Web Technologies And Services

Name: sravya
Cse 3rd year
Vidya Vikas Institute Of Technology
Email-id : sravya_funny@yahoo.co.in

Abstract
Web services are a new breed of Web application.
They are self-contained ,self-describing, modular
applications that can be published, located, and
invoked across the Web. Web services perform
functions, which can be anything from simple requests
to complicated business processes. … Once
a Web service is deployed, other applications (and
other Web services) can discover and invoke the
deployed service. The notion of web services captures
a recent technological development that aims at the
possibility to access services (i.e. applications)
through the Internet infrastructure (i.e. Web
standards). Technologically they represent only a
small change as compared to earlier
distributed computing standards, but the impact of this
new technology is considered as
being very high as it facilitates automated distributed
computing and information access by Here, the service requester is the client of the web
taking advantage of the ubiquitously available Web service, and the service provider is the host of the web
infrastructure. In particular on-demand service. A requester makes SOAP requests to the
use of software is considered as one of the important provider and the provider responses accordingly.
developments Web service technology
is going to support. A service registry can be thought of as a database of
web services. It has the definitions and URIs for web
services. Developers of web services can publish their
An Introduction to Web Services services to a service registry if they wish. After that
someone can query the registry and choose the service
Let's start learning about web services with the from the registry. Since a registry has all the
definition for web service as provided by W3C. information required to develop a web client,
According to them, a web service is a software developers can search and find necessary information
application which is identified by a URI, whose from a service registry using UDDI (Universal
interfaces and binding are capable of being defined, Description, Discovery and Integration).
described and discovered by XML using XML-based
messages via Internet-based protocols. An Introduction to Web Services - A closer
look at SOAP, WSDL and UDDI
A web service is usually identified by a URI (Unified
Recourse Identifier). A web service has WSDL (Web Up to this point we have learned about three elements
Service Description Language) definitions. To of web service platforms: SOAP, WSDL and UDDI. A
communicate with web services we need to use SOAP developer usually publishes the WSDL for their
messages, which are XML based messages transported services in the registry. A client can query the registry
over Internet protocols like HTTP, SMTP, and FTP. using UDDI and get the WSDL from the registry.
Web services can be better described with the After that the client can establish a connection with the
following diagram. service and send SOAP requests to the service, whose
response will also be SOAP messages.
SOAP is used for communication between
applications via the Internet. SOAP is platform
independent. SOAP is also language independent; it is
based on XML. Each SOAP message has a mandatory
SOAP envelope, and multiple optional attachments. A
SOAP envelope consists of an optional SOAP header,
a mandatory body, and optional fault sections. Usually
a SOAP body contains the original requests or the
responses.
WSDL is an XML document, which is used to
describe web services. WSDL is also used to locate
web services. WSDL elements include the following:
Types
A definition
A web service is a programmable component that
provides a service and is accessible over the Internet.
Web services can be standalone or linked together to
provide enhanced functionality.
Web services consist of methods that operate on
messages containing either document-oriented or
procedure-oriented information. An architecture that is
based on web services is the logical evolution from a
system of distributed object-oriented components to a
network of services. Web services provide a loosely
coupled infrastructure that enables cross-enterprise
integration.

• Data type definitions
Messages
• Abstract, typed definitions of data being
exchanged (Request/Response)
Operations
Web services differ from existing component object
models and their associated object model specific
protocols, such as CORBA and IIOP, COM and
DCOM, and Java and RMI, in that the distributed
components are interfaced via non-object-specific
protocols. Web services can be written in any language
and can be accessed using the familiar and firewall-
friendly HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP).

• Abstract descriptions of an action

• Refer to input and/or output messages

Port type

• Collection of operations
• Abstract definition of a service

Binding

• Concrete protocol and data format for a

particular

Port

• Defines a single communication endpoint

• Endpoint address for binding

Service Figure 1. Web services stack

• Aggregate set of related ports
UDDI is a directory for storing information about web
services. UDDI is also a directory of web service
interfaces described by WSDL. UDDI communicates
via SOAP.
As shown in Figure 1, web services consist of multiple
layers that, when stacked together, form the basis for a
standard mechanism for discovering, describing, and
invoking the functionality provided by a standalone
web service.
Protocol layer
At the bottom of the layered architecture model, any of
the standard Internet protocols may be used to invoke
web services over the network. The initial definition
focuses specifically on HTTP/1.1 (and the encrypted
HTTPS).
HTTP/1.1 is a text-based "request-response" style
protocol, which specifies that a client opens a
connection to a server, then sends a request using a
very specific format. The server responds and, if
necessary, keeps the connection open. Other request-
response style protocols, such as FTP and SMTP can
also be used, though they are not yet defined in the
standards around web services.
Packaging layer
Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is a
lightweight protocol designed for the exchange of
information. Focused on distributed, decentralized
environments, it provides a framework to invoke
services across the Internet. It also provides the
mechanism for enabling cross-platform integration
independent of any programming language and
distributed object infrastructure.
SOAP represents the evolution of xml-rpc and has
been adopted as an Internet standard. SOAP is text
based (extensible Markup Language, or XML) and can
run over HTTP, making it better able to operate in the
face of firewalls than DCOM, RMI, or IIOP. SOAP is
also easy to implement on an embedded device, unlike
ORBs.
SOAP does not define a programming model or
implementation. Instead, it defines a modular
packaging model and the encoding mechanisms for
encoding data within modules. This allows SOAP to
be used in any number of systems ranging from
message passing systems to remote procedure calls.
A SOAP message is XML-encoded and consists of
three parts:
• An envelope, which provides the framework
for packaging message information
• Encoding rules that define how messages
should be processed
• An RPC representation that defines how to
represent remote procedure calls and
responses
The SOAP specification also defines bindings to
transport SOAP messages using the HTTP protocol.
SOAP messages are uni-directional. Individual
messages are typically combined to form a
request/response mechanism.
The SOAP message exchange model requires that
applications receiving a SOAP message execute the
following sequence of actions:
1. Identify all the components of the SOAP
message that are intended for this particular
application. Applications may act as SOAP
intermediaries and pass parts of the message
on to other applications.
2. Verify that all the mandatory parts specified
in the SOAP message are supported by the
application, and process them accordingly.
3. If the SOAP application is not the end
destination of the message, it should remove
all the parts that the application consumes and
then forward the message to the next
application the message is intended for.
The SOAP encoding style uses both scalar types
(strings, integers, and so on) and compound types
(structures and arrays). These types appear as elements
in an XML document. The data types defined in the
XML schema specification, along with types derived
from those, can be used directly as SOAP elements.
Any robust messaging system must expect that faults
may occur; SOAP is no exception. SOAP has a built-
in fault element that is used to carry error and status
information. Because it is based on XML, the fault-
reporting system of SOAP is highly extensible and
quite flexible.
The SOAP specification details the mechanisms used
to make remote procedure calls (RPC). The example in
Listing 1 actually invokes a remote procedure (in this
case a web service called Event Service) by packaging
the parameters the procedure requires as a structure.
The response to a method invocation is also modeled
as a structure that contains the return value and
possibly the parameters (in the same order they were
passed).
Web services and SOAP are two different things.
SOAP is simply one way to package and bind the
information required to invoke a web service. It
happens to be the method that is most commonly
associated with web services, but web services can be
invoked using other encoding techniques, such as
simple URL-encoded messages for bandwidth-
constrained scenarios. In addition, SOAP itself is not
strictly relegated to web services. SOAP can be used
as an access mechanism for any type of remote objects
or procedures or as a simple message passing
mechanism.
Information layer
XML is a meta-language that enables cross-platform
data interchange using a standard method for encoding
and formatting information. Unlike HyperText
Markup Language (HTML), XML lets you publish
information not only about how your data is
structured, but also about what it means (that is, its
context). In addition, significant benefits accrue
through maintaining an XML document's structure,
content, and presentation as three distinct components.
For example, part of the content of an HTML
document may look as follows:
<b>Motor Failure</b>
This instructs a browser to display the text string
"Motor Failure" as bold text. HTML is purely about
formatting and display. XML takes it much further and
provides information about what the content is
describing, not just about how it looks. For example,
an XML document may take the same text but actually
apply a data type to it as follows:
<FaultType>Motor Failure</FaultType>
This format gives the interpreter of this document a
clearer understanding of what the text signifies.
Some people will tell you that all you need to do is
support XML in your devices to solve all of the
world's problems. But XML is only a markup
language; supporting XML does not magically
integrate you into a host of business applications or
make for a complete solution. XML may provide a
description of an event as a fault, but it does not
provide the device or business logic that says what to
do when that fault occurs or how to ensure that the
fault indication is properly captured in one or more
enterprise applications. That is why the higher-level
concept of web services, which are based on XML, is
so important.
Service layer
The interface to web services is defined in the XML-
based Web Services Description Language (WSDL),
which provides all of the information necessary for an
application to access the specified service.
A WSDL document is an XML description of a web
service. WSDL takes great pains to promote
reusability. Several abstract and concrete elements are
combined to define the functionality and access
mechanisms of a web service. The following list
enumerates the elements used to define a web service:
• types-containers for data type definitions can
be scalar or complex, currently based on the
XML schema
• message-an abstract, typed definition of the
data being communicated
• operation-an abstract description of an action
supported by the web service
• port type-an abstract set of operations
supported by one or more end points
• binding-a concrete protocol and data format
specification for a particular port type
• port-a single endpoint that is an instantiation
of a port type in combination with a binding
and a network address
• service-a collection of related ports
A web service is defined in a collection of ports,
which, in turn, are a collection of abstract operations
and messages. Keeping the operations and messages
abstract allows them to be bound to different protocols
and data formats such as SOAP, HTTP GET/POST,
or MIME.
Discovery layer
The final, and optional, piece in the web services
protocol stack is the Universal Description, Discovery,
and Integration (UDDI) specification. UDDI offers a
way to publish information about web services, as well
as provide a mechanism to discover what web services
are available. In essence, UDDI is a registration
system instantiated as a series of XML files, and
associated schema, which contain a description of a
business entity and the web services that it offers. It is
envisioned that there will ultimately be many public
UDDI registration servers distributed about the Web
that continually replicate data amongst themselves.
The UDDI specification provides a programmatic
interface that allows a business to register a
web service and/or search through the
registry for a specific web service. Once the
 desired web service is identified, a pointer to
the location of the WSDL document is
provided. It is important to note that UDDI is
entirely optional. Companies with web
services that want to limit specific
functionality to people or devices of their
choosing need not advertise their service
externally.
Problem Space Addressed by Web
Services
Web Services is probably not the first solution to such
a problem. RMI, COM, CORBA, EDI, and ebXML
also address the same problem space. So, what would
make Web Services so special and different from the
rest?
Web Services is based on the already existing and
well-known HTTP protocol, and uses XML as the
base language. This makes it a very developer-friendly
service system. However, most of the above-
mentioned technologies such as RMI, COM, and
CORBA involve a whole learning curve. New
technologies and languages have to be learnt to
implement these services.
Also, Web Services is based on a set of standardized
rules and specifications, making it more portable. This
was not the case with the technologies mentioned
earlier.
Component Technologies of Web Services
Consider a scenario in which you need to locate a
particular pharmacy store in your area. You would not
go out on the road and ask every person you met the
way to the store. You might, instead, refer the Web
site of the pharmacy on the Internet. If you knew the
pharmacy's Web site, you would look it up directly
and find the location through the store locator link. If
not, you would go to a search engine and type out the
name of the pharmacy in the language that the search
engine was meant to recognize. After getting the
location, you would find the directions to the store,
and then go to the store.
The structure of Web Services is also very similar.
Web Services provide for each of these previously
described activities.
If you carefully look at the preceding example, you
will see that there is a requestor or a consumer—that is
you. There is also a service, the pharmacy store. The
central database of information is the Internet, through
which you find the location of the pharmacy. In the
example, when you fire a search in the search engine,
your request is wrapped in a structure, whose language
is predetermined and localized, and then passed onto
the server running the search engine.
In Web Services, SOAP, UDDI, and WSDL represent
the roles mentioned in these steps.
SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is the method
by which you can send messages across different
modules. This is similar to how you communicate with
the search engine that contains an index with the Web
sites registered in the index associated with the
keywords.
UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and
Integration) is the global look up base for locating the
services. In the example mentioned earlier, this is
analogous to the index service for the search engine, in
which all the Web sites register themselves associated
with their keywords. It maintains a record of all the
pharmacy store locations throughout the country.
WSDL (Web Services Definition Language) is the
method through which different services are described
in the UDDI. This maps to the actual search engine in
our example.
Figure 1.1 illustrates this concept.
Figure 1.1
Imagine if you had to maintain a copy of such
information for each and every service available in
your vicinity! With every change in your residence or
your requirement, you would need to compile a new
list. The preceding example is a very simplified form
of the Web Services environment. But, don't get fooled
by this. The scope of Web Services is not limited to
just a lookup service. So, how does Web Services
become important for the business world?
Business Aspects of Web Services
Web Services in the business world, in the most
simplistic fashion, provides a mechanism of
communication between two remote systems,
connected through the network of the Web Services.
For example, in case of a merger or an acquisition,
companies don't have to invest large sums of money
developing software to bring the systems of the
different companies together. By extending the
business applications as Web Services, the information
systems of different companies can be linked. These
business systems then can be accessed by using simple
SOAP messages over the normal HTTP Web protocol.
For example, a manufacturing company requires some
raw materials to be supplied whenever the material in
stock reaches the threshold levels. These levels can be
constantly monitored by the business system of a
trusted supplier, and promptly replenished, without
having to wait for a supervisor to notice it and
generate a work order.
There are many more important uses of Web Services.
These, again, depend on the requirement of your
company. Interested enough to find out more? In our
next article, you will learn about the architecture of
Web Services, the technology organization, the
protocols used, and the basic steps involved in
building a Web Services application.
Web services' distributed computing model allows
application-to-application communication. For
example, one purchase-and-ordering application could
communicate to an inventory application that specific
items need to be reordered. Because of this level of
application integration, Web services have grown in
popularity and are beginning to improve business
processes. In fact, some even call Web services the
next evolution of the Web.
Web Services Technology
Web services are built on several technologies that
work in conjunction with emerging standards to ensure
security and manageability, and to make certain that
Web services can be combined to work independent of
a vendor. The term Web service describes a
standardized way of integrating Web-based
applications using the XML, SOAP, WSDL and UDDI
open standards over an Internet protocol backbone
XML
Short for Extensible Markup Language, a
specification developed by the W3C. XML is a pared-
down version of SGML, designed especially for Web
documents. It allows designers to create their own
customized tags, enabling the definition, transmission,
validation, and interpretation of data between
applications and between organizations.
SOAP
Short for Simple Object Access Protocol, a lightweight
XML-based messaging protocol used to encode the
information in Web service request and response
messages before sending them over a network. SOAP
messages are independent of any operating system or
protocol and may be transported using a variety of
Internet protocols, including SMTP, MIME, and
HTTP.
WSDL
Short for Web Services Description Language, an
XML-formatted language used to describe a Web
service's capabilities as collections of communication
endpoints capable of exchanging messages. WSDL is
an integral part of UDDI, an XML-based worldwide
business registry. WSDL is the language that UDDI
uses. WSDL was developed jointly by Microsoft and
IBM.
UDDI
Short for Universal Description, Discovery and
Integration. It is a Web-based distributed directory
that enables businesses to list themselves on the
Internet and discover each other, similar to a
traditional phone book's yellow and white pages.
XML is used to tag the data, SOAP is used to transfer
the data, WSDL is used for describing the services
available and UDDI is used for listing what services
are available. Used primarily as a means for businesses
to communicate with each other and with clients, Web
services allow organizations to communicate data
without intimate knowledge of each other's IT systems
behind the firewall.
Security
Security has become a hot topic for Web services. provides a means for partner applications to share user
Because it is based on program-to-program authentication and authorization information. This is
interactions as opposed to human-to-program essentially the single sign-on (SSO) feature being
interaction, it is important for Web service security to offered by all major vendors in their e-commerce
address topics such as access control, authentication, products. In the absence of any standard protocol on
data integrity and privacy. Today the most common sharing authentication information, vendors normally
security scheme is SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), but use cookies in HTTP communication to implement
when it comes to Web services there are limitations SSO. With the advent of SAML, this same data can be
with SSL. The Web service technology has been wrapped inside XML in a standard way, so that
moving towards different XML-based security cookies are not needed and interoperable SSO can be
schemes for Web services. Some of the XML-based achieved.
securities include the following:
ebXML Message Service: The OASIS ebXML
XML digital signature: The XML Signature Message Service defines the message enveloping and
specification is a joint effort of W3C and IETF. XML header document schema used to transfer ebXML
Signatures provide integrity, message authentication messages over a communications protocol such as
and/or signer authentication services for data of any HTTP or SMTP and the behavior of software sending
type, whether located within the XML that includes and receiving ebXML messages.
the signature or elsewhere.
References:
XML Encryption: W3C's XML Encryption
specification addresses the issue of data confidentiality [1] Karl Aberer, EPFL-SSC, Laboratoire de systèmes
using encryption techniques. Encrypted data is d'informations rèpartis
wrapped inside XML tags defined by the XML
Encryption specification.
[2] Srinivas Koushik SVP, Enterprise Chief Technology
Officer Nationwide
XKMS (XML Key Management Specification): The
XML Key Management Specification (XKMS) [3] Juan Jose Rodriguez Hector Galan Marti
comprises two parts ‫ ׫‬the XML Key Information
Service Specification (X-KISS) and the XML Key
Registration Service Specification (X-KRSS). The X-
KISS specification defines a protocol for a Trust
service that resolves public key information contained
in XML-SIGelements. The X-KISS protocol allows a
client of such a service to delegate part or all of the
tasks required to process elements. The X-KRSS
specification defines a protocol for a web service that
accepts registration of public key information. Once
registered, the public key may be used in conjunction
with other web services including X-KISS.

SAML (Secure Assertion Markup Language):

SAML is an XML-based framework for
communicating user authentication, entitlement and
attribute information. As its name suggests, SAML
allows business entities to make assertions regarding
the identity, attributes, and entitlements of a subject
(an entity that is often a human user) to other entities,
such as a partner company or another enterprise
application. The OASIS Security Services Technical
Committee is in charge of defining, enhancing, and
maintaining the specifications that define SAML.

WS-Security (Web Services Security): Security

Assertion Markup Language (SAML) from OASIS