Creating a web service provider by using the web services assistant

You can create a service provider application from a web service description that complies with WSDL 1.1 or WSDL 2.0, or from a high-level language data structure. The CICS® web services assistant helps you to deploy your CICS applications in a service provider setting.

About this task

When you use the assistant to deploy a CICS application as a service provider, you have two options:

Start with a web service description and use the assistant to generate the language data structures.
Use this option when you are implementing a service provider that conforms with an existing web service description.
Start with the language data structures and use the assistant to generate the web service description.
Use this option when you are exposing an existing program as a web service and are willing to expose aspects of the program interfaces in the web service description and the SOAP messages.

You can expose the web service description associated with your service provider using a URI. This URI has the same path as the URI associated with the WEBSERVICE with the suffix ?wsdl appended. This enables requesters within your business, or external to it, to discover the WSDL files associated with your service providers.