...

Building Services

JAX-WS Annotated Services from Java

The JAX-WS APIs include a set of annotations which allow you to build services using annotated classes. These services are based on a single class which contains a set of operations.

...

More Information: A simple JAX-WS service, Developing a JAX-WS Service (goes into much more depth), Writing a service with Spring

JAX-WS Annotated Services from WSDL

If you have existing WSDLs for your service or wish to write your WSDL first and then generate classes, CXF has many tools to help you do this.

...

• The command line
• The Maven Plugin
• With the WSDL2Java API

JAX-WS Providers

JAX-WS Providers allow you to create services which work at the message level - as opposed to the operation level as with annotated classes. The have a single operation "invoke" which receives either the message payload (i.e. the SOAP Body) or the whole message itself (i.e. the SOAP Envelope).

...

More Information: Developing a JAX-WS Service

Simple Frontend

Sometimes you don't want to annotate classes or use the JAX-WS APIs. CXF includes a Simple Frontend which allows you to take nearly any class and make a service out of it with absolutely no extra work. This is great for those services which are simple or are quick prototypes.

...

• ServerFactoryBeans - these allow programmatic publishing of an endpoint
• CXF's XML configuration format - i.e. <simple:server ... />

...