Chapter 3 Service Endpoint Design

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processing layer may have to interact with EISs. For these cases, refer to Chapter

6 for guidelines.

3.6

Publishing a Web Service

Up to now, this chapter has covered guidelines for designing and implementing your

Web service. Just as important, your Web service needs to be accessible to its

intended clients. Recall that some Web services are intended for use by the general

public. Other Web services are intended to be used only between trusted business

partners (inter enterprise), and still others are intended for use just within an enter 

prise (intra enterprise). 

Regardless of whether a service is to be accessible to the public, other enter 

prises, or even within a single enterprise, you must first make the details about the

Web service its interface, parameters, where the service is located, and so

forth accessible to clients. You do so by making a description of the Web service

available to interested parties. As noted in  Web Services Description Language 

on page 36, WSDL is the standard language for describing a service. Making this

WSDL description available to clients enables them to use the service. 

Once the WSDL is ready, you have the option to publish it in a registry. The

next section describes when you might want to publish the WSDL in a registry. If

you make the WSDL description of your service available in a public registry,

then a Java based client can use the JAXR APIs to look up the description of your

service and then use the service. For that matter, a client can use the same JAXR

APIs to look up the description of any Web service with an available WSDL

description. This section examines registries from the point of view of a service

developer.

3.6.1 Publishing a Service in a Registry

Publishing a service in a registry is one method of making the service available to

clients. If you decide to publish your service in a registry, you decide on the type of

registry to use based on the likely usage scenarios for your service. Registries run

the gamut from public registries to corporate registries available only within a single

enterprise.

E

You may want to register Web services for general public consumption on a 

well known public registry.