## Axis 1.1 beta Release Notes

This is the 1.1 beta release of the Axis SOAP library.

### About this release

1.1 is primarily a bug fix release to deal with some problems which came to light after 1.0 went out. There are also some new features, see What's New for details.

### Rationale for Releasing Axis 1.0

Many users have requested a v1.0 so that they can work from a relatively stable base. Some users have even remained on Apache SOAP until v1.0 of Axis is available. Now Axis has surpassed Apache SOAP in function, performance, and interoperability and, in particular, has passed Sun's JAX-RPC and SAAJ compliance tests, we decided to ship v1.0 as it currently stands.

However, this is far from the end of the road for Axis: there is more documentation to be written; the SOAP v1.2 spec. needs to be tracked to completion and implemented fully; major functional enhancements and architectural improvements are being considered. We particularly encourage you to submit improvements to the documentation, however large or small and in any format, to axis-dev@xml.apache.org. Also, interoperability is always a concern, so please report all replicatable bugs.

The Axis Development Team

### JAX-RPC

This release is intended to be 100% compliant with the JAX-RPC and SAAJ specifications from Sun. The Axis code has successfully passed the all of the JAX-RPC and SAAJ TCK (Technology Compatibility Kit) tests.

### Why AXIS over SOAP 2.2?

The Axis code has:

- Significantly higher performance than Apache SOAP 2.2
- Good interoperability with other SOAP implementations
- A streaming-oriented model for message parsing (SAX, not DOM)
- A modular, configurable message handling architecture
- A pluggable transport framework
- Support for WSDL generation and code generation from WSDL
- An extensive package and functional test suite

### What's New?

Changes since 1.0

- Axis supports JMS for reliable messaging between client and server. Note that the actual wire format of JMS messages is vendor-specific at present, so you may not be able to use this to connect arbitrary JMS clients and servers without special bridging software. Refer to your particular JMS vendor for details. (rule-of-thumb is "if you can get a JMS connection working, we can talk SOAP over it." :))
- Many more WSDL and interop issues reported (thank you!) and fixed.
- Axis ant tasks are now documented, and are much enhanced.
- Axis now includes a Castor serializer, handing off XML marshalling to Castor. Castor integration offers schema validation and autogenerated Java classes from a Schema. Pending documentation and tests, this code is left for the experienced Castor user, who should look at the classes in org.apache.axis.encoding.ser.castor to discover what is available.
- Fixed a bug where clients running Java1.4 needed servlet.jar on their classpath
- Fixed a bug with Axis shutdown on Tomcat 3.3.1

Changes since beta-3

- Axis now passes the JAX-RPC and SAAJ TCK test suites.
- Many bugs have been fixed.
- Axis now supports (almost) all XML Schema types in WSDL
- Some basic performance tuning has been done
- Attachments are now supported in WSDL2Java

Changes since beta-2:

- Support for the new version of the DIME spec

Changes since alpha-3:

- Closer to JAX-RPC compliance.
- Support for SOAP Messages with Attachments.
- Much better XML schema type support.
- Document/literal support.
- Now using the org.apache.commons.logging APIs as a common logging interface.
- Many minor bug fixes.

Please check out the included documentation and the FAQ for more information.