Axis is a JAX-RPC-based Web service toolkit. JAX-RPC-based Web Service toolkits provide the ability to examine, modify, and insert information into SOAP requests using handler objects that conform to a defined interface (javax.xml.rpc.handler.GenericHandler). Axis client interface classes do not give programmatic access to SOAP request and response headers; therefore a client application must create and use one of these handlers to access these SOAP message headers.
A client application defines one or more of these handlers and binds them to a
<portType> (Open Client object) defined in the Web service's WSDL document. Each time a SOAP request or response message is handled by an object, the appropriate handlers bound to the object are called and allowed access to the request or response message. For more information, see the source code modules for the Java samples described in
Sample SOAP Web service applications.