The Web Services Invocation Framework (WSIF) provides a Java API for invoking Web services, independent of the format of the service or the transport protocol through which it is invoked.
This framework includes an EJB provider for EJB invocation using Remote Method Invocation over Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (RMI-IIOP). However, for EJB(IIOP)-based Web service invocation you should instead invoke RMI-IIOP Web services using JAX-RPC.
The WSIF API supports the invocation of services defined in WSDL. WSIF is intended for use in both WSIF clients and Web service intermediaries.
The WSIF API is driven by the abstract service description in WSDL; it is completely independent of the actual binding used. This independence makes the API more natural to work with because it uses WSDL terms to refer to message parts, operations, and so on.
The WSIF API was designed for the WSDL usage model: Pick a port that supports the port type needed, then invoke the operation by providing the necessary abstract input message consisting of the required parts, without worrying about how the message is mapped to a specific binding protocol.
Other Web service APIs, for example SOAP APIs, are not designed on WSDL, but for a specific binding protocol with its associated syntax; for example, target URIs and encoding styles.
The WSIF API main interfaces are described in the following topics:
For additional technical details of the WSIF API, see the generated API information.