Testing a Published Web Service

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Page 337

To complete the Web service package, you need UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration) as well. It provides specifications for a directory of Web services. The UDDI Business Registry (also called UBR and cloud services) is the actual registry where potential consumers can search through UDDI lists, and where service publishers can register and describe the Web services they offer. The registry is divided into three sections:

Yellow pages The most abstract layer, simply listing data such as the company's product or type of business (geologic research, for instance). Think of it as similar to the phone book yellow pages.

White pages More specific details about a company that is offering a Web service (addresses, phone numbers, salespersons' contact info, and so on).

Green pages The actual nitty gritty details: specs explaining the Web service itself. You can put whatever you want in the Green pages, but typically you include the URI to the address of the Web service, or reference associated SOAP or WSDL files. (You aren't required to use SOAP here. You can use alternative descriptions. And, if you wish, you need not include details about your Web service, but instead simply provide an e-mail address or Web page where customers can look for further information.

You can browse Microsoft's node of the UDDI Registry, or you can even add your own Web service to it to test it. To register your own service, choose Help image Show Start Page, click the Online Resources tab, then click the XML Web Services option in the left pane.

You can also use this registry to add Web services to your .NET projects. When you open the Projectimage Add Web Reference dialog box, you can access UDDIs in several ways (in addition to the ''local machine" option described previously in this chapter):

Browse UDDI Servers on the Local Network Click this link to see servers in your LAN that are currently publishing UDDI described Web services.

UDDI Directory With this link you can traverse the Microsoft UDDI Registry and discover the Web services that have registered on Microsoft's node.

Test Microsoft UDDI Directory Use this link to search for test Web services that have been posted here, so you can experiment with the Web service technology as a consumer. You can also use this test directory to register and publish your own Web services for testing purposes.

For further information on the UDDI Registry in general, look at: http://www.uddi.org/register.html.

Testing a Published Web Service

If you want to try consuming a Web service that's published on the Internet (written by someone else), you can give it a try. It's useful practice, to see if you can manage to figure out someone else's intentions and successfully get back a response.

I've looked around and many of the test services listed are either impossible to figure out without further help from their authors or no longer active at their URL. Nonetheless, you might find one on your own that you can discover (figure out) and consume (use).

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Visual Basic  .NET Power Tools
Visual Basic .NET Power Tools
ISBN: 0782142427
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 178

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