GlassFish Metro
Metro is an opensource web service stack that is a part of the GlassFish project, though it can also be used in a stand-alone configuration.[1] Components of metro include JAXB RI, JAX-WS RI, SAAJ RI, StAX (SJSXP implementation) and WSIT. It is available under the CDDL and GPLv2 (with classpath exception.)[2]
History
Originally, the Glassfish project developed two semi-independent projects :
- JAX-WS RI, the Reference implementation of the JAX-WS specification
- WSIT, a Java implementation of some of the WS-* and an enhanced support for interoperability with the .NET Framework. It is based on JAX-WS RI as "Web Service layer".
In June 2007, it has been decided to bundle these two components as a single component named Metro.
Market share
Metro is bundled with Java SE 6 in order to allow consumers of Java SE 6 to consume Web Services
Metro is bundled with numerous Application Servers such as :
- GlassFish
- Sun Java System Application Server Platform Edition 9.x
- Oracle WebLogic Server
- JBoss (version 5.x only)
- TmaxSoft JEUS 6.x
The JAXB reference implementation developed for Metro is used in virtually every Java Web Services framework (Apache Axis2, Codehaus XFire, Apache CXF) and Application Servers.
Features
Metro compares well with other web service frameworks in terms of functionality. A comparison is provided by Codehaus at , which compares Apache Axis 1.x, Axis 2.x, Celtix, Glue, JBossWS, Xfire 1.2 and JAX-WS RI + WSIT (the bundle was not yet named Metro at this time).