Choosing SSL client certificate in Java

Question

Our system communicates with several web services providers. They are all invoked from a single Java client application. All the web services up until now have been over SSL

Answer 1

Java SSL clients will only send a certificate if requested by the server. A server can send an optional hint about what certificates it will accept; this will help a client choose a single certificate if it has multiple.

Normally, a new SSLContext is created with a specific client certificate, and Socket instances are created from a factory obtained from that context. Unfortunately, Axis2 doesn't appear to support the use of an SSLContext or a custom SocketFactory. Its client certificate settings are global.