Introduction

IBM ® WebSphere® Studio V5 (including Application Developer, Site Developer, and Express) introduces a new tool called the Web Services Explorer. This tool is the successor to the UDDI Explorer in WebSphere Studio Application Developer V4. To review the capabilities of the UDDI Explorer, see:

• Publishing, Discovering, and Testing a Microsoft .NET-based Web Service using WebSphere Studio Application Developer
• Web Services Programming with WebSphere Studio Application Developer -- Part 1: Web Services Discovery and Evaluation.

This article shows you in detail how to use the Web Services Explorer, highlighting advantages over its predecessor and providing examples when appropriate. You should have a basic understanding of:

• Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) 2.0 specification
• Web Services Inspection Language (WSIL) 1.0 specification
• Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 1.1 documents

To complete the steps, you should also have an Internet connection and access to one of the three WebSphere Studio V5 products listed above.

Like its predecessor, the Web Services Explorer enables you to publish and discover UDDI Web services-related metadata (businesses, services and TModels) to and from a UDDI compliant registry. The Web Services Explorer supports only registries with UDDI 2.0-compliant APIs. Fortunately, most of the major public UDDI registries (including IBM, Microsoft, SAP, NTT Communications, and XMethods) provide UDDI 2.0 compliant APIs. A private UDDI 2.0 registry is also provided with WebSphere Studio Application Developer V5. Published or discovered metadata can be bookmarked as favorites, but the mechanism has changed in V5 to allow better isolation and cross-platform portability.

A major new feature in the Web Services Explorer is support for discovery of WSIL Web services related metadata (links to UDDI businesses, services and WSDL documents) from WSIL 1.0 documents. This will be presented in more detail in The Web Services Explorer - Part II: WSIL. For users who are behind a firewall, better proxy server support is now available. Overall, the user should experience better integration amongst the components of the Web Services Explorer and with the Eclipse-based workbench.

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Getting started

If you are behind a firewall, then before launching the Web Services Explorer, you will need to add your proxy server information to the workbench's Internet preferences:

1. In the workbench window, select Window => Preferences.
2. In the Preferences dialog, select the Internet node in the left-hand tree view.
3. Fill in the proxy server information in the right-hand side of the dialog.
4. Click Apply => OK.

The Web Services Explorer supports proxy servers using non-authenticating or basic authenticating HTTP as well as SOCKS V4 protocols.

WebSphere Studio V5 provides several ways to launch the Web Services Explorer. The simplest way is to click on the Launch the Web Services Explorer icon () in the main toolbar of any perspective. On Windows®, the Web Services Explorer launches inside an internal browser window by default once you click this icon. Figure 1 displays the results:

The Web Services Explorer consists of the main toolbar at the top and the page content below the Web Services Explorer toolbar. The main toolbar provides back and forward arrows ( and ) for navigating through a history of selections and icons to jump to different page contents ( for UDDI, for WSIL, and for Favorites). Users familiar with the UDDI Explorer should immediately see the similarity.

The Web Services Explorer uses the same layout as the UDDI Explorer with the same three panes: Navigator, Actions, and Status. The Navigator pane contains a tree view that stores queries and published objects. The two images opposite the Navigator label are toolbar icons for refreshing and clearing a selected node. The Actions pane renders the details and available actions of an object selected in the Navigator pane. And the Status pane provides diagnostic information for performed actions. The remainder of this article focuses on the UDDI and Favorites pages. Part 2 of this article series will describe the WSIL page.

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Using the UDDI page

As mentioned above in Getting started, the page content for UDDI follows the same three-pane layout as with the UDDI Explorer. The Navigator pane contains a tree view. Initially, only the UDDI Main node is shown. The Actions pane prompts you to select a node, and the Status pane is empty.

1. Opening a registry

Click on the UDDI Main node to load the Open Registry form in the Actions pane. This form enables you to manually add a UDDI 2.0 compliant registry to the Navigator pane. Figure 2 shows the form:

By default, this form is pre-populated with parameters pertaining to the IBM UDDI Test Registry. The contents of the Registry Name field are only used for display purposes. It is the Inquiry URL field that determines which registry is actually opened. The public UDDI registries link lists the Inquiry URLs of other public registries. Click Go to open the IBM UDDI Test Registry. Once the operation finishes, the Web Services Explorer should appear as shown in Figure 3 below. The newly added registry is automatically selected, and as a result, its details appear in the Actions pane. The Status pane shows the results of the action. In the previous UDDI Explorer, newly added registries were not automatically selected and the Open Registry form remained in the Actions pane.

An additional user enhancement is the Edit link shown in the Actions column of the Registry Name table. The Edit link lets you change the name of an added registry, so that you can associate a registry name with authentication information such as a UDDI user id. For example, click Edit and change the registry name so that it contains your UDDI user id. You must click Go for the change to be processed. Since the IBM UDDI Test Registry is a well-known public UDDI registry, the Web Services Explorer can associate the correct Publish URL for actions that require authentication. The UDDI Explorer only provided this aid for the IBM UDDI Test Registry. Finally, if you don't yet have a user id and password for publishing to the IBM UDDI Test Registry, click on Click here as shown in the Actions pane in Figure 3 to load the registry site's Web page in a separate window, and follow the instructions there. You will need a user id and password if you wish to continue following the tutorials. Additional methods for launching the Web Services Explorer and opening registries will be discussed below under Other methods of launching the Web Services Explorer.

Expand the IBM UDDI Test Registry node in the Navigator tree view. The following child nodes should appear: Executed Queries, Published Businesses, Published Services, and Published Service Interfaces. These hold collections of items. By comparison, the UDDI Explorer's Navigator tree view did not use an obvious organization format and could grow infinitely deep, while this new tree view has a fixed depth.

The toolbar in the Actions pane now displays icons to perform actions against this registry:

• View/Edit Details
• Find
• Publish
• Add to Favorites

The Find actions were previously accessed as child nodes of the registry in the Navigator tree view of the UDDI Explorer.

2. Publishing a business to the registry

The Web Services Explorer lets you publish three types of entities into a UDDI registry, just like its predecessor: businesses, services, and TModels (called service interfaces by the Web Services Explorer). All three entities can be published in either simple or advanced format. Simple format lets you publish the item with a minimal number of user inputs. Advanced format lets you specify the complete set of inputs that the UDDI 2.0 specification allows for publishing that entity. UDDI Explorer provided only the advanced format.

Click on the Publish icon ( ) in the Actions pane toolbar to load the form for publishing an item:

At the top of the form, the Publish drop-down lets you pick the type of item to publish. The choices are Business, Service, and Service Interface. The default choice is Business. Selecting a different choice will alter the remainder of the form. The default Publication format is Simple. The functions of the remaining text fields are explained by the label just above the Publish URL label. The Publish URL field is automatically filled in with the publish URL of the registry (since it is a well known public site). Enter your user id and password for the IBM UDDI Test Registry. Then enter My Temperature Business for the Name, Provides temperature reports for Description fields, and click Go to publish the business. The operation will fail if a business is already associated with the user id used in this operation, since the IBM UDDI Test Registry enforces a limit of one business entity per user id. Diagnostics for the operation should appear in the Status pane upon completion. If the business is successfully published, My Temperature Business should be selected and appear as a child of the Published Businesses folder in the Navigator pane, as shown in Figure 4 above. The Actions pane will contain the business details and actions, and the Status pane should provide a message indicating that the operation was successful. Figure 6 shows the expected UDDI page content:

The Business Details page shown in the Actions pane lets you make updates to the business. Editing functions will be examined in more detail under Updating businesses, services, service interfaces, and registries below. With UDDI Explorer, publishing a business did not result in the new business being selected, and the publish business form remained in the Actions pane.

3. Publishing a service and service interface to the registry

There are now two places where you can publish a service. You can publish from the IBM UDDI Test Registry and the My Temperature Business nodes. With the UDDI Explorer, you could only publish from the My Temperature Business node. Let's try publishing the service from the IBM UDDI Test Registry node. Click on the back arrow () in the Web Services Explorer's main toolbar to reselect the previously selected node, which should be the IBM UDDI Test Registry. If that is not the previously selected node, just click on the node itself. Then check if the publish form shown in Figure 5 appears in the Actions pane. If it does not, click on the Publish icon ( ) in the Actions pane toolbar. In the publish form, select Publish => Service:

Note the differences between Figures 5 and 7. As the registry was successfully logged into while publishing a business, the authentication information is reused. Below the instruction label is a section titled Business with a twist control and Get, Find, and Remove links. The twist control ( ) toggles the revealing or hiding of the contents of the section. The Get link lets you select from previously published or discovered businesses. The Find link lets you perform a query for businesses and select from the results. The Remove link lets you remove the business used in this form. The Find link will be described in more detail under Discovering businesses, services, and service interfaces below. The Get link will be used to select and add My Temperature Business into the publish service form.

1. Click the Get link. The Get form shown in Figure 8 will load in the Actions pane.
2. Select My Temperature Business business by clicking on the checkbox to the left of its name.
3. Click the Transfer button to add this to the publish form and continue. See Figure 9 for the updated publish form.
4. A Browse link beside the WSDL URL label enables you to select a WSDL URL from the Web Services Explorer's favorites or from the workbench. The UDDI Explorer allowed selections only from the workbench. For now, just enter http://www.xmethods.com/sd/2001/TemperatureService.wsdl in the text box below the WSDL URL label.
5. Enter My Temperature Service and Report the temperature given a US postal code in the Name and Description text fields respectively.
6. Click Go to publish the service.
   Figure 8. Getting a Business to publish the Service under
   
   
   Figure 9. The Form in Figure 7 with My Temperature Business added
   
   
   If the service is successfully published, My Temperature Service should be selected and appear as a child of the Published Services folder in the Navigator pane shown in Figure 4. The Actions pane will contain the service's details and actions and the Status pane should provide a message indicating that the operation was successful. In addition, a service interface (or TModel) is also published. Here is the expected UDDI page content:
   
   Figure 10. UDDI page content showing a successfully published service
   
   

The WSDL file referenced by My Temperature Service is monolithic and would have required a workaround before attempting to publish it with the UDDI Explorer (see Reference 1 below). This workaround is no longer needed when using the Web Services Explorer.

Publishing an individual service interface is similar to publishing a service. The only visible difference between the forms is the absence of the business section.

4. Updating businesses, services, service interfaces, and registries

If the simple format was used to publish an item (as in the previous steps), you may want to make updates to the published items. Updating allows the editing, addition, and/or removal of names, descriptions, identifiers, categories, and discovery URLs, or the editing of WSDL URLs, depending on the item chosen. Update actions in the Web Services Explorer are performed directly via an item's details page. The UDDI Explorer also provided update actions, but they were through separate actions. Moreover, it did not take into consideration editing in different languages.

To illustrate the update options available, click on the http://www.xmethods.net/sd/TemperatureService.wsdl node in the Navigator tree view. The Actions pane should load the service interface's details page, as shown in Figure 11:

The details page for businesses, services, service interfaces and registries all contain a label at the top of the page providing instructions on what changes can be performed followed by a read-only key. Although the remaining data is generally specific to the type of object, the process of updating a service interface should adequately cover the updating capabilities of the Web Services Explorer without loss of generality.

The details page divides the data for the object into sections, each of which are represented by tables. For all editable data, an Edit link will appear in its Actions column. Tables that can contain multiple rows (such as Descriptions) include an additional section header featuring a twist control ( ). The twist control toggles hiding and revealing the table followed by the name of the section in bold and then the Add, Remove, Edit, and Cancel links, which perform the actions of adding, removing, editing, and canceling out of editing data. If you click on Add when the table is hidden, the twist action will be toggled to reveal the table. These tables also contain a column of checkboxes on the left. The checkboxes in rows below the blue table heading select or deselect the associated row. The checkbox in the blue table heading select or deselect all rows in the table. The following steps will make changes to the service interface:

1. Click Edit in the Actions column for the Name table. The row changes into edit mode as shown in Figure 12:
   Figure 12. Name in Edit Mode
   
   The link in the Actions column is now Cancel. Clicking this link cancels out of edit mode and restores the previous data. Change the name to My Temperature Service Interface.
2. Click Edit in the Actions column of the first row in the Descriptions table, which changes the row into edit mode as shown in Figure 13:
   Figure 13. Description data in Edit Mode
   
   Since descriptions can be multilingual, a language selector is provided along with a standard text field. Use the Cancel link if you mistakenly edit a description in another language for which you don't have the correct fonts or input method editor. Leave the language as English and enter My Temperature Service Interface description for the description.
3. Click Add in the Identifiers section header. This will add a new identifier to the Identifiers table with its fields in edit mode, as shown in Figure 14:
   Figure 14. Identifier data in Edit Mode
   
   An identifier consists of a type, key name, and key value. The Web Services Explorer supports only Dun & Bradstreet numbers (D-U-N-S) and Thomas Registry Suppliers in edit mode. It does, however, support arbitrary identifiers in read mode by labeling their types as undefined. If you have a D-U-N-S number, enter it in the key value. Otherwise, enter any value you can think of (you can even use your IBM UDDI Test Registry id). Remember it because it will be used later for a discovery scenario.
4. Click Add in the Categories section header to add a new category to the Categories table with its fields in edit mode, as shown in Figure 15:
   Figure 15. Category data with the last row in Edit Mode
   
   A category consists of a type, key name, and key value. The Web Services Explorer supports three built-in categories:
   • North American Industry Classification System 1997 (NAICS)
   • United Nations Standard Products and Services Code System 7.3 (UNSPSC)
   • ISO 3166 Geographic Code System (GEO)
   There is one more category supported by the Web Services Explorer but is for private use only and will not be discussed here. The Browse link in the Actions column of the new category is associated with a category row when it is in edit mode. When you click this link, the Web Services Explorer Category Browser, shown in Figure 16, is launched with a tree view showing the valid values in the selected category type. Each node is labeled using the format [key value] key name.
   Figure 16. Web Services Explorer Category Browser showing NAICS Categories
   
   
   Select the category using the following steps:
   
   1. Expand the [51] Information node.
   2. Expand the [514] Information Services and Data Processing child node of [51] Information.
   3. Expand the [5141] Information Services child node of [514] Information Services and Data Processing.
   4. Click on the [51419] Other Information Services child node of [5141] Information Services. Populate this category's Key name and Key value fields with the entries Other Information Services and 51419 respectively.
5. Click Go to update the service interface.

The Status pane should indicate the success or failure of the update operation. If the update is successful, the service interface node in the Navigator tree view should be renamed to My Temperature Service Interface and its details page should reload in the Actions pane with the changes appearing in read mode. The Web Services Explorer lets you attempt updates on discovered as well as published items. However, the UDDI registry will prevent you from updating an item that you do not own.

5. Discovering businesses, services, and service interfaces

Now that the Web service has been published, it is time to play the role of a user. Users may go to UDDI to find any of the three items. For example, they may want to find and relate with another business (this is the UDDI 2.0 concept of publisher assertions, which will be discussed in Part 3). They may want to find a service in order to access its WSDL document or to reference it using a different business (this is the UDDI 2.0 concept of service projections, which will also be discussed in Part 3). Finally, they may want a service interface to use as the basis for the design of a new Web service.

There are two categories of discovery functions:

• Given user-supplied base information (names, identifiers, categories in conjunction with find qualifiers), find a business, service or service interface
• Given a business, service, or service interface, find an associated object without user input.

The two categories are expanded below.

1. If you click on the IBM UDDI Test Registry node in the Navigator pane, the Actions pane toolbar will reveal the Find action, which is denoted by the icon ( ). When you click on this icon, the default Find form is presented in the Actions pane, as shown in Figure 17:
   Figure 17. Find form showing defaults for finding businesses
   
   In the form, the Name of this query text field used to label the query when it is added to the Navigator tree view after execution. The Search for drop-down lets you choose Businesses, Services, or Service Interfaces. Each choice influences the controls in the remainder of the form. There are three types of searches that you can perform: Simple, Advanced, and UUID. In the Simple format, only a partial name is required as input for the search. In the UUID format, the item's registry assigned key must be supplied. Finally, the Advanced search is the most customizable. It lets users specify different combinations of names, identifiers, categories, service interfaces, discovery URLs, and find qualifiers depending on the type of object being searched for. As the advanced search forms are quite similar, only the Find Businesses and part of the Find Service Interfaces forms will be examined in detail without loss of generality. Click on the Advanced button shown in the form in Figure 17 to load the form into the Actions pane. The resulting form should look like this:
   
   Figure 18. Find Businesses Advanced form
   
   
   At the beginning of the advanced form (just below the Type of search radio buttons) is a label describing what inputs can be added. The remainder of the form follows a motif similar to the details pages. There are section headers and tables for each parameter meaning. The main differences between the section headers and tables here as compared to their counterparts in the details pages are: 1) No Edit, and Cancel links in the find advanced forms 2) The tables are always in edit mode, which is why there are no Edit or Cancel links. There is also an Owned checkbox, which overrides all other options and finds only the businesses that were published by the current id. Selecting this checkbox also requires specification of authentication information. However, it was previously specified in the publish scenario, so the Web Services Explorer reuses the authentication information and does not require the user to enter it again.
   
   The find businesses advanced form lets you specify Names, Identifiers, Categories, Service Interfaces, Discovery URLs, and Find Qualifiers as search parameters. Although there is a central section for find qualifiers, not all of them appear there. For example, it makes more sense to place a Find qualifier ensuring that names are compared using exact matching rules in the Names section. Finally, there are two text fields at the end of the form governing the maximum size of the search set and the maximum number of results to return. The default values are 100 and 10 respectively, and these are also the values implicitly used by the simple search actions. In general, the number of results returned is the minimum of the values specified in these two fields.
   
   Here's a sample scenario that uses of some of the advanced find business parameters:
   
   1. Ensure that the find business advanced form is loaded in the Actions pane. If it is not, click on the IBM UDDI Test Registry node in the Navigator tree view followed by the Find icon ( ) in the resulting Actions pane toolbar.
   2. Enter Find business advanced test in the Name of this query text field.
   3. Ensure that Businesses is selected in the Search for drop-down.
   4. Ensure that the Advanced radio button is selected as the Type of search.
   5. Click on Add in the Names section header and add the name My% with a blank language.
   6. Click on Find in the Service Interfaces section to perform a sub-query for service interfaces and to select its results for use with this query. Triggering a sub-query loads its form into the Actions pane. The form for this particular sub-query is shown in Figure 19:
      Figure 19. Sub-query form
      
      
      The Sub-query form is similar to a standard Find form of the same object type except for three differences:
      • A series of numbered links are present in the top right-hand corner, letting you jump to the various targets in a chain of sub-queries.
      • The name of the query is the name of the parent query appended with information on what type of UDDI object the sub-query is to search for.
      • The Search for drop-down has been removed, as the Web Services Explorer knows the type of item to search for.
   7. Select Advanced for the Type of search. The resulting Find service interfaces advanced sub-query form should look like this:
      Figure 20. Find Service Interfaces Advanced Sub-query Form
      
      
      Add a new D-U-N-S identifier whose key value is the same as the one you entered in step 4c and then press Go to initiate the sub-query. When the sub-query finishes, the search results will be presented in the Actions pane in a form similar to the Get results shown in Figure 8. My Temperature Service Interface should be among the search results. Also, the Navigator pane should have a query node named query results - Service Interfaces sub-query added as a child under the Executed Queries folder. If the sub-query does not yield the desired result, you may have to alter the maximum search set size and/or the maximum number of results settings or, alternatively, select the Owned checkbox before performing the query. Select the row containing My Temperature Service Interface by clicking on the leftmost checkbox and then click Transfer to add this result to the Service Interfaces section of the Find businesses advanced form and return to that form. After completing this operation, the Find businesses advanced form should reload in the Actions pane with the My Temperature Service Interface populated as an entry in the Service Interfaces table of the find businesses advanced form, as shown in Figure 21:
      
      Figure 21. Find businesses advanced form showing a service interface obtained via sub-query
      
      
   8. Click Go to launch the Find businesses query. If successful, a query node named query results should be added as a child of the Executed Queries folder. If you expand the query node, My Temperature Business should be among the children. Figure 22 shows the Navigator pane at this point:
   
   Figure 22. Navigator contents after find businesses advanced query
   
   
2. UDDI also lets you find some objects quickly given another type of object. Although these actions can be performed using the registry's Find advanced forms in conjunction with sub-queries and/or Get operations, it is simpler (no user input required) to invoke these through the icons in the Actions pane for a given object. Here is the list of available actions in this category:
1. Given a business, get the associated services ( ).
2. Given a service, get the associated business ( ) and service interfaces ( ).
3. Given a service interface, get all the associated services ( ) and businesses ( ).

Click on the My Temperature Service node under the Published Services folder and then click on the Get Service Interfaces ( ) icon in the Actions pane toolbar. This should add another query node under the Executed Queries folder with this node containing My Temperature Service Interface as a child. This operation is identical to running the Find service interfaces advanced form with the Use service checkbox selected and My Temperature Service as the service parameter obtained using a Get or Find action links, but without requiring any user input. This support was carried over from UDDI Explorer.

6. Other object-specific actions

Like the UDDI Explorer, an Add to Favorites action is available for all registries, businesses, services, and service interfaces. For details, see Favorites page content. Similarly, an unpublish action is also available for businesses ( ), services ( ) and service interfaces ( ).

The remaining actions for businesses are: Publish Service ( ), Manage Referenced Services ( ), and Manage Publisher Assertions ( ). The first two actions pertain to the new UDDI 2.0 features called Service Projections and Publisher Assertions. These will be covered in detail in Part 3 of this article series.

The remaining actions for services and service interfaces are: Import WSDL to workbench ( ), Import WSDL to File System ( ), and Launch Web Service Wizard ( ). The import WSDL actions are essentially carried over from the UDDI Explorer. However, the Web Services Explorer can now import WSDL into any type of workbench project rather than just Web projects as the UDDI Explorer was constrained to. A new action is the Launch Web Service Wizard action, which provides a form giving users the choice of launching a Web Service Client wizard or a Web Service Skeleton wizard, as shown in Figure 23:

When either wizard is launched, the WSDL URL fields in the wizards will be pre-populated with the service or service interface's WSDL URL. As this option was not available with the UDDI Explorer and the equivalent action required two steps: import the WSDL file into the workbench, and use the imported WSDL file as the context for launching a Web Service wizard. The Web Services Explorer eliminates the need to import the WSDL file in this scenario. Part 2 of this series will provide a tutorial that uses this new action.

7. Mass actions

Some of the forms available in the UDDI page content (and others as well) enable you to perform an object-specific action on a set of selected objects. In the UDDI page content, these are available in the Results action for query nodes, and the summary actions for the registry node's children (Executed Queries, Published Businesses, Published Services, and Published Service Interfaces). Figure 8 shows the general layout of a form providing mass actions. In these forms, there is always a table containing a set of objects followed by some buttons. The checkboxes in the table can be used to select and deselect objects in preparation for a mass action. In Figure 8, you can transfer selected objects to a parent form by clicking on Transfer (only available for Sub-queries and Get actions) or they can be refreshed, added to favorites, and even cleared from the Navigator tree view by clicking on the Refresh, Add to Favorites, or Clear buttons respectively.

The summary actions of the Executed Queries folder provides listings of discovered businesses, services, and service interfaces, while those of the Published Businesses, Published Services, and Published Service Interfaces provide listings of published businesses, services, and service interfaces, respectively. The mass actions are those described in the previous example.

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Favorites page

Like a Web browser's Favorites page, the Web Services Explorer Favorites page enables you to manage and connect to previously bookmarked items. Click on the Favorites icon ( ) in the Web Services Explorer's main toolbar to bring up the Favorites page:

The Favorites page has a three-pane design similar to the UDDI page. The Navigator pane has folders for Favorite UDDI Registries, Favorite UDDI Businesses, Favorite UDDI Services, Favorite UDDI Service Interfaces, Favorite WSILs, and Favorite WSDL Services. The first icon to the right of the Navigator label ( ) restores the default favorites rather than refreshing a favorite. When an item in one of the other pages is added to the favorites by either executing an Add to favorites mass action or by selecting the Add to favorites icon ( ), the Web Services Explorer categorizes it under one of these folders and then renders it as a child node of the selected folder. Selecting the folder produces a listing of the children of the folder in the Actions pane. This listing generally allows for the mass actions of removing or reconnecting to selected favorites. Figure 25 shows the favorite UDDI registries in the Favorites page and the mass actions that can be used with them. Similar actions that act on a single favorite appear in the Actions pane toolbar when an individual favorite (child of a folder node) is selected.

For Favorite WSDL Services, there are additional actions available, because the Web Services Explorer is dealing with just a URL to a WSDL file and therefore any action that requires only a WSDL URL string as input is possible. Consequently, you can also import the WSDL file to the workbench and file system and even launch a Web Services wizard directly from a favorite WSDL service.

The default favorites provided by the Web Services Explorer are the favorite UDDI registries shown in Figure 25. You can use these favorites to add an instance of the registry to the UDDI page without having to remember its inquiry and publish URLs.

Favorites Metadata is saved in the WSIL file favorites.wsil in the .metadata/.plugins/com.ibm.etools.webservice.consumption.ui subdirectory. Using WSIL has several advantages over the Java^TM serialization binary format used by the UDDI Explorer. The WSIL file is an XML file, which is readable, and WSIL provides extensibility elements that enable future types to be managed under the same framework.

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Other methods of launching the Web Services Explorer

The workbench provides several additional methods for launching the Web Services Explorer. From the File => Import and File => Export menu items, you can select Web Service and follow the wizard. Both wizards are similar, so only the Import one is shown in Figure 26:

These wizards let you pre-select a public or private UDDI registry to populate the UDDI page with before the Web Services Explorer is launched. To pre-populate with a public UDDI registry, select Launch the Web Services Explorer to find a Web service from a UDDI Registry checkbox, select the desired UDDI registry from the Public UDDI Registry drop-down, and then click Finish to launch the Web Services Explorer. The private registry and its integration with Web Services Tooling will be discussed in Part 3.

The same wizard page is also available in the main Web Service Wizard when its Launch the Web Services Explorer to publish this Web Service to a UDDI Registry checkbox is selected, as shown in Figure 27. To launch this wizard, select File => New => Other to bring up the list of New wizards, select Web Services and Web Service in the left and right panes respectively, and then click Next.

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Conclusion

This article provided a tour of the Web Services Explorer, focusing on differences with its predecessor, the UDDI Explorer, and highlighting improvements in usability, productivity, national language support, integration with the workbench, and favorites management. The remaining page content, WSIL, will be covered in more detail in Part 2. Some of the new UDDI 2.0 functions, service projections, and publisher assertions will be covered in more detail in Part 3.

Resources

• Publishing, Discovering, and Testing a Microsoft .NET-based Web Service using WebSphere Studio Application Developer
  
  
• Web Services Programming with WebSphere Studio Application Developer -- Part 1: Web Services Discovery and Evaluation
  
  
• UDDI 2.0 specification
  
  
• WSIL 1.0 specification
  
  
• WSDL 1.1 specification
  
  
• Information on public UDDI registries
  
  
• The Web Services Explorer -- Part 2: WSIL
  
  
• Dun & Bradstreet numbers (D-U-N-S)
  
  
• Thomas Registry Suppliers
  
  
• North American Industry Classification System 1997 (NAICS)
  
  
• United Nations Standard Products and Services Code System 7.3 (UNSPSC)
  
  
• ISO 3166 Geographic Code System (GEO)
  
  
• The Web Services Explorer -- Part 3: Advanced UDDI 2.0 and Private Registry Support
  
  

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Table of contents

• Introduction
• Getting started
• Using the UDDI page
• Favorites page
• Other methods of launching the Web Services Explorer
• Conclusion
• Resources
• About the authors
• Comments

Next steps from IBM

WebSphere Application Server can leverage its built in Web Services support to expose services to remote consumers in an industry-standard way.

---

• Try: The no-charge WebSphere Application Server Community Edition is a pre-integrated, lightweight Java 5 application server built on Apache Tomcat and includes built in Web Services support.
• Article: Learn how to use of the JAX-WS programming model to create dispatch and dynamic proxy clients and how to create an asynchronous Web service client.
• Tutorial: This tutorial takes you through the steps to deploy Data Web Services to the WebSphere Application Server Community Edition.
• Demo: This demo shows how to extract and install the IBM Java Platform, Java EE 5 SDK with WebSphere Application Server.
• Buy: WebSphere Application Server - Express

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