Better JMS Transport for CXF Webservice using Apache Camel
Configuring JMS in Apache CXF is possible but not really easy or nice. I have written a Tutorial on the Camel Wiki that shows how to use Apache Camel to provide a better JMS Transport for CXF.
Why not simply use JMS Features of Apache CXF
JMS configuration in Apache CXF is possible but the configuration is not very flexible and quite error prone. In CXF you have to configure a JMSConduit or a JMSDestination for each webservice. The connection between Conduit and the Service proxy is the endpoint name which looks like "{http://service.test\}HelloWorldPort.jms-conduit". As this name is never explicitly configured elsewhere it is quite probable that you misspell the name. If this happens then the JMS Transport just does not work. There is no good error reporting to show you what you did wrong. The next thing is that you have to use JNDI for the connectionFactory and the queue name. This is something that beginners with JMS have many problems with.
Why is using Apache Camel better in the JMS Transport layer
In apache camel you can simply reference the ConnectionFactory as a spring bean. This means you can either define it directly in a spring bean what is the ideal way to start or you can use spring´s JNDI binding to retrieve it from your application server for production use.
The next nice thing is that you can configure all JMS options like Receive Timeout or username / password in a central location, the JMSComponent and then share this config for several services. On the other hand you can easily configure different JMS providers.
The last thing that I do not need right now but is nice to have is that you have the full power of Camel´s routing config. So if you want to do additional things from simply calling the service it is easy.
How to do it
The Tutorial can be found in the Apache Camel Wiki
Better JMS Transport for CXF Webservice using Apache Camel
Thanks
Many thanks to Eduard Hildebrandt http://www.family-hildebrandt.com who helped a lot in making this example work by debugging all the problems we initially had and providing patches for the issues.
When I announced this Howto on the camel mailing list James Strachan told me that it is also possible to make your webservices transactional by using Spring declarative transactions. I will write a spearate article that focuses on how to do this.