Chapter 6. Describing Web Services

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Why Service Descriptions?

• Role of Service Description in a Service-Oriented Architecture

• Well Defined Service

• History of IDLs

• Web Services Definition Language (WSDL)

• WSDL and Java

• Future Service Description Efforts

To this point, we have described XML and positioned it as the underpinnings of the SOAP messaging protocol. Given that XML is a self-describing, human-readable representation of data, isn't that enough to make a SOAP message also self-describing? If so, then why do we need an approach for service descriptions? We'll answer this question in this chapter.