xmlhack: Apache SOAP 2.1 released

The Apache SOAP team have released version 2.1 of their Java-based SOAP engine, adding many new features.

The team report that, although some work on documentation still needs to be done, the code is "solid" and that users of version 2.0 should consider upgrading.

Among the new features are:

Addition of support for SSL, client-side HTTPS, and HTTP basic authentication
Support for SOAP messages with attachments
Pluggable configuration manager, provider support
Support for international character sets

Apache SOAP can be downloaded from the Apache XML Project web site.

Bazza:

Have you written up your concerns (preferably with example code) and sent them to the soap-dev@xml.apache.org list? We'd love to iron out any problems you may have with the release.

The 'official' release went out today, but you can expect another in the not-too-distant future, if for no other reason than that the docs are desperately in need of updates. If we do find any problems in the interim, you may be sure they'll be fixed as well.

Thanks for using the code!

--Glen Daniels (Apache SOAP team member)

I've used the previous build and the nightlys (only a week or so ago) and solid was not an adjective I would apply to it. There may have been bugfixes since, but in particular Vector serialization/deserialization didn't work (it never recognized that there was a registered serializer) and byte[] encoded/decoded to/from base64 in a manner incompatible with perl's SOAP::Lite implementation of base64. It did appear that the perl implementation was correct. Development still unfortunately requires looking at traces through the 'tunnel gui' to figure out how the different soap implementations were trying to communicate.

Having said that, its perfectly usable. Stick to Beans exposing base java types as properties and it works simply and well. Far worse than the few bugs that remain is the severe lack of documentation. Even the examples don't provide coverage of some key features.