Axis2 is a Web Services, SOAP, WSDL engine which current release, 1.5.1, comes with many interesting features among which there is the Spring Framework support.
Axis2 documentation offers some good example of Spring integration, such as the How to create a Spring-based POJO Web Service guide or the Axis2 Integration with the Spring Framework, but there's no mention of the use of Spring annotations.
Spring annotations work like a charm in Axis2 if you follow exactly the steps of the previous guide, but my tip is to build your service structure without using annotations in a first stage (unless you are already skilled in this field), then incrementally simplify your code adding Spring annotations.
Here is an example of a simplified application-config.xml when using Spring annotations with Axis:
<beans>
<bean id="applicationContext" class="org.apache.axis2.extensions.spring.receivers.ApplicationContextHolder" />
<context:component-scan base-package="service"/>
<context:component-scan base-package="bean"/>
</beans>
Now all your beans inside the packages 'service' and 'bean' will be deployed on Spring application context start or refresh. To annotate a class as Spring bean just use the @Component annotation on your class.
If you want to initialize your service on deployment time, add the @PostConstruct annotation on your initialization method. If your bean needs to access another bean, just use the @Autowired annotation on your class field.
Here a simple example:
@Component
public class MyService{
@Autowired
private MyBean bean;
@PostConstruct
protected void init() {
//init operations
}
Don't forget to add the SpringBeanName parameter in your services.xml:
<parameter name="SpringBeanName" >myService</parameter>
Annotations simplify your life reducing time spent configuring every bean you need in your application and using them in Axis allows you to build complex WebServices with less code.
Have fun.