WSDL

Having a means of transporting data between Web services is only half the story. Without interface descriptions for our Web services, they are about as useful as any other undocumented API—very little! While in theory we could simply examine the message schemas for a Web service and figure out for ourselves how to interoperate with it, this is a difficult and error-prone process and one which could be safely automated if Web services had recognizable interfaces. Fortunately, WSDL provides this capability and more for Web services.

The Web Service Description Language or WSDL—pronounced “Whiz Dull”—is the equivalent of an XML-based IDL from CORBA or COM, and is used to describe a Web service's endpoints to other software agents with which ...

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