Migration to Jakarta: ClassNotFoundException: com.sun.xml.internal.ws.spi.ProviderImpl - soap

Question

While migrating from Java 8 to Java 11 and switching from EE to the newest Jakarta libraries according to https://wiki.eclipse.org/New_Maven_Coordinates and Maven central, we get the following runtime exception in our (still SOAP-based) client application:
Exception in thread "main" javax.xml.ws.WebServiceException: Provider com.sun.xml.internal.ws.spi.ProviderImpl not found
at javax.xml.ws.spi.FactoryFinder$1.createException(FactoryFinder.java:31)
at javax.xml.ws.spi.FactoryFinder$1.createException(FactoryFinder.java:28)
at javax.xml.ws.spi.ServiceLoaderUtil.newInstance(ServiceLoaderUtil.java:73)
at javax.xml.ws.spi.FactoryFinder.find(FactoryFinder.java:82)
at javax.xml.ws.spi.Provider.provider(Provider.java:66)
at javax.xml.ws.Service.<init>(Service.java:82)
at [...]
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.sun.xml.internal.ws.spi.ProviderImpl
at java.base/jdk.internal.loader.BuiltinClassLoader.loadClass(BuiltinClassLoader.java:583)
at java.base/jdk.internal.loader.ClassLoaders$AppClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoaders.java:178)
at java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:521)
at javax.xml.ws.spi.ServiceLoaderUtil.nullSafeLoadClass(ServiceLoaderUtil.java:60)
at javax.xml.ws.spi.ServiceLoaderUtil.safeLoadClass(ServiceLoaderUtil.java:93)
at javax.xml.ws.spi.ServiceLoaderUtil.newInstance(ServiceLoaderUtil.java:71)
... 5 more
The solution described in Getting java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.sun.xml.internal.ws.spi.ProviderImpl despite the dependencies are defined doesn't work and doesn't use Jakarta.
If I'm not wrong, the Jarkarta libraries shouldn't contain "com.sun.xml."packages or reference such, but javax.xml.ws.spi.Provider obviously STILL DOES reference such class:
private static final String DEFAULT_JAXWSPROVIDER =
"com.sun"+".xml.internal.ws.spi.ProviderImpl";
So, does anyone know if there is a Jakarta equivalent to the missing library containing ProviderImpl, or how I could workaround the problem with Jakarta?
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I finally found a workaround for my problem. According to the answer given in How to use WebServices on Java 11? package javax.jws does not exist the reference implementation of JAX-WS should be included with Java 11:
<dependency>
<groupId>com.sun.xml.ws</groupId>
<artifactId>jaxws-ri</artifactId>
<version>2.3.2</version>
<type>pom</type>
</dependency>
Unfortunately, compiling our project with this dependency using the latest maven-compile-plugin 3.8.0 causes the exception described in https://jira.apache.org/jira/browse/MCOMPILER-355. It should be fixed in 3.8.1 but the version is not available yet.
As a workaround I got our project working with the hint given in Getting java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.sun.xml.internal.ws.spi.ProviderImpl despite the dependencies are defined, combined with an additional dependency (namely resolver that is also linked in the pom.xml of jaxws-ri) to avoid an subsequent java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.sun.org.apache.xml.internal.resolver.CatalogManager:
<dependency>
<groupId>com.sun.xml.ws</groupId>
<artifactId>rt</artifactId>
<version>2.3.2</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.sun.org.apache.xml.internal</groupId>
<artifactId>resolver</artifactId>
<version>20050927</version>
</dependency>
Maybe this helps someone running into the same problem.

Answer 2

Throwing my 5 cents into the ring as I had "the same problem". What resolved it to me was to stick with the version two of the jaxws-rt package, since version 3.0.0 did fail with the same results as mentioned above.
So what I used to get my JDK 8 source running without any modification was:
// https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/com.sun.xml.ws/jaxws-rt
implementation group: 'com.sun.xml.ws', name: 'jaxws-rt', version: '2.3.3' //3.0.0 did not work!
// https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/javax.xml.ws/jaxws-api
implementation group: 'javax.xml.ws', name: 'jaxws-api', version: '2.3.1'
// https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/javax.jws/javax.jws-api
implementation group: 'javax.jws', name: 'javax.jws-api', version: '1.1'