SAAJ - SOAP with Attachments API for Java

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The SOAP with Attachments API for Java or SAAJ provides a standard way to send XML documents over the Internet from the Java platform.

SAAJ enables developers to produce and consume messages conforming to the SOAP 1.1 and 1.2 specifications and SOAP with Attachments note.

Developers can also use it to write SOAP messaging applications directly instead of using JAX-RPC or JAX-WS.

Why SOAP needs attachments[edit]

As an XML-based messaging protocol, SOAP messages require considerable processing power and memory. All parts of a SOAP message must conform to XML rules for allowed characters and character sequences so binary data can not be included directly. Furthermore, SOAP implementations typically parse the entire SOAP message before deciding what to do with the contents, so large data fields could easily exceed available memory. For all these reasons it was recognized that SOAP requires some mechanism for carrying large payloads and binary data as an attachment rather than inside the SOAP message envelope.