Web services are distributed application components that conform to standards that make them externally available. They solve the problem of integrating diverse computer applications that have been developed independently and run on a variety of software and hardware platforms.
The promise of web services architecture is to allow you to connect applications that were developed on different platforms and in different programming languages. This can only work if vendors can agree on common standards.
The following web service programming models are supported by the IDE:
Both of the latter two programming models are based on the following specifications:
SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). Defines the mechanism by which a web service is called and how data is returned. For detailed information, refer to the SOAP 1.2 Specification.
WSDL (Web Services Description Language). Describes the external interface of a web service. For detailed information, refer to the WSDL 1.1 Specification.
UDDI (Universal Discovery, Description, and Integration). Registries contain information about web services, including the location of WSDL files and the location of the running services. The IDE does not let you publish web services to or browse from a UDDI registry, although the WSDL files that you use can come from a variety of sources, including a UDDI registry.
JAXB (Java Architecture for XML Binding). In contrast to JAX-RPC, that uses its own data binding facilities, JAX-WS delegates data binding related tasks to JAXB. The JAXB 2.0/2.1 specification is developed in parallel with JAX-WS 2.0/2.1.