XML

, WEB SERVICES AND SOA

APPLICATION INTEGRATION
ICE BREAKER
WEB SERVICES

A Web service is a software system identified by a URL,

whose public interfaces and bindings are defined and
described using XML. Its definition can be discovered
by other software systems. These systems may then
interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by
its definition, using XML based messages conveyed by
internet protocols.”
 Service Oriented Architectures

Role Technologies capable of:

•Exchanging messages
•Describing Web services
service
requestor •Publishing and discovering Web
retrieves a service descriptions
service A service publishes its
description Operation
description

One-way, Component
conversational,
many-to-many
 Web Services –
Architectural Extensions
– Incorporates additional features and functionality by extending technologies and
components defined within the basic architecture, such as:
• Asynchronous messaging
• Attachment – typical usage : associating binary data with SOAP messages.
• Caching
• Message exchange pattern (MEP) - Describes a generalized pattern of message exchange
between two services. e.g. : one-way, request/response, publish/subscribe, and broadcast.
• Reliable message - implementation of Reliable Messaging one MEP is a series of requests
between two nodes with an acknowledgement SOAP Module.
• Message confidentiality – Can transmit the message via SSL or TLS, or have a SOAP Module
provides for encryption and decryption.
• Message integrity – Can have a SOAP Module use digital signature.
• Session
The Complete Web Services "Stack"

More
mature
technologie
s
The Wire Stack
•Transport: HTTP is
the de facto, other
may be supported.
•Packaging: SOAP is
the de facto standard
for XML messaging.
•Extensions :
Additional information
attached to web
services messages.
 The Description Stack
It is actually a stack of description
documents defined using XML
Schema.

Not fully
specified
facts, or assertions, and
rules that apply to a
particular Web service
Input/
Output
rendering
minimum service description
necessary to support Satisfied
interoperable Web services. by WSDL
 The Discovery Stack
WSIL : de-centralized
service discovery method

■ Service can be published using a variety of mechanisms:

Direct publish: description sent directly to requestor;
WSIL : HTTP GET retrieves descriptions from URL;
Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI)
registries: a Web-based distributed directory.
■ Service requestors can retrieve a service description at design
time (search by interface) or runtime (by communication and
QoS) from a Web page (URL), a service description repository,
a simple service registry or a UDDI registry. Discovery
depends on how services are published;
 The technology
The WS technology is completely based on XML. Therefore, both the data format
and the interaction protocols are XML-based:
■ customized XML -> data format
■ SOAP -> communication protocol
■ WSDL -> the Interface definition language
■ WSIL/UDDI -> standards for services discovery

The lowest-level layers (the transport layer) should exploit some existing Internet
protocols, like HTTP or SMTP
 What is XML
XML is a simple tag-based language for describing information in a
structured way.
Basic elements:
■ Tags
■ Attributes
LastName Allen
■ Text

StartTag Attributes Text EndTag

<xhtml:table><xhtml:tr>
<xhtml:td width="40%">LastName</xhtml:td>
<xhtml:td width="60%">Allen</xhtml:td>
</xhtml:tr></xhtml:table>
 How to work on XML
The tree-like structure of XML makes developers life hard.
In practice there is not a standard way for editing and analyzing, but the best
method depends on your need. Just choose among:
■ SAX -> callback-based parser
■ DOM -> tree representation
■ XSLT -> “XML to XML” conversion
■ XPATH -> queries
■ XML Binding -> transparent conversion to objects
 Simple Object Access Protocol
SOAP is a technology to support the exchange of XML-coded
messages over a transport protocol, such as HTTP and SMTP.
(wire stack)

HTTP Client Server

SOAP
XML XML
XML
Stub Skeleton

SOAP SOAP
POST…
HTTP client HTTP server
Protocols Folding HTTP 1.1 200 OK

SOAP basic mechanism

 Simple Object Access Protocol
A SOAP runtime engine basically adds a XML envelope to an
existing XML document

SOAP Envelope <soap:Envelope>

<soap:Header>
SOAP Header <axis:SessionKey>
SDHH37TYEW7R7
Communication </axis:SessionKey>
Info </soap:Header>
Example <soap:Body>
<GetPrice>
SOAP Body <Item>Apples</Item>
</GetPrice>
</soap:Body>
XML
</soap:Envelope>
Document

Document Container Session, Authentication,

Routing, Security
 SOAP Encoding
Dealing directly with XML messages is not easy.
Therefore, SOAP provides a “RPC emulation” technology
The result: developers work with web services like with traditional RPC (e.g.
CORBA,DCOM,DCE)

The “RPC emulation” is named SOAP encoding.

Fundamentally it is a set of rules to map a procedure invocation to a XML document.

 SOAP Encoding
The rules:
■ method name -> first level element in the SOAP Body
■ arguments identifiers -> second level elements
■ arguments values -> third level elements
■ arguments types -> attribute xsi:type

ClockService.getTime(location="USA");
Service Request

<soap:Body>
<getTime>
<location xsi:type="xsd:string">USA</path>
</getTime>
</soap:Body>
 Web Service Description
Language
WSDL is a standard format to describe a Web Service (description stack)

A WSDL document is composed by two sections:

■ An abstract interface section -> like in traditional IDL, it defines the signatures
of procedures (RPC-style) or messages (document-style)
■ A deployment section -> it defines the service location and the supported
transport protocols

Fundamentally a client uses the WSDL to create the stub or to dynamically decode
messages.
 Web Service Introspection
Language
WSIL and UDDI are the standard way to search Web Services. (Discovery
stack)
WSIL is the decentralized approach.

Fundamentally a WSIL document contains a directory of the Web Services

deployed on a server.
It is anologous to the index.html document for web pages.
In the future, specific crawlers will browse the Internet looking for WSIL
documents, like Google does today for web pages.
 Web Service Introspection Language

<inspection>
<abstract>Acme Industries Public Web Services</abstract> <service>
<name>Store Finder Service</name>
<abstract>
A service to perform a geographical search of Acme stores.
</abstract>
<description location="http://example.org/services/storefinder.wsdl"/>
</service>
<link location="http://example.org/services/ecommerce.wsil"/>
</inspection>

Service name
Link to an other WSIL page
Service location and description
 UDDI
UDDI is a complimentary approach for searching based on a centralized
repository.

The repository is an “electronic yellow pages” for firms that offer web services
online. Besides the names of services and their WSDL descriptors, firms can
add a description of their business, phone numbers, addresses...

UDDI repositories are offered by many agencies - e.g. IBM, Microsoft and HP.
QUESTIONS???