Jim Clune

Solid testing techniques are essential for developing robust Web services because Web services' flexibility and connectivity provide an increased opportunity for errors. Problems can be introduced in any of a service's multiple layers, and even the slightest mistake can cause the entire service to fail. In order for a complete Web service to deliver the promised functionality, both the client and the service must satisfy a number of requirements. Interfaces must be correctly described in a WSDL document. Messages must conform to both the transport protocol specification (such as HTTP 1.1) and the message protocol (such as SOAP 1.1). Messages must also conform to the contract specified in the WSDL describing the service, both in terms of the message content and the binding to the transport layer. Add to the mix security provisions, interoperability issues, UDDI regi... (more)

BPEL in a Service-Oriented Architecture

Service-oriented architectures (SOA) have gained much attention recently as a unifying technical architecture that can be concretely embodied with Web service technologies. SOA is a design model deeply rooted in the concept of encapsulating application logic within services that interact via a common communications framework. A key aspect of the Web service incarnation of SOA is that the Web service is viewed as a fundamental building block of an SOA-based application. BPEL, originally called BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services) is a language for descri... (more)