Can Spring-WS 1.5 be used with Spring 3?

Question

Spring-ws 1.5.9 depends on Spring 2.5 (based on the pom). Can it be used with Spring 3 without running into any classloading issues. I know that some of the packages match between the two, can I just not include those Spring 3 jars? I cant seem to find any official word on this.

Answer 1

In addition to skaffman's answer, here's how to use Spring-WS 1.5.9 with Spring 3 through Maven:

1) First exclude the OXM dependency of Spring 3. Just remove the following dependency from your POM.

<dependency>
   <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
   <artifactId>spring-oxm</artifactId>
</dependency>

If you're using another framework that has a transitive dependency on Spring 3 (like Apache Camel's camel-spring module) use:

<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.camel</groupId>
<artifactId>camel-spring</artifactId>
<exclusions>
    <exclusion>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-oxm</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
</exclusions>
</dependency>

2) Remove the transitive dependency that Spring-WS 1.5.9 has on Spring 2.5.6:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.ws</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-ws-core</artifactId>
    <version>1.5.9</version>
    <exclusions>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-beans</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-aop</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-test</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
    </exclusions>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.ws</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-ws-support</artifactId>
    <version>1.5.9</version>
    <exclusions>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-beans</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-jms</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-tx</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-test</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
    </exclusions>
</dependency>

3) Finally make sure you include the necessary Spring 3 modules (the list above) as dependencies in your POM.

That's it you should now be able to use Spring-WS 1.5.9 with Spring 3.x.

Answer 2

Officially, no, they're not compatible. Like you said, there are package conflicts between the two - org.springframework.oxm in particular. This package was brought into Spring 3 from Spring-WS, and the two will clash.

Work was supposed to be completed on Spring-WS 2.0 immediately after Spring 3.0 was released, but this hasn't happened. Until that happens, Spring-WS remains incompatible with the current release of Spring Framework.

In practise, I've found that if you omit the org.springframework.oxm JAR from the Spring 3 distro, the two work fine together. If you're using maven, though, I'm not sure if this is an option for you.