J2EE™ Web Services

Appendix G. JAX-RPC and SwA

Sending and receiving SOAP Messages with Attachments (SwA) using JAX-RPC is deceptively easy. I say “deceptively” because, like SAAJ, JAX-RPC depends on the Java Activation Framework (JAF) to handle the marshalling of attachments to and from SOAP messages, so sending and receiving attachments depends in large part on the types of DataContentHandler classes that your J2EE application server provides. This appendix will explain how JAX-RPC supports the SwA standard using JAF.

It's important to remember that the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0 does not endorse or support SwA—but you are likely to run into Web services that use SwA, which is why this appendix is here.

JAF Revisited: DataContentHandler and DataSource Types

Essentially ...