Using MTOM to optimize binary data transfer with JAX-WS web services

Reference : - http://www.codejava.net/java-ee/web-services/using-mtom-to-optimize-binary-data-transfer-with-jax-ws-web-services

By default, binary data is converted to base64Binary or hexBinary XML data type within a SOAP envelope, meaning that the raw bytes are encoded as a String using base64 technique. For example, the following XML snippet is content of such a SOAP message:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>

<S:Envelope xmlns:S="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">

    <S:Body>

        <ns2:upload xmlns:ns2="http://server.mtom.ws.codejava.net/">

            <arg0>binary.png</arg0>

            <arg1>iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABAAAAAQCAMAAAAoL...5CYII=</arg1>

        </ns2:upload>

    </S:Body>

</S:Envelope>







Look at the text inside the element <arg1> - it is the encoded form of the binary data in base64 format. Basically, the base64 encoding technique bloats the original data by a factor of 1.33x (with UTF-8 encoding) or 2.66x (with UTF-16), so it becomes very inefficient when dealing with a large amount of data. To overcome this drawback, MTOM is defined as a specification for optimizing the transmission of this kind of data type in SOAP messages, and XOP (XML-binary Optimized Packaging) is the concrete implementation. The following example is content of a HTTP POST request which is generated by MTOM/XOP:




Enabling MTOM in JAX-WS

In JAX-WS, it’s easy to enable MTOM for a web service endpoint by using either the @MTOM or @BindingTypeannotations. At the client side, MTOM can be enabled either by passing a new instance of MTOMFeature class when getting a reference to the web service endpoint (port), or by calling theSOAPBinding.setMTOMEnabled(true) method on the binding provider object. Here are the usages and examples in details.

import javax.jws.WebMethod;

import javax.jws.WebService;

import javax.xml.ws.soap.MTOM;

 

 

@WebService

@MTOM

public class FrogWebService {

     

    @WebMethod

    public void uploadFrogPhoto(byte[] data) {

        // implementation details...   

    }

}













That enables MTOM support for the MyWebService endpoint. The @MTOM annotation has two optional parameters:

• enabled: specifies whether MTOM feature is enabled (true) or disabled (false).
• threshold: specifies the size (in bytes) above which the binary data will be sent as attachment. This would be useful to enable MTOM only for data which is larger than a specified amount.










@WebService

@MTOM(enabled = false)

public class FrogWebService {

}







This example shows MTOM is enabled only for binary data which is larger than 12222 bytes:

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@WebService @MTOM(threshold = 12222) public class FrogWebService { }

An alternative way is using the @BindingType annotation with an appropriate value for the SOAP version used. For example:

• Enabling MTOM with SOAP version 1.1:

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  import javax.xml.ws.BindingType; import javax.xml.ws.soap.SOAPBinding;   @WebService @BindingType(value = SOAPBinding.SOAP11HTTP_MTOM_BINDING) public class MyWebService { }

• Enabling MTOM with SOAP version 1.2:

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  import javax.xml.ws.BindingType; import javax.xml.ws.soap.SOAPBinding;   @WebService @BindingType(value = SOAPBinding.SOAP12HTTP_MTOM_BINDING) public class MyWebService { }

Enabling MTOM for the client

The following example shows how to enable MTOM at the client by passing a new instance of the MTOMFeatureclass when getting a proxy reference the web service endpoint:

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import javax.xml.ws.soap.MTOMFeature;   MyWebServiceService service = new MyWebServiceService(); MyWebService port = service.getMyWebServicePort(new MTOMFeature());

Suppose that the MyWebServiceService and MyWebService classes are generated by the wsimport tool. And similar to the @MTOM annotation, we can also specify the enabled and threshold parameters in the MTOMFeatureclass’ constructor like this:

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boolean enabled = true; int threshold = 10240; MyWebService port = service.getMyWebServicePort(new MTOMFeature(enabled, threshold));

And here’s an alternative way, calling the SOAPBinding.setMTOMEnabled(true) method:

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MyWebServiceService service = new MyWebServiceService(); MyWebService port = service.getMyWebServicePort();   BindingProvider provider = (BindingProvider) port; SOAPBinding soapBinding = (SOAPBinding) provider.getBinding(); soapBinding.setMTOMEnabled(true);