Java Web Services

Anatomy of a WSDL Document

Let’s take a detailed look at the individual parts of a WSDL document. The following code shows the major elements that may appear in a WSDL document. An asterisk (*) next to an element indicates that more than one of these elements may appear. Elements from WSDL binding extensions (i.e., SOAP, HTTP, etc.) were not included here, to keep things simpler:

<definitions>
    <import>*
    <types>
        <schema></schema>*
    </types>
    <message>*
        <part></part>*
    </message>
    <PortType>*
        <operation>*
            <input></input>
            <output></output>
            <fault></fault>*
        </operation>
    </PortType>
    <binding>*
        <operation>*
            <input></input>
            <output></output>
        </operation>
    </binding>
    <service>*
        <port></port>*
    </service>
</definitions>

In the next few sections, we define each of the major WSDL elements and present a real-life example as part of the explanation. Finding a WSDL file sophisticated enough to cover the various facets of the specification while still remaining readable was not simple. The following sections present the WSDL document that defines a web service for the translation of the Z39.50 ASN.1 specification. Z39.50/XER (XML Encoding Rules) allows information described in ASN.1 to be carried in XML. It describes the datatypes and operations that one would need to perform real-time conversions between ASN.1-encoded data structures and XML-encoded data structures.

The ez3950-PortTypes.wsdl file in the examples directory contains the WSDL for this example. This file also depends upon ez3950.xsd, which ...