Booking a Trip – Using WWW/HTML

GET/POST Search Engine

request

G52IWS: Web Services Airline Reservation

Website

Julian Zappala
User with a Hotel Reservation
browser Website

communication:
HTTP over TCP/IP
Rental Car
Reservation
Website
Document
1 (usually HTML) 4

Contents Booking a Trip – Using WWW/HTML

Definitions of Web services
Search engines index the WWW

Comparison of WWW/HTML and Web services
− Booking a trip
The user discovers web sites using a search

Motivations for Web services engine

Web Services and Standards


Logical & Technical views of Web services
They then directly request things (“documents”,
e.g. a reservation page) from those web sites

See “Developing Java Web Services”, chapter 2

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Booking a Trip – Using Web

Definitions of Web Services
Services

“Web services are loosely coupled software components
delivered over Internet standard technologies”
Gartner Research
Airline
June 15 2001 Register Reservation
Find services System

Wireless services Travel

device Services

Web Services mean many things to many people… a set of Registry
standards which allow us to do things we could not do
before…The common themes are:-
Hotel
− A departure from the web as a quasi-static information space to one in Reservation
which interactions are the primary model System

− A use of HTTP, XML and other standards from the web architecture as Invoke services
the building blocks
− A typical focus on enterprise wide and inter-enterprise operations Service Requestor
Desktop Travel
Tim Berners-Lee Reservation
Services
2002 Provider Rental Car
Reservation
3 System 6
After “Developing Java Web Services” Figure 2.1

1
 Booking a Trip – Using Web
Core Web Service Standards
Services

Travel reservation services provider exposes
Extensible Markup Language (XML)

travel services via a web service interfaces − How to encode arbitrary information in document

The services are registered with (described in) form
the travel services registry
SOAP (formerly known as Simple Object Access Protocol)


A customer discovers the service(s) from the − How to express web service requests and
registry (or other search engine)
responses in XML

They then directly request things (“services”,
Web Services Definition Language (WSDL)

e.g. a reservation) from those web services − Defines the operations, data types and faults that
characterise a web service

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Motivations for Web Services Core Web Service Standards (cont.)

Based on XML messaging
Universal Description, Discovery and
Integration (UDDI)


Loosely coupled – abstracted service interfaces
− How to describe, publish, store and retrieve

Use any common programming language information about web services in registries

Industry standard protocols (HTTP)
WS-Security
− Familiar and simple − Various security-related facilities & definitions,
− Internet scope including XML Encryption, XML Key Management
− Firewall compatibility System, XML Signature, ...
− Established mechanisms for scalability, robustness,
etc.
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Motivations cont. A Logical View of Web Services

Usable by many types of client

Support a range of levels of functionality from Service
Broker
Register
trivial to profound Discover
Service service

Supported by other middleware/platforms

− e.g. J2EE, CORBA, Microsoft .NET

Support dynamically locatable and invocable
services Service
Requestor
Service
Provider
Invoke service

Support cross-platform integration of business
applications over the internet
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2
 A Technical View of Web Services Challenges for web services
Web Services communicate
Distributed transactions
using
− How are success, failure and recovery coordinated?
are described
by
Quality of Server (QoS)

is written XML is written
in in − How can we ensure reliability and dependability?
WSDL SOAP
− How can service-level agreements be enforced?
binds to
is discovered (is realised by)

Security
through
is accessed
− This is all happening over the internet…
using
− Publicly exposed core business services and
UDDI
operations!
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Supporting standards Summary

Web services are like WWW for computers

TCP/IP
− Publishing “services” rather than documents
− The Internet Protocol suite for reliable global
communication − In XML (for machines) rather than HTML (for
people)


DNS – the Domain Name System − Using standard technologies (XML, HTTP, ...)

The standard Internet naming protocol
Especially useful for
−



HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

− Business-to-business integration and
− A common “binding” for SOAP – to carry SOAP interoperability
requests and responses
− Other loosely-coupled distributed applications

Recommended reading for this lecture
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− Developing Java Web Services: Chapter 2

Other related standards

ebXML
− Complementary standards specific to e-business

Web Services Choreography Interface
− Standard(s) for defining more complex patterns of
interaction between web services

Business Transaction Protocol
− Support for web service distributed transactions

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