Components of connector for web services

Figure 1 illustrates the connector for web services, including its protocol handler and listener frameworks and the SOAP data handler.

Note:
The Web Services Adapter comes with a limited use license of the XML data handler. The adapter, however, does not require the XML data handler to function.

Figure 1. The connector for web services


The following components interact to enable data exchanges across the Internet:

Web services connector

During request processing, the web services connector responds to collaboration service calls by converting business objects to SOAP request messages and conveying them to destination web services. Optionally (for synchronous request processing) the connector converts SOAP response messages to SOAP Response business objects and returns these to the collaboration.

During event processing, the connector processes SOAP request messages from client web services by converting them into SOAP Request business objects and passing them on to collaborations (that have been exposed as web services) for processing. The connector optionally receives SOAP Response business objects from the collaboration, which are converted to SOAP response messages and then returned to client web services.

For further information, see Web services connector

Note:
In this document, any mention of a connector is a reference to the web services connector, unless specified otherwise.

Protocol listeners and handlers

The connector includes the following protocol listeners and handlers:

Protocol listeners detect events from internal or external web service clients in SOAP/HTTP, SOAP/HTTPS, or SOAP/JMS formats. They notify the connector of events that require processing by a collaboration that has been exposed as a web service. Protocol listeners then read the business-object-level and attribute-level ASI, connector properties, and transformation rules embedded in protocol configuration objects to determine the collaboration, data handler, processing mode (synchronous/asynchronous) and transport-specific aspects of the web services transaction. For a detailed account of protocol listener processing, see Protocol listeners.

Protocol handlers invoke web services in SOAP/HTTP, SOAP/HTTPS, or SOAP/JMS formats on behalf of a collaboration. Protocol handlers read TLO ASI and transformation rules embedded in protocol configuration objects to determine how to process the request (synchronously or asynchronously), which data handler to use to convert SOAP messages to SOAP business objects and vice versa, and to determine the target address of the web service (from the Destination attribute of the SOAP Request business object Protocol Config MO). For synchronous transactions, the protocol handler processes SOAP response messages, converting them into SOAP Response business objects and passing them back to the collaboration.

For further information on protocol handlers, see Protocol handlers.

SOAP data handler

The SOAP data handler converts SOAP business objects to SOAP messages and vice versa. For further information on the SOAP data handler, see SOAP data handler.

For further details, see SOAP data handler.

Web services configuration tools

You can deploy web service solutions with collaborations that invoke, or are exposed as, web services.

When you enable a collaboration for request processing, you use the WSDL Object Discovery Agent (ODA) to generate web service TLOs. For further information on request processing and the WSDL ODA, see Enabling collaborations for request processing.

When you expose a collaboration as a web service, you use the WSDL Configuration Wizard, which helps you generate a WSDL document for the collaboration that you then publish, for example, via a UDDI registry. The connector provides no tools for publishing this information. For information on exposing collaborations as web services, see Exposing collaborations as web services.

Deploying the connector

There are two ways to deploy the web services connector:

Note:
The web services connector does not include a gateway or front-end for managing incoming or outgoing messages from or to external web services. You must configure and deploy your own gateway. The connector must be deployed within the enterprise only, not in the DMZ or outside of the firewall.

Copyright IBM Corp. 1997, 2004