Web services architecture

The Web services architecture includes three roles:

• Service provider
  Web service providers create components, then publish them to a repository. On the WAS platform, these components include:
  • Enterprise beans
  • Java beans
  • DB2 Universal Database stored procedures
  • Server-side scripts that implement the Bean Scripting Framework (BSF)

  For more information on accessing enterprise beans, see Enterprise beans.

  Web service providers can also unpublish components (remove them from the repository) when they are no longer needed.

• Service broker
  Web service brokers categorize Web services as they are published, and search for them as service requests are received. Web brokers are roughly analagous to Internet search engines, except that they locate components instead of Web pages.
• Service requester
  Web service requesters look up, or locate and invoke components as services. They act as the client for published Web services.

This diagram illustrates how client and server roles can interact to provide Web services.