Working with SOAP Web Services

Lesson 1: Introduction to SOAP Web Services

This lesson will cover what Web Services are. Simply put, a WebService is a service that runs on the Web and exposes certain application logic to the outside world making it callable via the web using HTTP request.

This lesson will focus on SOAP WebServices. It uses a specialized form of XML for communication.

www.WebserviceX.net is an online service that provides various webservices.
For example, a service for looking up countries.
Shown is the WSDL; the webservice description language that provides an overview of the service in XML format.
The most important portion of the are the operations. They describe what methods you can call on during a service, the parameters required, and what output they generate.
Running the webservice shows that it can be called on through the browser. Once exposed, it shows all the methods that are exposed by the webservice.
Choosing “GetCountryByCountryCode” shows a description of the method, and a location to call on the service.
Entering a CountryCode parameter and selecting “invoke” causes the webservices to be called using the entered parameter.
For example, entering “NL” produced a response in XML format showing the details for the Netherlands.

SOAP Web Services

DataFlex courses

Information

Working with SOAP Web Services

Lesson 1: Introduction to SOAP Web Services