A set of frequently asked
questions about service integration bus-enabled
web services are collected together in this topic.
What
are web services?
Web services are
modular applications that interact with one another across the Internet.
Web
services are based on shared, open and emerging technology standards
and protocols
(such as SOAP, UDDI, and WSDL) and can communicate,
interact, and integrate with other applications, no matter how they
are implemented.
What are bus-enabled
web services?
You
can associate your web services with the service integration bus,
to achieve
the following goals:
- You can take an internally-hosted service
that is available at a bus
destination, and
make it available as a web service.
- You can take an external
web service and make it available internally
at a bus destination.
- You can
use the web services gateway to map
an existing service - either an internally-hosted service or an external
Web
service - to a new web service that seems to be provided by the gateway.
Bus-enabled web services also provide a choice of quality
of service
and message distribution options for web services, along with intelligence
in the form of mediations that allow for the rerouting of messages.
What problems are solved by bus-enabled web
services?
Bus-enabled
web services solve the following problems:
- Securely "externalizing" existing
services: Existing
business applications that are exposed as web services can be used
by any
web service-enabled tool, regardless of the implementation details.
Bus-enabled
web services also let you enable controlled access for clients from
outside
the firewall to web services that are hosted within your enterprise.
- Better return on investment: Any number of partners
can
reuse an existing process that you deploy as a web service.
- Use
of existing infrastructure: You can use your existing
messaging infrastructure to make web service requests, and use your
existing
web services for external process integration.
- Use of
external web services: You can make an existing external
web service available to your internal systems at a bus destination.
Who should use bus-enabled
web services?
Any
enterprise that chooses to share its resources selectively with its
business
partners and customers. IT managers and developers, who deploy resources,
can also benefit from this technology.