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WS-Policy

WS-Policy is an interoperability standard that is used to describe and communicate the policies of a Web service so that service providers can export policy requirements in a standard format. Clients can combine the service provider requirements with their own capabilities to establish the policies required for a specific interaction.

WebSphere Application Server conforms to the Web services Policy Framework (WS-Policy) specification. You can use the WS-Policy protocol to exchange policies in standard format. A policy represents the capabilities and requirements of a Web service, for example, whether a message is secure and how to secure it, and whether a message is delivered reliably and how this is achieved. You can communicate the policy configuration to any other client, service registry, or service that supports the WS-Policy specification, including non-WebSphere Application Server products in a heterogeneous environment.

For a service provider, the policy configuration can be shared in a published WSDL, that is obtained by a client using an HTTP get request, or by using the Web Services Metadata Exchange (WS-MetadataExchange) protocol. The WSDL is in the standard WS-PolicyAttachments format.

For a client, the client can obtain the policy of the service provider in the standard WS-PolicyAttachments format and use this information to establish a configuration that is acceptable to both the client and the service provider. In other words, the client can be configured dynamically, based on the policies supported by its service provider. The provider policy can be attached at the application or service level.

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