Seminar: Distributed Software-Systems

Introduction to Web Services

Christoph Weyer

TU Hamburg-Harburg

19th April 2004

 Introduction to Web Services

Outline of the Presentation

1. Requirements for e-Business

2. Service Oriented Architecture

3. Web Services

4. Architecture and Standards

5. Summary

Christoph Weyer: Introduction to Web Services TU Hamburg-Harburg, 19th April 2004 1

 Requirements for e-Business

• information exchange and information integration

• paradigm shift towards machine-to-machine interactions
• shift to peer-to-peer architecture
• abstraction beyond object-oriented technology
• integration on service semantics (business process-based)
• loosely coupled interactions
• business partner interactions are moving towards dynamic
agreements
• just-in-time integration

Christoph Weyer: Introduction to Web Services TU Hamburg-Harburg, 19th April 2004 2

 Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Service
Broker

Find Publish

Service
Contract
...
...

Service Service
Consumer Provider
Bind

see [Hégaret 2003]

Christoph Weyer: Introduction to Web Services TU Hamburg-Harburg, 19th April 2004 3
 Architectural Constraints of SOA

• small set of simple and ubiquitous interfaces to all

participating entities
• interfaces should be universally available
• messages must be descriptive, rather than instructive
• no system behaviour is prescribed by messages
• messages constrained by an extensible schema
• schema limits the vocabulary and structure of messages
• extensible schema allows new versions of services to be
introduced without breaking existing services

Christoph Weyer: Introduction to Web Services TU Hamburg-Harburg, 19th April 2004 4

 Web Services

SOA is the basic idea behind Web Services!

Used XML-based Technologies

• SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)

defines an envelope for Web Services communication and
provides a serialisation format for transmitting XML
documents
• WSDL (Web Services Description Language)
defines Web Services interfaces, data and message types,
interaction patterns, and protocol mappings
• UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration)
Web Services registry and discovery mechanism, is used for
storing and categorising interfaces
Christoph Weyer: Introduction to Web Services TU Hamburg-Harburg, 19th April 2004 5
 Web Services Model

Service
Broker
UDDI

Find Publish

Service
Contract
... L
... SD
W
Service SOAP Service
Consumer Provider
Bind Web Service

see [Hégaret 2003]

Christoph Weyer: Introduction to Web Services TU Hamburg-Harburg, 19th April 2004 6
 Advantages of Web Services

• Interoperability
. any Web Service can interact with any other Web Service
. platform independent and based on open standards
• Ubiquity
. based on HTTP and XML
. Web technologies are widely spread
• Low barrier to Entry
. concepts are easy and simple
. existing knowledge of XML-based technologies
• Industry Support
. all major vendors are supporting SOAP and Web Services
. already integrated in many applications (e.g. .NET, Office)

Christoph Weyer: Introduction to Web Services TU Hamburg-Harburg, 19th April 2004 7

 Web Services Everywhere? (I)

"The Computer can search for You!"

(Google)

• Google offers a Web Service

• auto-monitoring the web for new
information on a subject
• glean market research insights and
trends over time
• use your own UI for searching the web

http://www.google.com/apis/

Christoph Weyer: Introduction to Web Services TU Hamburg-Harburg, 19th April 2004 8

 Web Services Everywhere? (II)

• Web Service that helps photography-

related businesses enhance their
services
• Common Picture eXchange
environment (CPXe)
• combine services from different
vendors and retailers
• PSN members
. Kodak
. Agfa
. ...

http://www.pictureservices.org/
Christoph Weyer: Introduction to Web Services TU Hamburg-Harburg, 19th April 2004 9
 Open Issues

• Security
. basic security with HTTP over SSL
. other issues are addressed by WS-Security
• Transaction
. traditional transaction architecture for closed environments
. is addressed by WS-Coordination and WS-Transaction
• Reliability of Communication
deals with reliable message deliver ⇒ WS-ReliableMessaging
• Scalability
. performance issue → overhead through XML & SOAP
. orchestration and aggregation of lower-level Web Services
⇒ BPEL4WS and WSCDL
• Manageability and Testing
Christoph Weyer: Introduction to Web Services TU Hamburg-Harburg, 19th April 2004 10
 Web Services Protocol Architecture

Service
BPEL4WS Composition

Reliable Composable
Security Transactions Service
Messaging
Assurances

WSDL, UDDI, Policy, MetadataExchange Description

SOAP (Logical Messaging)

Messaging
XML (Encoding)

HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP Transport

see [Ferguson 2003]

Christoph Weyer: Introduction to Web Services TU Hamburg-Harburg, 19th April 2004 11

 Summary

Challenges for e-Business

• service orientation
• loosely coupled machine-to-machine interactions

Standards are evolving

• flaws in Web Services architecture
• ensure interoperability

Are Web Services a Revolution?

• new paradigm for distributed architectures
• misapplication of Web Services
• still simple?
Christoph Weyer: Introduction to Web Services TU Hamburg-Harburg, 19th April 2004 12
 Questions ???

Christoph Weyer: Introduction to Web Services TU Hamburg-Harburg, 19th April 2004 13

 References
[Ferguson 2003] Donald F. Ferguson, et. al.: Secure, Reliable, Transacted Web Services:
Architecture and Composition, MSDN Library, 2003.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnwebsrv/html/wsoverview.asp
[Glass 2000] Graham Glass: The Web Services (R)evolution - Applying Web Services to
Applications, IBM developerWorks, 2000.
http://www-4.ibm.com/software/developer/library/ws-peer1.html
[Graham 2001] Steve Graham, et. al.: Building Web Services with Java: Making Sense of XML,
SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI, Sams Publishing, 2001.
[Hégaret 2003] Philippe Le Hégaret: Introduction to Web Services, 2003.
http://www.w3.org/2003/Talks/0317-ws-intro/
[Kreger 2001] Heather Kreger: Web Services Conceptual Architecture (WSCA 1.0), IBM Software
Group, 2001.
http://www.ibm.com/software/solutions/webservices/pdf/WSCA.pdf
[Newcomer 2002] Eric Newcomer: Understanding Web Services: XML, WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI,
Addison Wesley Professional, Independent Technology Guides, 2002.
[Ogbuji 2002] Uche Ogbuji: The Past, Present and Future of Web Services, Part 1, 2002.
http://www.webservices.org/index.php/article/articleprint/663/-1/24/
[Tidwell 2000] Doug Tidwell: Web Services: The Web’s next revolution, IBM developerWorks, 2000.
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/ws-dw-wsbasics-i.html
[W3C 2004] W3C: Web Services Glossary, W3C Working Group Note, 2004.
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/NOTE-ws-gloss-20040211/

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