Endpoint References and WS-Addressing

ActiveVOS Server User’s Guide

Endpoint References and WS-Addressing

The protocol to specify location information for an endpoint reference is based on the Web Services Addressing (WS-Addressing) specification.

The WS-Addressing specification standardizes the format for referencing a Web service allowing you to create uniquely identified Web services and Web service instances that are not bound to a specific transport mechanism, such as HTTP. Using WS-Addressing, the endpoint information is added to the header of a SOAP request and not to the URL specified in the SOAP body.

Having endpoint reference information in a SOAP header means that you can do the following:

Specify Web service instance IDs
Select Reply To and Fault To addressees
Select From endpoint references in the case where an acknowledgement needs to be sent back to the sender

The basic WS-Addressing syntax is as follows:

<wsa:EndpointReference>

  <wsa:Address>s:anyURI</wsa:Address>

  <wsa:ServiceName PortName=”portname”>s:Service

    </wsa:ServiceName>

</wsa:EndpointReference>

where:

Address is a mandatory element that identifies an endpoint. It may be a network address or a logical address.

ServiceName is the qualified name, or QName, for the service being invoked. This service must be defined in a WSDL file that is deployed with the process or one that is available in the ActiveVOS engine’s resource catalog.

PortName identifies the service port being invoked.

ActiveVOS supports the following versions of the WS-Addressing specification:

http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing

Note: This is the default version that the PDD uses.

http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2003/03/addressing
http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2004/03/addressing
http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2004/08/addressing

You can review the WS-Addressing Working Draft specification at http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-ws-addr-core-20050331/.

For more details on addressing, see Partner Role Invoke Handlers.