Web services are services that you use over the Internet. If you have an
existing application, and you want to make the service that your application
provides available to others - either within your own organization or beyond
it - you can use Web services technologies to provide a standard Web interface
for your service. Used in this manner, Web services can be defined as middleware.
You can connect applications together no matter how each application is implemented
or where it is located.
Middleware is not new, but what is new is Web services technology and its
power to connect by using open standards. Web services operate at a level
of abstraction that is similar to the Internet; they can work with any operating
system, hardware platform or programming language that can be Web-enabled.
The core technologies on which Web services are developed and implemented
include:
- XML (Extensible
Markup Language). XML solves the problem of data independence. You use it
to describe data, and also to map that data into and out of any application
or programming language.
- Web Services for Java 2 platform,
Enterprise Edition (J2EE) specification defines the programming model
and run-time architecture for implementing Web services based on the Java
language. WebSphere Application Server Version 6.0 is supports Web Services
for J2EE Version 1.1.
If you want to know how to implement a Web service
interface to an existing application, then deploy your Web service within
the application server, see Using
Web services based on Web Services for J2EE.
- Java API for XML-Based RPC
(JAX-RPC) enables you to develop SOAP-based interoperable and portable
Web services and Web services clients. WebSphere Application Server Version
6.0 supports JAX-RPC Version 1.1.
- WSDL (Web Services Description Language). You use
this XML-based language to create a description of an underlying application.
It is this description that turns an application into a Web service, by acting
as the interface between the underlying application and other Web-enabled
applications. WebSphere Application Server Version 6.0 supports WSDL Version
1.1.
- SOAP is the core communications
protocol for the Web, and most Web services use this protocol to talk to each
other. WebSphere Application Server Version 6.0 supports SOAP Version 1.1.
- SOAP with attachments API for
Java (SAAJ) is used for SOAP messaging that works behind the scenes
in the Java API for XML-based RPC (JAX-RPC) implementation. You can also use
this API to directly write SOAP messaging applications rather than using JAX-RPC.
SAAJ allows you to do XML messaging from the Java platform by making method
calls by creating, sending and consuming XML messages over the Internet. WebSphere
Application Server Version 6.0 supports SAAJ Version 1.2
WebSphere Application Server also provides other mechanisms that can help
you get the most out of your Web services:
- A private Universal Description,
Discovery and Integration (UDDI) registry
- A private UDDI registry provides a way to publish and discover information
about Web services that are available within and through your organization.
You can use it to make your Web services available to people within your organization,
or beyond your organization. A group of companies can use it to share their
Web services, or to make them available to others outside the group. At its
simplest, a private UDDI registry does for Web services what a business telephone
directory does for business addresses and telephone numbers. However, a private
UDDI registry is much more than just a directory. It needs to be in order
to harness the considerable power and flexibility of Web services. If you
publish your Web service to UDDI, you make it available for other people or
applications to discover and reuse. This saves development time, effort and
cost, and helps minimize the need to maintain several different implementations
of the same application.
- A Web Services Invocation Framework
(WSIF)
- SOAP bindings for Web services are part of the WSDL specification. So
when you think of using a Web service, you probably think of assembling a
SOAP message and sending it across the network to the service endpoint, using
some SOAP client API. The WSDL specification allows for extensibility points
which can describe alternate ways of invoking a Web service. A WSIF client
can make use of these non-SOAP descriptions to invoke a service in a more
efficient way. For example, a Web service provider might offer a SOAP binding
for the service and a local Java binding that allows you to treat the local
service implementation (a Java class) as a Web service. If the client is deployed
in the same environment as the service, then the local Java binding for the
service can be used. This provides more efficient communication with the service
by making direct Java calls rather than sending and receiving SOAP messages.
- To deploy a Web service as a WSIF-enabled service, you first develop and
deploy the Web service, then you develop the WSIF client based on the WSDL
document for that Web service.
- The Web service enablement of the service integration bus (SIBWS)
- Through the SIBWS, you can achieve the following goals:
- You can take an internal service that is available at a service destination,
and make it available as a Web service.
- You can take an external Web service, and make it available at a service
destination.
- You can use the Web services gateway to map an existing
service - either an internal service, or an external Web service - to a new
Web service that appears to be provided by the gateway.