Inside of WSDL

WSDL addresses the communication by defining an XML grammar for describing network services as collections of communication endpoints capable of exchanging messages. It provides documentation for distributed system and serves as a recipe for automating the details involved in applications communication.

In this post I will show shortly what is inside of one WSDL.

In general WSDL document defines services which is a collection of network endpoints (ports). One WSDL contains:

1. An abstract definition of endpoints (ports) and messages is separated from their concrete network deployment or data format bindings. This allows the reuse of abstract definitions: messages, which are abstract descriptions of the data being exchanged, and port types which are abstract collections of operations.

1. The physical description of protocol and data format specifications for a particular port type. This description is a kind of reusable binding. A port is defined by associating a network address with a reusable binding.

The full WSDL specification can be found here.

This commented example shows a subset of original WSDL of very popular CurrencyServer web service.