[SOLVED] Wildfly 23 server - Simple JAX-WS deployment - all attempts to access the WSDL are "Forbidden" OR "Not Found"

While I am not new to JAX-WS, (used it years ago w/ Sun Metro JAX-WS RI w/o issues)... much has changed and I have been involved in MANY other web services projects involving REST endpoints, mainly w/ Spring Boot the past few years.

I am now involved in another project where the server stack is Wildfly 23 and they are using SOAP web services. I have a written a simple WAR project w/ an annotated Java class implementing an annotated Java interface. (the term is SEI in the documentation, it's been a few years). I just want to understand how JAX-WS services deploy and how the WSDL is accessed.

Service implementation class

package com.example.jaxws.ws;

import jakarta.jws.WebMethod;
import jakarta.jws.WebService;
import jakarta.jws.soap.SOAPBinding;
import jakarta.jws.soap.SOAPBinding.Style;

@WebService(
    serviceName = "EmployeeService",
    endpointInterface = "com.example.jaxws.ws.EmployeeService"
)
@SOAPBinding(
    style = Style.DOCUMENT
)
public class EmployeeServiceImpl implements EmployeeService {
    public EmployeeServiceImpl() {
    }

    @WebMethod
    public Employee getEmployee(int id) {
        return null;
    }

    @WebMethod
    public Employee addEmployee(int id, String name) {
        return new Employee(id, name);
    }
}

Service interface:

package com.example.jaxws.ws;

import jakarta.jws.WebMethod;
import jakarta.jws.WebService;
import jakarta.jws.soap.SOAPBinding;

@WebService
@SOAPBinding(style= SOAPBinding.Style.DOCUMENT)
public interface EmployeeService {

    @WebMethod
    Employee getEmployee(int id);
    @WebMethod
    Employee addEmployee(int id, String name);
}

The web.xml file looks like this (effectively an empty default)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns="https://jakarta.ee/xml/ns/jakartaee"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="https://jakarta.ee/xml/ns/jakartaee https://jakarta.ee/xml/ns/jakartaee/web-app_5_0.xsd"
         version="5.0">

    
</web-app>

Another post said one needs a jboss-web.xml, (same location /WEB-INF) so this was added

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<jboss-web version="10.0"
           xmlns="http://www.jboss.com/xml/ns/javaee"
           xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
           xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.jboss.com/xml/ns/javaee http://www.jboss.org/j2ee/schema/jboss-web_10_0.xsd">

    <context-root>/employee-service</context-root>
</jboss-web>

Finally, the pom.xml contains this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>com.example</groupId>
    <artifactId>JAXWS_Services</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <name>JAXWS_Services</name>
    <packaging>war</packaging>

    <properties>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
        <maven.compiler.target>11</maven.compiler.target>
        <maven.compiler.source>11</maven.compiler.source>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>jakarta.servlet</groupId>
            <artifactId>jakarta.servlet-api</artifactId>
            <version>5.0.0</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>jakarta.xml.ws</groupId>
            <artifactId>jakarta.xml.ws-api</artifactId>
            <version>3.0.1</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>3.3.2</version>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

The WAR project is added an Artifact to the Server instance within IntelliJ where a Wildfly run configuration was created. Starting the server shows ZERO errors, a context-root path created matching the jboss-web.xml. Yet navigating to anywhere on that context-root path results in a "Forbidden" error page AND a path to the WSDL (that I think should work based on other code I've seen), yields a 404 😔)

Clearly, I am missing a BIG something. Any insight would be appreciated.

Console output from startup:

Connected to server
[2023-10-31 11:00:37,551] Artifact JAXWS_Services:war: Artifact is being deployed, please wait...
23:00:37,763 INFO  [org.jboss.as.server.deployment] (MSC service thread 1-2) WFLYSRV0027: Starting deployment of "JAXWS_Services-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war" (runtime-name: "JAXWS_Services-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war")
23:00:39,883 INFO  [org.infinispan.CONTAINER] (ServerService Thread Pool -- 28) ISPN000128: Infinispan version: Infinispan 'Corona Extra' 11.0.9.Final
23:00:39,965 INFO  [org.infinispan.CONFIG] (MSC service thread 1-6) ISPN000152: Passivation configured without an eviction policy being selected. Only manually evicted entities will be passivated.
23:00:39,968 INFO  [org.infinispan.CONFIG] (MSC service thread 1-6) ISPN000152: Passivation configured without an eviction policy being selected. Only manually evicted entities will be passivated.
23:00:40,115 INFO  [org.infinispan.PERSISTENCE] (ServerService Thread Pool -- 28) ISPN000556: Starting user marshaller 'org.wildfly.clustering.infinispan.spi.marshalling.InfinispanProtoStreamMarshaller'
23:00:40,452 INFO  [org.jboss.as.clustering.infinispan] (ServerService Thread Pool -- 28) WFLYCLINF0002: Started http-remoting-connector cache from ejb container
23:00:40,767 INFO  [org.wildfly.extension.undertow] (ServerService Thread Pool -- 8) WFLYUT0021: Registered web context: '/employee-service' for server 'default-server'
23:00:40,852 INFO  [org.jboss.as.server] (management-handler-thread - 1) WFLYSRV0010: Deployed "JAXWS_Services-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war" (runtime-name : "JAXWS_Services-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war")
[2023-10-31 11:00:40,872] Artifact JAXWS_Services:war: Artifact is deployed successfully
[2023-10-31 11:00:40,872] Artifact JAXWS_Services:war: Deploy took 3,321 milliseconds

While the logging shows successful deployment and the establishment of the context-root path... I am not seeing evidence that the coded "web service" is actually running in the container.