JAX-RPC client with Maven2

Recently I needed to make my Maven2 web project communicate with an old style RPC encoded web service. We run on GlassFish which comes with JAX-RPC RI built-in, so I was hoping to find a way to use it without having to bundle another runtime such as Axis into the project. Specifically I was looking for a way to make my build-script generate client stubs from a WSDL file in the project tree. I want the client stubs to use standardized JAX-RPC APIs which are serviced by the implementation provided by GlassFish.

I found that the JAX-WS RI has a Maven2 plugin but not the JAX-RPC RI. I did a lot of googling, and posted messages in a few mailing lists. Surprisingly there is almost nobody using JAX-RPC on Maven2 projects because there are barely any examples online and nobody could answer my question. I'm surprised because there are a lot of legacy systems out there that developers need to integrate with, so I can't be the only one still needing JAX-RPC support. Some people suggested that I update the web service to modern RPC literal to make client-side development easier with JAX-WS, but that is not an option. Others suggested that I use Maven's antrun plugin to call out to an ant build script that does JAX-RPC work. Finally I found an all Maven solution that works for me:

 <dependency> 
  <groupId>org.apache.axis</groupId> 
  <artifactId>axis</artifactId> 
  <version>1.4</version> 
  <scope>compile</scope> 
</dependency> 
<dependency> 
  <groupId>org.apache.axis</groupId> 
  <artifactId>axis-jaxrpc</artifactId> 
  <version>1.4</version> 
  <scope>compile</scope> 
</dependency> 
<dependency> 
  <groupId>commons-discovery</groupId> 
  <artifactId>commons-discovery</artifactId> 
  <version>0.4</version> 
  <scope>compile</scope> 
</dependency> 
<dependency> 
  <groupId>wsdl4j</groupId> 
  <artifactId>wsdl4j</artifactId> 
  <version>1.6.2</version> 
  <scope>compile</scope> 
</dependency> 
 
<plugin> 
  <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId> 
  <artifactId>axistools-maven-plugin</artifactId> 
  <version>1.3</version> 
  <executions> 
    <execution> 
      <goals> 
        <goal>wsdl2java</goal> 
      </goals> 
    </execution> 
  </executions> 
  <configuration> 
    <packageSpace>com.mycompany.service.client</packageSpace> 
    <sourceDirectory>src/main/resources/META-INF/wsdl</sourceDirectory> 
    <outputDirectory>target/generated-sources/wsdl2java</outputDirectory> 
  </configuration> 
</plugin> 

 private MyServiceSEI getMyServicePort() throws ServiceException { 
  MyServiceLocator locator = new MyServiceLocator(); 
  MyServiceSEI port; 
  Stub stub; 
 
  port = locator.getMyServiceSEIPort(); 
 
  // OPTIONALLY configure URL and HTTP BASIC authentication 
  stub = (Stub) port; 
  stub._setProperty(Stub.ENDPOINT_ADDRESS_PROPERTY, "http://hostname/ContextRoot/ServicePort"); 
  stub._setProperty(Stub.USERNAME_PROPERTY, "user"); 
  stub._setProperty(Stub.PASSWORD_PROPERTY, "secret"); 
 
  return port; 
} 

It works, but I think the client stubs are dependent on the Axis 1 runtime instead of using the GlassFish provided JAX-RPC runtime through the standardized JAX-RPC APIs. I've wasted enough time on this so I moved on. If you know a better way to do this, please let me know.