XmlSeeAlso

[dlofthouse]

I am just trying to find out some further information on the level of support of XmlSeeAlso for.

This annotation was added to JAXB 2.1 so on a super type the sub classes can be identified and used by the JAXB context.

The JAX-WS 2.1 specification allows this annotation to be added to the service endpoint interface.

We have JAXB 2.1 but not JAX-WS 2.1 so I can add the annotation to a type known to JAXB but not to the SEI.

The scenario I have requires this annotation to be added when using wsconsume. One of the return types being returned from my SEI wraps an Object as in the WSDL it is defined as wrapping an xsd:anyType I need the object instance assigned to this to be marshaled correctly.

The only way that I have found to get round this is to extend the object that is returned from the method an annotate that with XmlSeeAlso and return an instance of this instead.

Do we have any other support for XmlSeeAlso?

Adding it manually to the SEI did not achieve anything?
Is there any way to get wsconsume to add it to the generated classes so I don't need this workaround?

[heiko.braun]

Hi Darran,

here is what i came up with.
We got two problems:

a) Type substitution at runtime
b) Tooling support for inheritance

The first one is supported since we introduced JAXB 2.1.
Please see the following JIRA as reference.
http://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBWS-1591
It's basically there since 2.0.

The tooling is not available and will come with JAX-WS 2.1,
which we currently don't support. However the tests have shown that manually adding the @XmlSeeAlso annotation to your samples does work as expected.

Please see the following references for further explanations:

https://jax-ws.dev.java.net/roadmap/jaxws21-plan.html
http://weblogs.java.net/blog/kohlert/archive/community_java_web_services_and_xml/index.html

[heiko.braun]

I've tested the scenario with both Metro and Native. I had to put the XmlSeeAlso annotation manually (tooling issue):

@XmlSeeAlso(USAddressType.class)
public class AddressResponse {
...
}

Both Native and Metro handle request and response in the same way.
They receive a USAddress instance (requires casting though) and respond with a correct xsd:type attribute on the AddressResponse super element.

IMO, everything is fine and works as expected, besides the tooling problem.
But that's something we cannot easily fix without going to JAXWS 2.1.

Here's is a quick oveview how JAXB handles xsd:any types:
https://jaxb.dev.java.net/guide/Mapping_of__xs_any___.html