CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javawcf
tobias
tobias

Reputation: 1590

wcf and java interop

How can I interop easily between WCF and a Java app.?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1659

Answers (4)

Shiraz Bhaiji
Shiraz Bhaiji

Reputation: 65391

We have done this successfully on several projects. We use WCF basicHttpBinding, it is the simplest option if you just need to get it to work.

One of the things that can be a show stopper is if a service uses a platform specific datatype, like a Java vector or a .net dataset.

Upvotes: 1

Steve
Steve

Reputation: 655

You can use JAX-WS services on the Java side, and then use WCF in .NET.

First create the JAX-WS services (glassfish libraries will allow you to do this). Create your POJO's, add the JAX-WS annotations, and deploy your WAR. Then, get the WSDL generated by your server and give it to VisualStudio. VisualStudio can generate the client for you.

That is the simple way, but your mileage will vary of course.

Upvotes: 0

softveda
softveda

Reputation: 11066

Short Answer, Yes.
Long Answer, the interoperability depends on several factors. Basic interoperability is very easy. Only when you throw in factors such as security that things get complicated. We did some research on availabe Java web service frameworks and found out that the best suited one for our scenario is the metro stack along with netbeans 6.5 IDE. We achieved message secuity which has mandatory for the project using client/server mutual certificate authentication.

Some gotchas discovered in the process are:
- You have to add the webservices-rt.jar library from glassfish directory in netbeans project. (doesn't need glassfish to be running, just the jar file)
- WCF generates multifile WSDL files and netbeans cannot use them to generate proxy, although if netbeans is configured to use the URL (http://../?wsdl) it can generate the proxy.
- You have to put [IsRequired=true] on all datamembers in WCF. Java's handling of optional datamembers is quite complicated. - Dictionaries as datamembers comes out as list

Upvotes: 2

skaffman
skaffman

Reputation: 403501

WCF is a web service framework. Java also provides its own web service frameworks. They should be able to interoperate quite easily, although you'll need to ask a much more specific question if you want a better answer.

edit: The ProjectTango link you ask about says it all in the first paragraph:

... to ensure interoperability of enterprise features, such as security, reliable messaging, and atomic transactions.

These are fancy additions to basic web services, and the specifications alone are not enough to ensure compatibility.

Basic web service interaction, which is all 99.9% of us ever need, will work just fine between WCF and Java.

Upvotes: 2

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