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Before you start
This tutorial series chronicles the building of a web services-based workflow system at a small fictional newspaper, the Daily Moon. It is for developers who want to learn more about the concepts that underlie web services, so that they can more efficiently create applications for them. Non-technical users will also some find value in these tutorials, as they explain concepts before jumping into programming.
You should have a basic understanding of programming, and, if you want to follow along with the actual programming examples, a grasp of Java. We will be talking about XML, out of necessity, but we won't be getting deep into it, and any necessary concepts will be covered.
This tutorial series teaches the basic concepts of web services by following the exploits of the fictional newspaper, the Daily Moon, as the staff uses web services to create a workflow system to increase productivity in these turbulent times.
This first part starts simply, explaining the basic concepts behind web services and showing you how to use SOAP, the specification that underlies most of what is to come, connecting the classifieds department with the Content Management System.
Future installments in this series will build upon the basic concepts:
- Part two takes things a step further, explaining how to use Web Services Description Language (WSDL) to define the messages produced at expected by web service, enabling the team to more easily create services and the clients that connect to them.
- Part three finds the team with a number of services in place and a desire to locate them easily. In response, Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) provides a searchable registry of available services at a way to publicize their own services to others.
- Parts four and five, WS-Security and WS-Policy, chronicle the securing of the paper's services and the changes the teams need to make in order to access those newly secured services.
- Interoperability is the key word in part six, as services from several different implementations must be accessed from a single system. Part six covers the requirements and tests involved in WS-I certification.
- Finally, part seven shows how to use Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL) to create complex applications from individual services.
Now let's look at what this tutorial covers in a bit more detail.
This tutorial introduces you to the concept of web services, and to the team at our fictional Daily Moon Classifieds Department. You will follow along as the team integrates with an existing web services system, and witness the creation of a service. The focus will be on the Service Object Access Protocol (SOAP).
During the course of this tutorial, you will learn the following:
- The basic concepts of web services
- The basics of XML
- The structure and purpose of a SOAP message
- How to install an application server on which to run your web service applications.
- How to install a web services implementation into an application server
- How to programmatically create a SOAP message.
- How to create a client for a SOAP-based web service using Java and Apache Axis2
- How to create a SOAP-based web service Java and Apache Axis2
In this tutorial, the Classifieds Department will integrate with the content management system, creating a client. You'll also get a look at the process of creating one of the services with which the department interacts. Programming examples are shown in Java using the Apache Axis2 project, but the concepts apply to virtually any other language and environment.
In order to follow along with the code for this tutorial, you will need to have the following software available:
- Apache Geronimo or another application server. You will be creating various web services throughout the course of this tutorial, and you will need an application on which to run them. Because web services are, of course, supposed to be interoperable, it doesn't really matter which one you use. In this tutorial, we will demonstrate the installation and use of Apache Geronimo, which is also the basis for IBM® WebSphere® Community Edition. You can also use other application servers such as WebSphere Application Server. You can download Apache Geronimo from the Apache Geronimo Downloads site.
- Apache Axis2 or another SOAP implementation. You can create SOAP messages by hand, and you can interpret them by hand, but it's much easier to have an implementation handy. You will be using Apache Axis2, which contains implementations of various SOAP-related APIs to make your life significantly easier. You can download Apache Axis2 at: Apache.org. This tutorial uses version 0.94, but later versions should also work.
- Java™ 2 Standard Edition version 1.4 or higher. Both of these tools are Java-based, as are the services and clients you'll build in this tutorial. You can download the J2SE SDK from here.
- You'll also need a Web browser and a text editor, but I'm sure you already have those. If you like, you can also use an IDE such as Eclipse, but because the focus is on the technologies rather than the tools, I'll just be using a text editor and the command line to edit files and compile them.
Table of contents
Next steps from IBM
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