Web Services Directory

WS-Security provides a security language for Web services. WS-Security describes enhancements to SOAP messaging providing three capabilities: credential exchange, message integrity, and message confidentiality. These three mechanisms can be used independently or in combination to accommodate a wide variety of security models and encryption technologies. WS-Security provides a general-purpose mechanism for associating licenses (credentials that are signed assertions, e.g., X.509 certificates or Kerberos tickets) with messages. No specific type of credential is required. Message integrity is provided by leveraging XML Signature and licenses to ensure that messages are transmitted without modifications. Similarly, message confidentiality leverages XML Encryption and licenses to keep portions of a SOAP messages confidential.

WS-License describes a set of commonly used license types (credentials that are signed assertions) and describes how they can be placed within the WS-Security credentials tag. Specifically, the WS-License specification describes how to encode X.509 certificates and Kerberos tickets as well as how to include opaque encrypted keys. WS-License includes extensibility mechanisms that can be used to further describe the characteristics of the licenses that are included with a message.

A portal to key XML and Web Services specifications. Covers first and second generation (WS-*) Web Services standards.

The WS-Inspection specification provides an XML format for assisting in the inspection of a site for available services and a set of rules for how inspection related information should be made available for consumption. A WS-Inspection document provides a means for aggregating references to pre-existing service description documents which have been authored in any number of formats. These inspection documents are then made available at the point-of-offering for the service as well as through references which may be placed within a content medium such as HTML.

WS-Referral is a protocol that enables the routing strategies used by SOAP nodes in a message path to be dynamically configured. SOAP itself provides a distributed processing model where SOAP messages can have content destined for specific processing nodes. WS-Routing adds to SOAP the capability of describing the actual message path. WS-Referral provides a mechanism to dynamically configure SOAP nodes in a message path to define how they should handle a SOAP message. It is a configuration protocol that enables SOAP nodes to delegate part or all of their processing responsibility to other SOAP nodes.

WSXL (Web Services Experience Language) is a Web services centric component model for interactive Web applications, that is, for applications that provide a user experience across the Internet. WSXL is designed to achieve two main goals: enable businesses to deliver interactive Web applications through multiple distribution channels and enable new services or applications to be created by leveraging other interactive applications across the Web.

A set of high-level tutorials covering first and second-generation (WS-*) Web services standards, including BPEL4WS, WS-Security, WS-Coordination, and WS-ReliableMessaging.

Web Services Routing Protocol (WS-Routing) is a SOAP-based, stateless protocol for exchanging one-way SOAP messages from an initial sender to the ultimate receiver, potentially via a set of intermediaries.