a stack agnostic jbossws one instead
- refactor the client/endpoint configuration schemas, pruning the native 
specific stuff (basically ws-rm) and perhaps moving that to a native 
stack specific extension of the schema; we might even have a cxf stack 
specific extension for cxf interceptors, but that's not strictly 
required now (jaxws handlers should be enough for now)
- add the default endpoint configuration to the AS7 domain model: after 
all, this is a global configuration aspect of the application server and 
hence should be manageable
- modify our jbossws-cxf stack deployment aspects: when building the 
endpoint model, they will consider the endpoint configuration either 
from the default conf in the domain model or from a user provided 
descriptor in the deployment and referenced through @EndpointConfig

With this solution we'd clean a inconsistency in the api 
(@EndpointConfig for native only till now), add a mean for having global 
handlers configured by administrators [4] and allow providing security 
keystore/trustore/etc. info and use WS-Security(policy) with jbossws-cxf 
without any need for Spring.

Any comments?
Cheers
Alessio

[1] 
http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/jbossws/stack/native/trunk/modules/core/src/main/resources/schema/jaxws-config_2_0.xsd
[2] 
http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/jbossws/stack/native/trunk/modules/core/src/main/resources/META-INF/standard-jaxws-endpoint-config.xml
[3] https://issues.jboss.org/browse/JBWS-2709
[4] https://issues.jboss.org/browse/JBWS-3109
[5] https://issues.jboss.org/browse/JBWS-3272

-- 
Alessio Soldano
Web Service Lead, JBoss