Java Class Loaders

Be sure to check out this decent article on JCL on the commons-logging page:
JCL Information

Another article on Classloaders is on Java World: Find a way out of the ClassLoader maze

* JNDI uses context classloaders
* Class.getResource() and Class.forName() use the current classloader
* JAXP uses context classloaders (as of J2SE 1.4)
* java.util.ResourceBundle uses the caller's current classloader
* URL protocol handlers specified via java.protocol.handler.pkgs system property are looked up in the bootstrap and system classloaders only
* Java Serialization API uses the caller's current classloader by default

The JNDI Tutorial talks about Classloaders.

CheatSheet

Ignore the following as it is just a personal notepad:

Copy to tomcat lib:
f-tomcat.jar
openws-1.0-alpha1.jar
opensaml2-2.0-alpha1.jar
xmltooling-1.0-alpha1.jar
log4j.jar
joda
xmlsec
commons-logging
velocity-dep
javolution


endorse tomcat. (copy endorsed directory under tomcat dir)

Should I do JAXRPC or JAXWS?

You may be plagued by this question often when you are starting to evaluate web service technologies in the Java EE space.

A good article that has take a decent stab at addressing this issue is:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-tip-jaxwsrpc.html

In my honest opinion, you should choose JAX-WS because it brings you simplicity. EJB3 with JSR-181 type web services is the ultimate choice.