Artifacts necessary to enable a Web service under CICS

WSBind file

The WSBind file is a resource that describes to CICS® the specifics of the Web service. For example, it contains information about what the system should do to convert an input XML document to a COBOL language structure and what to do to convert the output COBOL data to the output XML document. Enterprise Service Tools can be used to generate both Vendor and Native WSBind files (see Setting preferences for the CICS Web Services Assistant (WSBind) and Runtime XML conversion: compiled or interpretive).

The WSBind file is an EBCDIC binary file, CICS expects the WSBind file to be encoded in the EBCDIC variant used by the region. The extension of the generated WSBind file is always set to .wsbind.

The WSBind File Viewer can be used to display the contents of the WSBind file (see Web Service Binding File Viewer).

Enterprise Service Tools Converters

In the CICS vendor scenario, CICS delegates conversion of SOAP requests and response messages to vendor conversion programs. The same wizard in the Enterprise Service Tools that generates the WSBind file also generates vendor conversion programs suitable for use with the CICS vendor interface. These vendor conversion programs consist of a driver, a request XML converter and a response XML converter. The XML converters convert an input XML document to a COBOL language structure and convert the output COBOL data to the output XML document. The driver program manages the communication between CICS and the XML converters.

WSDL

The WSDL file describes the Web service to the Web service clients. The same wizard in the Enterprise Service Tools that generates the WSBind file and the vendor conversion programs also generates the WSDL file.

The WSDL file can also be used by the CICS system to validate messages received and sent by the Web service. The validation can be turned on and off when the CICS Web service resource is installed or configured. Validation is useful when you test or debug your Web service. Validation will slow down the Web service performance and you may want to turn it off in the production version of the Web service.