Fast WS Tools for Java - Details

Building a Web Services Application

The following diagram demonstrates how a complete Web Services application is created using the various components of the OSS FWS Tools.

FWS workflow

FWS Compiler

The OSS FWS compiler takes a WSDL 1.1 service description as input and generates schema-derived Java classes to include in your application. The classes represent messages and message parts which contain the application-specific content described in the WSDL file. The compiler supports both document/literal and RPC/literal service descriptions as mandated by WS-I Profile. Using compiler-generated classes in your application requires the OSS FWS Runtime component. The generated message class instances can be encoded (serialized) into any output stream as XML SOAP or as X.892 Fast SOAP messages; message class instances can be created by decoding (parsing) the input stream which contains either XML or Fast SOAP messages.

Clients and servers of a Web service apply different handling to messages. For example, a server will rarely be required to be able to construct input messages by itself rather than creating them via parsing client requests. The FWS compiler can optionally generate different sets of methods in a message class depending on whether client-only or server-only functionality is required by an application. Both client and server functionality are supported.

Client-only Methods

  • Constructor for creating a SOAP request message object from the input parameters of an operation
  • Mutator methods for setting any of the input parameters to a new value
  • marshal() method for creating a serialized SOAP request message from the request message object
  • unmarshal() method for creating a SOAP response message object from a serialized SOAP response message
  • Accessor methods for extracting output parameters of an operation from the response message object.

Server-only Methods

  • unmarshal() method for creating a SOAP request message object from a serialized SOAP request message
  • Accessor methods for extracting input parameters of an operation from a request message object
  • Constructor for creating a SOAP response message object from the output parameters of an operation
  • Mutator methods for setting any of the output parameters to a new value
  • marshal() method for creating a serialized SOAP response message from a response message object

FWS Runtime

The OSS FWS Runtime library is a collection of classes for use in writing efficient Web Services applications in Java. The library contains:

  • Classes for creating, accessing and modifying a generic SOAP Envelope and its components (header blocks, body, and fault content).
  • Coder classes which provide:
    • - Serialization of Envelope Java classes to Fast and XML SOAP messages (both version 1.1 and 1.2).
    • - Parsing of XML and Fast SOAP messages. The parser can invoke user-provided callback class methods for each header block and body/fault to perform application-specific actions, and to control the parser to achieve the best performance. Both versions of SOAP messages, 1.1 and 1.2 (detected automatically), are supported.
    • - Creation of output SOAP message while parsing the input message. Some components (header blocks, body/fault, and/or application messages) of the input message can be relayed as they are, without decoding, while other components can be modified inside the callback functions and added to the output message. This functionality is useful for writing efficient intermediary SOAP nodes.
    • - Conversion of XML SOAP messages into Fast SOAP messages and vice versa.

The functionality of encoding, decoding, copying and comparing the application-specific messages is also available to your Fast Web Services applications. Multiple Web services in a single application are also supported.

FWS Transport Layer

The OSS-provided transport-layer runtime library can be used to send and receive SOAP messages. It encapsulates all transport protocol-related functionality. The OSS FWS Transport Layer supports SOAP HTTP(S) bindings

Transport layers use a simple, open and documented API. You can plug-in your own transport layer if you don't wish to use the generic implementation of HTTP provided by OSS.

For more information, contact us at 1-888-OSS-2761 (USA and Canada only), +1-732-302-9669 (international), or info@oss.com.