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Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2006 20:42:01 +1200
From: Dennis Sosnoski <dms@sosnoski.com>
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To: axis-dev@ws.apache.org
Subject: Re: [Axis2] Databinding structuring proposal
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One correction - you don't get an error on code generation if the jars 
for a framework you're not using are missing from the classpath. I 
thought I'd seen that on an earlier version, but I've verified it 
doesn't happen now. I do still think a module approach per data binding 
framework would be cleaner, though.

  - Dennis

Dennis Sosnoski wrote:

> I've got the initial JiBX data binding support ready to drop into 
> Axis2. I'd like to propose a somewhat different structure for this, 
> though, with the intent that the other data binding approaches 
> supported also implement the same sort of structure.
>
> Right now the codegen module knows about all the possible data binding 
> extensions and loads them all as part of the initial setup. It calls 
> each one in turn, allowing each extension to decide for itself whether 
> it needs to do anything. In and of itself I think this is good. What 
> becomes a problem is that each extension typically includes code that 
> links into the individual data binding framework, which means all of 
> these frameworks need to be present in order for the codegen to 
> execute. For example, if you delete the xbean-2.1.0.jar from the lib 
> you'll get an error trying to do code generation even if you're not 
> using XMLBeans. As more and more data binding frameworks are supported 
> this is going to create increasing problems (including the licensing 
> issues for JAXB 2.0, as mentioned in some separate recent threads).
>
> What I'd like to do for JiBX is add a separate module containing the 
> code that's tied to JiBX, then load that code dynamically from the 
> JiBX data binding extension - but only if JiBX is actually chosen as 
> the data binding framework to be used. That way the JiBX jars are only 
> needed when JiBX is actually being used, which seems like the way we 
> want things to work. If this approach is adopted for all the data 
> binding frameworks we can make all the framework code optional 
> components for the code generation rather than requiring more and more 
> of these framework jars to be included in the distribution. So a user 
> could download a minimal distribution which only included Axiom code 
> generation support (since Axiom is embedded throughout the whole Axis2 
> framework anyway), or distributions for each individual data binding 
> framework. Alternatively, the data binding framework support could be 
> just a separate zip that users would then unzip into their minimal 
> distribution - that way JAXB 2.0 could be handled with a separate 
> download that's not part of the Apache project, for instance.
>
> Discussion, anyone?
>
>  - Dennis
>