Synapse and Java 1.4?

[Andreas Veithen]

Hi all!

Yesterday I talked to a colleague who needs to solve a Web service  
versioning issue (maintaining compatibility between old clients and a  
new, modified version of the service). I told him that depending on  
the type of changes to the Web service, one possible solution might be  
to use an XSLT mediation with Synapse. However as he pointed out  
correctly, Synapse requires Java 1.5 while we are working in an  
environment that still uses Java 1.4.

Given that most of Synapse's code is still Java 1.4, what are actually  
the Java 5 language features or APIs Synapse relies on? What are the  
dependencies that require Java 5?

Since I'm working in the same environment I'm facing the same  
restriction with another Open Source library, and I had a look into  
retrotranslation tools that convert Java 5 bytecode to Java 1.4  
compatible bytecode. Retrotranslator (http://retrotranslator.sourceforge.net/ 
) seems very promising because it not only covers all Java 5 language  
features but also important parts of the Java 5 APIs. Did anybody  
already study the question if it would be possible to run Synapse on  
Java 1.4 with the help of this kind of tool?

Regards,

Andreas