Web Services and SOA Foundation Course

Note: For additional information, please download the course datasheet.

Target Population: Designed to provide IT workers of varying technical backgrounds with a foundation in Web Services, including Managers, Developers, Analysts and Architects.
Pre-requisites: None
Duration/Format: 1 day. This is a course involving lectures and demos delivered by an expert instructor.

Course Description

This course provides an overview for managers, decision-makers and software engineers of the history, technologies and applications of Web Services to solve the problems of application and software technology integration within and between enterprises. The pervasive nature of the Internet/Web infrastructure has spawned newer and simpler solutions for integration leveraging the emerging base technologies of XML, SOAP and WSDL, operating with .NET, J2EE, CORBA and mainframe environments. This course highlights the re-use of existing Service-Oriented Architecture but now over the ubiquitous world of HTTP and Web technologies to result in a Web Services approach to connecting companies and customers. In addition, valuable up-to-date information on Web Services tools and development environments as well as a live demonstration of Web Service development will be given to cement the reality of this exciting next step in IT systems.

Course Objectives

On the completion of the course, the participants will be able to:

Describe Web Services and how they enable application integration.
Understand how the different standards and standards bodies work together to provide a set of standards.
Understand in depth the core Web Services technologies (XML, WSDL, SOAP and UDDI)
Understand the differences between different styles of WSDL: RPC, document and wrapped-doc-literal.
Understand best practise in WSDL interface design.
Understand advanced issues such as Web Services security and transactions.
Understand the core concepts and design principles of service-oriented architecture, and how Web Services can be used as an underlying technology for SOA.
Identify areas where Web Services can have an immediate impact within their enterprise, and have the skills required to begin design of service-oriented interfaces using WSDL.

Detailed Course Content

Core technologies for Web Services

A high level overview of XML, WSDL, SOAP and UDDI: this chapter demystifies the underlying core technologies behind Web Services
These technologies are presented in terms of the classic service provider, service interface and service consumer trilogy.

Web Services Demo

An expert instructor will show Web Services in action.
A Web Services client and server implementing a stock quote service will be demonstrated.
The instructor will show how XML, WSDL, and SOAP are used in the interactions
If network resources are available, the instructor will connect to an Internet Web Services on the web.
The demo will use Eclipse, Java, Mindreef SoapScope and Artix.

Web Services Standards and Organisations

The Web Services standards space is shared by a number of organisations; this section describes each body and their associated standards.
Organisations include OASIS, W3C, WS-I, OMG and Java Community

XML Technologies

XML elements and attributes with sample documents
XML namespaces
XML Schema Definition (XSD)
Fundamentals of Extensible Stylesheet Language - Transform (XSLT)

SOAP - Simple Object Access Protocol

Structure of a SOAP message
Sample SOAP requests and responses

UDDI - Universal Discover Description and Integration

UDDI technologies, API, and acceptance
Alternatives to UDDI

WSDL - Web Services Description Language

Understanding the logical interface: types, messages, operations and portTypes.
Different kinds of WSDL operations: one-way, request-response, solicit-response and notification.
Understanding the physical interface: services, ports and bindings.
Interface modelling using WSDL.

The Wrapped-Doc-Literal Style for WSDL

Discussion of different message encodings and styles, their historical evolution and their on-the-wire format.
Why doc-literal is preferred over RPC-encoded, and why it should be used in wrapped form.
Design guidelines for using the wrapped-doc-literal approach.

Best Practise in WSDL Design

Advice on how to design interoperable WSDL that is easy to understand and re-use.
Operation Granularity
Naming: portTypes, services, ports and bindings.
Client access
WSDL-first design

Web Services Security

Why security is so important for Web Services
Challenges (and solutions) for Web Services security are presented and discussed.
Use of secure transports (HTTPS) and WSSE headers.
Security-related standards.

Web Services Transactions

Why transactions are so important for service re-use and aggregation.
Different transaction semantics: long-lived, short-lived, ACID, business process modelling, compensation.
Requirements for a Web Services transaction monitor.
Transactions-related standards.

Web Services and Service-Oriented Architecture

What are services, and what benefits do they offer?
Service-oriented architecture
Why Web Services are ideally suited to the goals of service-oriented architecture.
SOA and the "Enterprise service bus".
SOA without Web Services

Principles of service-oriented design

The principles of good service-oriented design are discussed: loose-coupling, formal contracts, abstraction, re-use, composition, autonomy, stateless and discovery.
With these principles in mind, common IT assets are reviewed and assessed with regards to how "service-oriented" they really are.

Summary, References and Useful links