WebSphere Business Integration Express supports the use of Web services in collaborations. A Web service is a modular application whose public interfaces and bindings are defined with XML, and it is accessible through open protocols such as HTTP and SOAP. A Web service can be included in a collaboration template's activity definition. When the corresponding collaboration object is run, the Web service is invoked. No modification of InterChange Server Express is required.
Use System Manager to locate and register Web services. Registered Web services become part of the Integration Component Library (ICL) project. In addition, any business objects needed for the Web services are automatically generated and placed in the ICL project. For more information on using System Manager to register and manage Web services, see the System Implementation Guide.
To include a Web service in a collaboration template, you must export it from the ICL project in System Manager. Each method is exported as a function block to Activity Editor, where it can be placed in an activity definition. For more information on exporting a Web service and adding it to an activity definition, see Web services function blocks.
To configure a timeout value for the Web service, add a collaboration configuration property called ws_timeout (see Defining collaboration configuration properties (the Properties tab) ). The timeout value is specified in milliseconds; the default value for ws_timeout is 10000 (10 seconds).