Chapter 6. Web Services Description Language (WSDL)

Web Services Description Language (WSDL) is in many ways what makes Web services interesting. Although SOAP is a message format that everyone understands in the Web services world, WSDL is what everyone uses to tell others what they can do.

WSDL is an XML vocabulary to describe Web services. It allows service authors to provide crucial information about the service so that others can use it. WSDL is designed to be highly extensible and adaptable to enable the description of services using different type systems (such as XML Schema, RelaxNG, or even Java) and services that communicate over SOAP and various other protocols (such as RMI/IIOP or in-memory calls).

A WSDL document consists of two parts: ...

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