How do I setup an AXIS client on Tomcat when the target WebService(WSDL) uses SSL?

I have developed a WebService client using apache AXIS. This was done using "New Web Service Client" wizard in Eclipse. The WebService itself was made using .NET and has a WSDL file attached to it. I used this WSDL file as a basis for the wizard. At this time the WebService wasn't using SSL. The wizard generated all necessary Java classes and I could immediately access the WebService.

Then my software partner changed the WebService to use SSL instead of plain HTTP access. It still worked fine on my computer even when SSL was turned on. Later on I deployed this on our server (Windows 2003) and I got this exception:

javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: sun.security.validator.ValidatorException: PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target

I then was a bit confused that it suddenly stopped working. I have been looking for an answer on this site and I found many solutions - but none of them has worked for me.

I tried to install a certificate from my software partner who made the webservice. I did this using the control panel in Java. I still got the same exception. I then tried the keytool but with the same results. I also tried creating my own keystore file for my web application and adding the certificate there. Also this without any success.

I then created a JSP file which accesses the same SSL webservice and it actually manages to read it!

The development was done on a Mac OSX(leopard, java 1.5) and also tested successfully on a Windows Vista 32bit Java 1.6.

Can anyone please help me?

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try {
        URL url = new URL( "https://server/webservice.asmx" );
        InputStream in = url.openStream();
        int chunkSize = 1024;
 
		int count;
		ByteArrayOutputStream bo = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
		byte[] b = new byte[chunkSize];
		try {
			while ((count = in.read(b, 0, chunkSize)) > 0)
				bo.write(b, 0, count);
			byte[] thebytes = bo.toByteArray();
			String s = new String( thebytes );
			System.out.println( s );
		} finally {
			bo.close();
			bo = null;
		}
    } catch (Exception e) {	
    	e.printStackTrace();
    }