Metro : Jax WS incompatibilities with Netbeans

Using Netbeans 6.9 and Tomcat 6 with JAX WS via Metro and Java JDK 6 on Windows.

The Tomcat installation is the one that is loaded as part of Netbeans.

When you try and invoke the web service, you get a string of errors e.g.

java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: javax.xml.ws.WebFault.messageName()Ljava/lang/String

The basic problem seems to be that the versions of JAX WS bundled with Netbeans / Java / Tomcat are incompatible.

(Metro provides JAX-WS 2.2 while Java SE includes JAX-WS 2.1. If you want to run Metro applications outside Tomcat, you will need to use the endorsed standards override mechanism. For more details see:

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/standards/index.html)

There are literally hundreds of articles etc. all over the web about how to fix this problem with tips about installing file x into the endorsed directory, the common/endorsed directory, updating Tomcat, updating Java etc. etc.

I tried a heap of them and none of the ones I tried fixed the problem. This is Google search at it's worst - tons of articles, all different, none of which appeared to work and utter frustration.

To complicate the issue, it you don't back out the failed change, you run the risk that the next change won't work because you didn't start from a known point.

To complicate things further, some of these changes partly work which means that next time you simply get a different error message and you have to start the process all over again.

Eventually, I went back to the source i.e. Metro and JAX WS.

I came across this article:

Creating a WSDL-first web service with Apache CXF or GlassFish Metro

which pointed me to:

Using JAX-WS 2.x / Metro 1.x/2.0 with Java SE 6

So, download Metro 2 - refer Metro 2.0

Ensure Netbeans and Tomcat are shut down.

Sort the zip file by path.

You do not need to extract all the files. You only need:

metro-on-tomcat.xml and all the jar files under /metro/lib and /metro/osgi.

Extract these to a directory.

Ensure you have ant installed.

Open a command prompt and navigate to the directory that you have just extracted the files to.

Type:

...\metro>set CATALINA_HOME=x:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache Tomcat 6.0.26

i.e. the path where Tomcat 6 is installed

where ... is the directory that the files were extracted to.

Then run:

ant -f metro-on-tomcat.xml install

which produces:

Buildfile: metro-on-tomcat.xml

catalinahome-test:

init:

uninstall:

update-catalina-props:

test-api:

check-api:

install-api-tomcat5:

install-api-tomcat6:
[mkdir] Created dir: x:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache Tomc
at 6.0.26\endorsed
[copy] Copying 2 files to x:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apach
e Tomcat 6.0.26\endorsed

install-api-tomcat:

install:
[echo] Installing Metro 2.0 FCS for x:\Program Files\Apache Software Founda
tion\Apache Tomcat 6.0.26 ...
[mkdir] Created dir: x:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache Tomc
at 6.0.26\shared\lib
[copy] Copying 4 files to x:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apach
e Tomcat 6.0.26\shared\lib
[echo] ... installation complete.

BUILD SUCCESSFUL

The two files copied to the \endorsed directory are :

jsr173_api.jar and webservices-api.jar

The four files copied to the \shared\lib directory are:

webservices-extra.jar, webservices-extra-api.jar, webservices-rt.jar and webservices-tools.jar

In addition, the script updates catalina.properties in the \conf directory. It changes:

shared.loader=

to

shared.loader=${catalina.home}/shared/lib/*.jar

And that, believe it or not, is that!

Problem solved!

If you want to back the change out, run:

ant -f metro-on-tomcat.xml uninstall

For completeness, if you want to enable JAX-WS 2.2 for all applications running under Java SE 6, you may run the command:

ant install-api

That command will copy the file webservices-api.jar to ${java.home}/lib/endorsed.

(The command needs to be run by a user that has the permissions to copy files into ${java.home}/lib/endorsed.)

Note that I didn't need to do this.

Enjoy!