OK, I am developing a program which will be deployed to lots of machines (Windows, Linux, AIX, z/Linux, openVMS, etc.). I want that application to contain a SOAP web service, but I don't want to bundle tomcat or run a separate service for the services (I want them in the same process as the rest of the application).
Basically what I'm looking for is something where I can define a class (say WebServices). I'm OK with writing WSDL or any other kind of service description as well. The I want something like this:
SOAPServer server = makeMeASoapServer();
//do config on the server
server.add(new WebService(...));
server.listen(port);
Obviously the names and parameters will be different.
I've been looking at Axis, and it seems like it provides this, but I don't know what classes I need to use. Am I crazy in wanting this kind of behavior? I can't believe more people aren't looking for this, I do this all the time with embedded web services within .NET clients.