Configure web services for a service integration bus

Take an internally-hosted service that is available at a bus destination, and make it available as a web service; Take an externally-hosted web service, and make it available internally at a bus destination; Use the web services gateway to map an existing service - either an inbound or an outbound service - to a new Web service that appears to be provided by the gateway.

In figure 1, a client request is received by an endpoint listener then passed through an inbound port to an inbound service destination. An outbound service destination passes a request through an outbound port to an external service.

In figure 2, a client request is received by an endpoint listener, then passed through an inbound port to an inbound service destination. An outbound service destination passes a request through an outbound port to an external service, and a gateway service resembles an inbound service and maps to an outbound service.

Figure 1. Inbound, outbound and gateway services

Through service integration bus-enabled web services we can achieve the following goals:

• Create an inbound service: Take an internally-hosted service that is available at a bus destination, and make it available as a web service.

• Create an outbound service: Take an externally-hosted web service, and make it available internally at a bus destination.

• Create a gateway service: Use the web services gateway to map an existing service - either an inbound or an outbound service - to a new Web service that appears to be provided by the gateway.

Subtopics

• Making an internally-hosted service available as a web service
  Create an inbound service. An inbound service is a Web interface to a service provided internally (that is, a service provided by our own organization and hosted in a location that is directly available through a service integration bus destination). To configure a locally-hosted service as an inbound service, you associate it with a service destination, and with one or more endpoint listeners through which service requests and responses are passed to the service. We can also choose to have the local service made available through one or more UDDI registries.

• Making an externally-hosted web service available internally
  Create an outbound service. An outbound service provides access, through one or more outbound ports, to a web service that is hosted externally. An outbound service can be used by any of your internal systems that can access the service integration bus on which it is hosted. To make an externally-hosted service available through a bus, you first associate it with a service destination, then you configure one or more port destinations (one for each type of binding, for example SOAP over HTTP or SOAP over JMS) through which service requests and responses are passed to the external service. You get the port definitions from the WSDL, but we can choose which ones to create.

• Work with the web services gateway
  Use the web services gateway to map an existing service - either an inbound or an outbound service - to a new web service that appears to be provided by the gateway. The gateway acts as a proxy: the gateway service users need not know whether the underlying service is being provided internally or externally. The gateway provides you with a single point of control, access and validation of web service requests, and we can use it to control which web services are available to different groups of web service users.