Summary

In this chapter, we started by looking at why we need a language such as WSDL and then briefly discussed the grammar of the WSDL 1.1 language in the context of a simple Web service. We then looked at how to programmatically change the WSDL that’s generated automatically for a Web service.

It should now be apparent that although WSDL is relatively simple, once you start adding protocol-specific details, it becomes complex very quickly—so much so that in most (if not 99.999 percent) of the cases where you need to use WSDL, you’ll do so without ever looking at a single line of WSDL.

You should now have a thorough understanding of SOAP, the transport protocol used by our Web services, and WSDL, the language used to describe those Web services. But a huge piece is still missing—namely, how to find the Web service in the first place. This is where Microsoft’s DISCO protocol and the standardized UDDI come into play. We’ll cover these topics in the next chapter.