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Development Environments

and
Infrastructures for Distributed Systems

Web Services
Outline
• Introduction to Web Services,
• Applications,
• Advantages of Web Services,
• Challenges,
• Service Oriented Architectures,
• Web Services:
– SOAP,
– WSDL,
– UDDI.
Introduction to Web Services
• Microsoft coined the term “Web services” in June 2000, when
the company introduced Web services as a key component of
its .Net initiative,
– A new vision for embracing the Internet in the development,
engineering and use of software.
• As others began to investigate Web services, it became clear
that the technology could revolutionise distributed computing.
• Now, nearly every major vendor is marketing Web services’
tools and applications and Web services are radically changing
IT architectures and partner relationships.
Introduction to Web Services
• Web services encompass a set of related
standards that can allow any two computers to
communicate and exchange data via a network,
such as the Internet.
• The primary standard used in Web services is
the Extensible Markup Language (XML)
developed by the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C).
• Developers use XML tags to describe individual
pieces of data, forming XML documents, which
are text-based and can be processed on any
platform.
Introduction to Web Services
• XML’s portability and its rapid adoption throughout the
industry made it the obvious choice for enabling cross-
platform data communication in Web services.
• XML provides the foundation for many core Web services
standards:
1. SOAP,
2. WSDL,
3. UDDI,
– Plus vocabularies of XML-based markup for a specific industry or
purpose).
• Almost every type of business can benefit from Web services
such as:
– Expediting software development,
– Integrating applications and databases,
– Automating transactions with suppliers, partners, and clients.
Introduction to Web Services
• SOAP (was originally called the Simple Object
Access Protocol) is an XML vocabulary that lets
programs on separate computers to interact
across a network (via RPC).
• WSDL (Web Services Description Language) is
another XML vocabulary that lets developers
describe Web services and their capabilities in a
standardised format.
• UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and
Integration) is a framework that defines XML-
based registries where businesses can publish
information about themselves and the services
they offer.
Web Services’ Applications
• Unfortunately, interoperability, the ability to
communicate and share data with software
from different vendors and platforms, is
limited among conventional proprietary
technologies, e.g. DCE, CORBA, DCOM and
RMI.
• Web services improve distributed computing
interoperability by using open (non-
proprietary) standards that can enable
(theoretically) any two software components
to communicate:
– Also they are easier to debug because they are
text-based, rather than binary, communication
protocols.
The Advantages of Web Services
• Web services advantages:
– Use open, text-based standards, which allow components written in
different languages and for different platforms to communicate,
– Promotes a modular approach to programming, so multiple
organisations can communicate with the same Web services.
– Comparatively easy and inexpensive to implement, because they
employ an existing infrastructure and because most applications can
be repackaged as Web services,
– Significantly reduce the costs of enterprise application integration
(EAI) and B2B communications,
– Implemented incrementally, rather than all at once which lessens the
cost and reduces the organisational disruption from an abrupt switch
in technologies,
– The Web Services Interoperability Organisation (WS-I) consisting of
over 100 vendors promotes interoperability.
Web Services’ challenges
• Web services’ challenges:
– The standards that drive Web services are still in
draft form, always will be in refinement.
– Some vendors want to retain their intellectual
property rights to certain Web services standards.
– Web services need standard security procedures,
a common problem to all of distributed
computing.
– The leading registry, based on the UDDI specification, has
some key limitations, and alternative discovery methods
are provided by ebXML and WS-Inspection.
– Web services need Quality of Service (QoS) support from
Web Services Registries, Brokerages, and Network
Providers.
Web Services Basics
• Web services:
– Software programs that use XML to exchange
information with other software via common
Internet protocols:
• Scalable, e.g. multiplying two numbers together to an
entire customer-relationship management system,
• Programmable - encapsulates a task,
• Based on XML - open, text-based standard,
• Self-describing - metadata for access and use,
• Discoverable - search and locate in registries,.
Architecture of Web Service
• A web service is a network accessible interface to
application functionality, built using standard
Internet technologies.
• Clients of web services do NOT need to know how
it is implemented.

Application

Application

 client  Web
 code
 Network  Service
Web Services
WSDL
WSDL

1. Client queries registry to locate
Document
Document service.
 UDDI
 2
2. Registry refers client to WSDL
Registry
document.
3. Client accesses WSDL document.
4. WSDL provides data to interact with
3
 Web service.
1

5. Client sends SOAP-message request.
4
 6. Web service returns SOAP-message
response.
 5
 Client
Web
 6 Services
Step1. Write Web Service Method
 shopping web service?

  Discovery
Discovery  Web Service  UDDI
 Client
 WSDL URIs




  Description
Description   Web Service

 WSD

  WSDL

 
 SOAPL pkg 

  Packaging
Packaging  Proxy request 
SOAP pkg

response

  Transport
Transport 


  Network
Network

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