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Bus-enabled web services: Frequently asked questions

A set of frequently asked questions about service integration bus-enabled web services are collected together in this topic.


What are web services?

  • Web services are modular applications that interact with one another across the Internet. Web services are based on shared, open and emerging technology standards and protocols (such as SOAP, UDDI, and WSDL) and can communicate, interact, and integrate with other applications, no matter how they are implemented.


    What are bus-enabled web services?

    We can associate the web services with the service integration bus, to achieve the following goals:

    • We can take an internally-hosted service that is available at a bus destination, and make it available as a web service.

    • We can take an external web service and make it available internally at a bus destination.

    • We can use the web services gateway to map an existing service - either an internally-hosted service or an external Web service - to a new web service that seems to be provided by the gateway.

  • Bus-enabled web services also provide a choice of quality of service and message distribution options for web services, along with intelligence in the form of mediations that allow for the rerouting of messages.


    What problems are solved by bus-enabled web services?

    Bus-enabled web services solve the following problems:

    • Securely "externalizing" existing services: Existing business applications that are exposed as web services can be used by any web service-enabled tool, regardless of the implementation details. Bus-enabled web services also let you enable controlled access for clients from outside the firewall to web services that are hosted within the enterprise.

    • Better return on investment: Any number of partners can reuse an existing process that you deploy as a web service.

    • Use of existing infrastructure: We can use the existing messaging infrastructure to make web service requests, and use your existing web services for external process integration.

    • Use of external web services: We can make an existing external web service available to the internal systems at a bus destination.


    Who should use bus-enabled web services?

    Any enterprise that chooses to share its resources selectively with its business partners and customers. IT managers and developers, who deploy resources, can also benefit from this technology.


    Related tasks

  • Enable web services through the service integration bus

  • Specifications and API documentation