Q: How do I use Axis without an application server?
A: Axis has a secret standalone mode. It is a secret because it primarily exists for standalone testing and is not in active development -it has a very crude implementation of the servlet API, so that it can host the <noWiki>AxisServlet</noWiki> that implements the HTTP transport.
For more information and further warnings about how it is unsupported look in the SimpleAxisServer class in the axis.transport.http package.