Java™ Web Services Unleashed

Time Server Introduction

WSIF might sound too good to be real, but it is available now, albeit in an early implementation. The best way to explore its rich capabilities is with a simple service that makes sense for both local and distributed applications to access. The explanation in this chapter breaks from the Web services tradition somewhat and does not offer a stock quote example. Instead, it builds a simple time service. This service may have only one implementation, but as you will see, it can have a number of different deployment scenarios, and thus manifest as different, but functionally congruent network service endpoints.

For example, an application that needs to access the current system time could access the time service locally within ...