What Does This Book Cover?

Here is an outline of the contents of this book.

Chapter 1: Web Services Specifications and Interoperability

This chapter starts with an overview of interoperability concepts and the reasons why widely adopted specifications are crucial for the future of SOAP- based Web services, including describing Microsofts vision of an advanced and modular Web services architecture. It includes some conceptual examples of why interoperability is important and discusses the roles of industry and standards bodies in driving interoperability. This chapter introduces many of these proposed advanced Web service specifications and shows how they are designed to extend SOAP-based messaging Web services for the enterprise. A high-level review of the foundational Web services standards is also included, which covers XML, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, DIME, and others.

Chapter 2: Programming Web Services Enhancements

This chapter describes Microsoft .NET and Web services development and introduces WSE 2.0. It includes descriptions of both the architecture and the programming model employed by WSE and explains how to install WSE. This chapter also includes a general description of the example Web service that I use throughout this book as well as a discussion of some WSE usage scenarios.

Chapter 3: WS-Attachments and DIME

This chapter covers the support provided by WSE for transporting arbitrary file attachments, including binary files, with SOAP messages. Based on a set of specifications backed by IBM and Microsoft, attachments and SOAP messages can be transported in Direct Internet Message Encapsulation (DIME) messages. This chapter describes DIME, WS-Attachments, and WSDL Extensions for DIME specifications and shows how to use WSE to send attachments with SOAP messages.

Chapter 4: Reliable Messaging for Web Services

This chapter describes the challenges in reliably delivering SOAP messages in complex Web services infrastructures and some of the specifications that have been proposed to begin to solve these message reliability issues, including WS- ReliableMessaging and WS-Addressing. There is also a discussion of WSE support for WS-Addressing. This chapter also includes a description of two Microsoft-proposed specifications, WS-Routing and WS-Referral, that can be used to support complex and decision-based routing topologies, including a discussion of using WSE to enable such routing topologies.

Chapter 5: Web Service Security

This chapter highlights the challenges involved in securing Web services, including descriptions of vulnerabilities and types of attacks. It also discusses the security features described in the WS-Security, XML Encryption, and XML Signature specifications. This chapter demonstrates how to use features of WSE to secure SOAP messages. The chapter is also the foundation for the material covered in Chapter 8.

Chapter 6: Defining Policies for Web Services

This chapter introduces the concept of Web service policies, which are extensions of the classic Web service description mechanisms that cover the capabilities and requirements of Web services. This chapter covers the WS-Policy, WS-PolicyAttachment, WS-PolicyAssertions, and WS-SecurityPolicy specifications, as well as the policy aspects of WS-ReliableMessaging. In it I demonstrate how WSE supports these policy specifications and how to use policies in a Web service.

Chapter 7: Coordinating Transactions in Web Services

This chapter describes the challenges in extending the coordinated transactions processing model to support Web services and how transactions can be used in a Web service. It introduces the WS-AtomicTransaction and WS-Coordination specifications and describes how they can be used to provide transactional integrity for and coordination between Web services.

Chapter 8: Implementing Secure Messaging for Web Services

This chapter builds on the core security functionality described in Chapter 5 to describe how Web services can interact securely with one another in a trusted environment. It includes a discussion of the WS-SecureConversation and WS- Trust specifications and how they enable secure SOAP-based messaging and the sharing of trust across domains. This chapter also describes WSE support for these specifications and how to use WSE to enable secure and efficient Web service by leveraging security token services.

Chapter 9: Future of Web Services, Specifications, and WSE

This chapter discusses the pieces of the specification framework that still need to be provided and how Microsofts support for Web services will be driving the industry. This chapter also includes some ideas regarding where the industry is headed in the long term with Web services.