Chapter 4: Exploring the Architecture Adapter Pattern

Overview

The previous chapter explained the Web Service architecture in terms of the Service-Oriented Architecture pattern. Web Services implement the service- oriented architecture using Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) as a communication mechanism between services and Universal Description, Data, and Discovery (UDDI) as a directory implementation. Web Services Description Language (WSDL) describes the interface to a Web Service. Web Services do not support inheritance or polymorphism, and they do not delve into the service implementation techniques. On the other hand, Web Services build on such a small set of primitive types and concepts that you can use virtually any semi-modern programming language to build service implementations .

In the beginning days of Web Services, Java programmers coded socket listeners that received SOAP messages, parsed them, and called the proper code in the Java language. There are significant challenges to writing the code that converts between the Web Service implementation of a service-oriented architecture and the Java platform. Thankfully, tools, such as some of the tools included with Apache Axis, automate the creation of this code that converts data from the Web Service architecture to the Java architecture. At design time, it is easy to wrap up the responsibilities of this conversion from Web Services to Java in a simple design pattern: the Architecture Adapter pattern.

In this chapter, you will look at the architecture adapter as a generic pattern. You then dissect the architecture adapter in terms of service deployment in Apache Axis and service consumption from Java.