WEEK 10: Web Services

 

Reading assignments
BOOK PAGES
TBA TBA

LINKS TO XML RELATED SITES

  1. XML.COM
  2. MICROSOFT'S IE6 DEVELOPER SITE
  3. MSDN'S XML DEVELOPER SITE
  4. IBM's XML WEBSITE
  5. IBM'S ALPHAWORKS WEBSITE
  6. W3 Schools XML Tutorial
  7. Kickstart XML Tutorial

Introduction to Web services:

Web services are a mechanism to create document and process flow between and among Web based applications. This page contains a list of files that show the WSDL definitions, SOAP messages, and BPEL flow for some basic types of Web services. Tutorial links will be added to this page later. If you have XML Spy loaded on your computer, try creating some SOAP messages from the WSDL documents - it's straightforward.

Section 1: WSDL documents

  1. loanapproval.wsdl - a WSDL document for the loan approval service
  2. loanapprover.wsdl - a WSDL document for the loan approver service
  3. loanassessor.wsdl - a WSDL document for the loan assessor service
  4. loandefinitions.wsdl - a WSDL document for the loan definitions service

Section 2: Building a simple SOAP envelope

  1. DayOfWeek.wsdl - a WSDL document of the day of the week service
  2. DayOfWeek_WSDL.xml - the WSDL document above in XML format
  3. DayOfWeek_SOAP - the SOAP envelop created for the DayOfWeek WSDL document

Section 3: ebXML documents

  1. serviceDescription.xml - a basic ebXML service description
  2. ebxml_process_desc.xml - an ebXML process description
  3. ebxml_process_rdf.xml - an RDF document for an ebXML process

Section 4: BPEL documents

  1. loanapproval.bpel - a BPEL document for loan approval
  2. loanApprovalBP.bpel - the loan approval BPEL flow
  3. bpel_process.xml - a BPEL process document in XML format

Section 5: RDF

Go to http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/dcdot/ to see 'Dublin Core metadata editor' an RDF meta generator tool. Enter a URL of a website you know (or yours) and see what it generates. Specify output in RDF and you have a 'good to go' RDF document. You can download the DTD at http://dublincore.org/documents/2002/07/31/dcmes-xml/dcmes-xml-dtd.dtd.

To generate an RSS file for an RDF description of an image or other binary file on the Web, try using the tool at: http://swordfish.rdfweb.org/rdfquery/ There are tools called 'squish' for querying an RDF index (not always functional) at: http://rdf.desire.org/~cmlm/rdfquery/ .

To use RDF in the context of Web services try using the FAQ at: http://www.w3.org/2001/04/wsws-proceedings/uche/

  1. informatics.rdf (native RDF file)
  2. Informaticus_RDF.txt (text format)
  3. dcmes-xml-dtd.dtd (right click on this link to download the DTD)

Section 6: RSS

  1. Information Week RSS page at http://www.informationweek.com/rss/
  2. Getting started with RSS at http://www.informationweek.smallbizpipeline.com/160701533
  3. Apple iTunes RSS sample
  4. eMarketer RSS sample
  5. The Scientist RSS sample and with CSS rendering
  6. Planet Gnome example

Zipped archives

  1. WS_example_files.zip - a complete archive of example files to download

Homework:

Practice creating some RDF documents, and try reading some of the background information on RDF at http://www.w3.org/RDF/. You'll find it quite useful! To use RDF in the context of Web services make sure to see the tutorial at: http://www.w3.org/2001/04/wsws-proceedings/uche/