While We Were Doing That...

JAX-WS: WSDL Fetched During Service Proxy Creation

I did some webservice client programming again lately, and was surprised to learn that by default, the JAX-WS service client library fetches the WSDL from its original location again each time a service proxy is created. I am pretty sure that not everyone is aware of that, and that this leads to production system problems once WSDLs become unavailable.

The JAX-WS FAQs mention runtime binding as the reason behind this, but as the WSDL is not supposed to change, I wonder why it isn't simply mapped into a generated Java class, or added as a local resource. Anyway, this can be done manually using the JAX WS wsgen tool (commandline option "-wsdl"), adding the local WSDL file to your JAR file, and then setting the service proxy's WSDL_LOCATION constant to:

MYSERVICE_WSDL_LOCATION = 
    new URL(
        MyClass.class.getResource(""), 
        "MyWsdl.wsdl");

Chickens Can Do Your Job

And because chickens can do a developer's job, most interviewers don't verify a candidate's skills by asking technical questions. That might hurt the candidate's feelings after all! Some interviewers might have heard of studies stating that, from a group of people with identical formal qualification, the top-notch folks can outperform their counterparts by a factor of 10 in efficiency (that is coding productivity, code quality, correctness and performance, whatever measure you choose). More than that, even people with lower formal qualification can be more efficient up to a factor of 10, compared to the other end of the spectrum.

But does that mean most companies will be searching for top-notch developers only, and once they have found them, pay them accordingly, treat them with respect, and give them tasks that match their skills? No! Developers are developers are developers. They are interchangable, and what they don't know now, they will simply learn on-the-job. It's that easy!