Jakarta Web Services Metadata

Jakarta Web Services Metadata (JWS; formerly Web Services Metadata for Java platform and Java Web Services), as a part of Jakarta XML Web Services (JAX-WS), is a Java programming language specification (JSR-181) primarily used to standardize the development of web service interfaces for the Jakarta EE platform.

Using annotations from the JSR 181, you can annotate a Web service implementation class or a Web service interface. It enables developers to create portable Java Web Services from a simple plain old Java object (POJO) class by adding annotations, and also helps in generating a Web service with a wizard or by publishing the service on to a server.

Some of the annotations specified by this JSR are:
 * @WebService
 * @WebMethod
 * @Oneway
 * @WebParam
 * @WebResult
 * @HandlerChain
 * @SOAPBinding

Put simply, JSR 181 is a specification to define standard and portable web services. It offers the following benefits:
 * Provide a simplified model for developing web services
 * Abstract the implementation details
 * Achieve robustness, easy maintenance, and high interoperability

Version is 2.1 was released on December 15, 2009.