Creating the SEI

The service endpoint interface (SEI) is the piece of Java code that is shared between a service and the consumers that make requests on it. When starting with a WSDL contract, the SEI is generated by the code generators. However, when starting from Java, it is the up to a developer to create the SEI.

There are two basic patterns for creating an SEI:

• Green field development You are developing a new service from the ground up. When starting fresh, it is best to start by creating the SEI first. You can then distribute the SEI to any developers that are responsible for implementing the services and consumers that use the SEI.

  Information noteNote: The recommended way to do green field service development is to start by creating a WSDL contract that defines the service and its interfaces.

• Service enablement In this pattern, you typically have an existing set of functionality that is implemented as a Java class and you want to service enable it. This means that you will need to do two things:

  1. Create an SEI that contains only the operations that are going to be exposed as part of the service.

  2. Modify the existing Java class so that it implements the SEI.

     Information noteNote: You can add the JAX-WS annotations to a Java class, but that is not recommended.