I have a web service that returns Dates. Imagine something simple like:

@WebMethod
Date getCurrentBusinessDate()

In this case, I am only interested in a Date (not a Time or Date Time). This is by design because otherwise one might go down the road of considering Time Zones, etc. -- and that is not necessary for this case.

When running something like this, we see a full date/time appear in the SOAP result. Sure, the time is zero/midnight, but it also mentions a time zone (which really shouldn't be there, but seems to be impossible to get rid of).

By rights, I really only want to see a Date transmitted (like YYYY-MM-DD). In JPA, for example, I use a Date type but qualify it with a @Temporal annotation to clarify the TemporalType (Date, Time, DateTime). I see that JAXB has similar distinctions (xsd:date, xsd:time, xsd:dateTime).

Is there a way to annotate the web method so the return value is clarified to be an xsd:date?


Secondly... Is there a material difference between using java.util.Date vs. java.util.Calendar? (Is one really preferred over the other?) If I am writing Java-first Web Services, should I be using Date or Calendar to represent dates?


Thanks for your help!