Apache CXF is an open source services framework. CXF helps you build and develop services using frontend programming APIs, like JAX-WS. These services can speak a variety of protocols such as SOAP, XML/HTTP, RESTful HTTP, or CORBA and work over a variety of transports such as HTTP, JMS or JBI. (Information from Official CXF Site)
CXF includes a broad feature set, but it is primarily focused on the following areas:
- Web Services Standards Support: CXF supports a variety of web service standards including SOAP, the Basic Profile, WSDL, WS-Addressing, WS-Policy, WS-ReliableMessaging, and WS-Security.
- Frontends: CXF supports a variety of "frontend" programming models. CXF implements the JAX-WS APIs (version 2.0 will be TCK compliant). It also includes a "simple frontend" which allows creation of clients and endpoints without annotations. CXF supports both contract first development with WSDL and code first development starting from Java.
- Ease of use: CXF is designed to be intuitive and easy to use. There are simple APIs to quickly build code-first services, Maven plug-ins to make tooling integration easy, JAX-WS API support, Spring 2.0 XML support to make configuration a snap, and much more.
- Binary and Legacy Protocol Support: CXF has been designed to provide a pluggable architecture that supports not only XML but also non-XML type bindings, such as JSON and CORBA, in combination with any type of transport.
