G52IWS: Web Services

Julian Zappala

Contents

Definitions of Web services

Comparison of WWW/HTML and Web services
− Booking a trip

Motivations for Web services

Web Services and Standards

Logical & Technical views of Web services

See “Developing Java Web Services”, chapter 2

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1
 Definitions of Web Services

“Web services are loosely coupled software components
delivered over Internet standard technologies”
Gartner Research
June 15 2001

Web Services mean many things to many people… a set of

standards which allow us to do things we could not do
before…The common themes are:-
− A departure from the web as a quasi-static information space to one in
which interactions are the primary model
− A use of HTTP, XML and other standards from the web architecture as
the building blocks
− A typical focus on enterprise wide and inter-enterprise operations
Tim Berners-Lee
2002
3

Booking a Trip – Using WWW/HTML

GET/POST Search Engine
request

Airline Reservation
Website

User with a Hotel Reservation

browser Website

communication:
HTTP over TCP/IP
Rental Car
Reservation
Website
Document
(usually HTML) 4

2
 Booking a Trip – Using WWW/HTML

Search engines index the WWW

The user discovers web sites using a search

engine



They then directly request things (“documents”,
e.g. a reservation page) from those web sites

Booking a Trip – Using Web

Services

Airline
Register Reservation
Find services System

Wireless services Travel

device Services
Registry

Hotel
Reservation
System
Invoke services

Service Requestor
Desktop Travel
Reservation
Services
Provider Rental Car
Reservation
System 6
After “Developing Java Web Services” Figure 2.1

3
 Booking a Trip – Using Web
Services

Travel reservation services provider exposes
travel services via a web service interfaces

The services are registered with (described in)
the travel services registry

A customer discovers the service(s) from the
registry (or other search engine)


They then directly request things (“services”,
e.g. a reservation) from those web services

Motivations for Web Services

Based on XML messaging

Loosely coupled – abstracted service interfaces

Use any common programming language

Industry standard protocols (HTTP)
− Familiar and simple
− Internet scope
− Firewall compatibility
− Established mechanisms for scalability, robustness,
etc.
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4
 Motivations cont.

Usable by many types of client

Support a range of levels of functionality from
trivial to profound

Supported by other middleware/platforms
− e.g. J2EE, CORBA, Microsoft .NET

Support dynamically locatable and invocable
services

Support cross-platform integration of business
applications over the internet
9

Core Web Service Standards

Extensible Markup Language (XML)

− How to encode arbitrary information in document
form

SOAP (formerly known as Simple Object Access Protocol)

− How to express web service requests and
responses in XML

Web Services Definition Language (WSDL)

− Defines the operations, data types and faults that
characterise a web service

10

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Core Web Service Standards (cont.)


Universal Description, Discovery and
Integration (UDDI)

− How to describe, publish, store and retrieve
information about web services in registries

WS-Security
− Various security-related facilities & definitions,
including XML Encryption, XML Key Management
System, XML Signature, ...

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A Logical View of Web Services

Service
Broker
Register
Discover
service
Service

Service Service
Requestor Provider
Invoke service

12

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 A Technical View of Web Services
Web Services communicate
using

are described
by
is written XML is written
in in
WSDL SOAP

binds to
is discovered (is realised by)
through
is accessed
using
UDDI

13

Supporting standards

TCP/IP
− The Internet Protocol suite for reliable global
communication

DNS – the Domain Name System
− The standard Internet naming protocol

HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

− A common “binding” for SOAP – to carry SOAP
requests and responses

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7
 Other related standards

ebXML
− Complementary standards specific to e-business

Web Services Choreography Interface
− Standard(s) for defining more complex patterns of
interaction between web services

Business Transaction Protocol
− Support for web service distributed transactions

15

Challenges for web services

Distributed transactions
− How are success, failure and recovery coordinated?

Quality of Server (QoS)

− How can we ensure reliability and dependability?
− How can service-level agreements be enforced?

Security
− This is all happening over the internet…
− Publicly exposed core business services and
operations!
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 Summary

Web services are like WWW for computers
− Publishing “services” rather than documents
− In XML (for machines) rather than HTML (for
people)

− Using standard technologies (XML, HTTP, ...)


Especially useful for
− Business-to-business integration and
interoperability
− Other loosely-coupled distributed applications

Recommended reading for this lecture
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− Developing Java Web Services: Chapter 2