Web Services Protocol Stack
Encyclopedia
A web service protocol stack is a protocol stack
(a stack of computer networking protocols) that is used to define, locate, implement, and make Web services interact with each other. A Web service protocol stack typically stacks four protocols:
The Web service protocol stack also includes a whole range of recently defined protocols: BPEL
, SOAP-DSIG.
Protocol stack
The protocol stack is an implementation of a computer networking protocol suite. The terms are often used interchangeably. Strictly speaking, the suite is the definition of the protocols, and the stack is the software implementation of them....
(a stack of computer networking protocols) that is used to define, locate, implement, and make Web services interact with each other. A Web service protocol stack typically stacks four protocols:
- (Service) Transport Protocol: responsible for transporting messages between network applications and includes protocols such as HTTP, SMTP, FTPFile Transfer ProtocolFile Transfer Protocol is a standard network protocol used to transfer files from one host to another host over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server...
, as well as the more recent Blocks Extensible Exchange ProtocolBEEPIn computer networking, BEEP is a framework for creating network application protocols. It includes an application protocol kernel for connection-oriented asynchronous interactions, and can be used both for binary and text messages within the context of a single application user identity.BEEP is...
(BEEP). - (XML) Messaging Protocol: responsible for encoding messages in a common XMLXMLExtensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
format so that they can be understood at either end of a network connection. Currently, this area includes such protocols as XML-RPCXML-RPCXML-RPC is a remote procedure call protocol which uses XML to encode its calls and HTTP as a transport mechanism. "XML-RPC" also refers generically to the use of XML for remote procedure call, independently of the specific protocol...
, WS-AddressingWS-AddressingWS-Addressing or Web Services Addressing is a specification of transport-neutral mechanisms that allow web services to communicate addressing information...
, and SOAP. - (Service) Description Protocol: used for describing the public interface to a specific Web service. The WSDLWeb Services Description LanguageThe Web Services Description Language is an XML-based language that is used for describing the functionality offered by a Web service. A WSDL description of a web service provides a machine-readable description of how the service can be called, what parameters it expects and what data structures...
interface format is typically used for this purpose. - (Service) Discovery Protocol: centralizes services into a common registry such that network Web services can publish their location and description, and makes it easy to discover what services are available on the network. Universal Description Discovery and IntegrationUniversal Description Discovery and IntegrationUniversal Description, Discovery and Integration is a platform-independent, Extensible Markup Language -based registry for businesses worldwide to list themselves on the Internet and a mechanism to register and locate web service applications...
(UDDI) was intended for this purpose, but it has not been widely adopted.
The Web service protocol stack also includes a whole range of recently defined protocols: BPEL
Business Process Execution Language
Business Process Execution Language , short for Web Services Business Process Execution Language is an OASIS standard executable language for specifying actions within business processes with web services...
, SOAP-DSIG.