Web Services Questions and Answers

1. What are the roles of J2EE and XML?

J2EE also provides excellent client connectivity capabilities, ranging from PDA to Web browsers to
Rich Clients (Applets, CORBA applications, and Standard Java Applications). A typical J2EE
architecture is physically divided into three logical tiers, which enables clear separation of the
various application components with defined roles and responsibilities. The Presentation tier is
composed of Web components, which handle HTTP requests/responses, Session management,
Device independent content delivery, and the invocation of business tier components. Application
tier also known as the business tier, deals with the core business logic processing, which may
typically deal with workflow and automation. The Integration tier deals with connecting and
communicating to back-end Enterprise Information Systems (EIS), data-base applications and
legacy applications, or mainframe applications.
Using XML as a data exchange mechanism between applications promotes interoperability
between applications. XML offers a standard framework for B2B and inter-application
communication across networks.
2. What are Service-oriented architecture and Web Services?
Increasing demands of the industry for enabling B2B, application-to-application (A2A), and inter-
process application communication has led to a growing requirement for service-oriented
architecture. Service-oriented applications facilitates the exposure of business applications as
service components enable business applications from other organizations to link with these
services for application interaction and data sharing without human intervention. By adopting Web
technologies, the service-oriented architecture model facilitates the delivery of services over the
Internet by leveraging standard technologies such as XML. It uses platform-neutral standards by
exposing the underlying application components and making them available to any application, any
platform, or any device, and at any location. This phenomenon is is commonly referred to as Web
services.
3. Define Web Services. According to Gartner research (June 15, 2001), “Web services are
loosely coupled software components delivered over Internet standard technologies.”
In short, Web services are self-describing and modular business applications that expose the
business logic as services over the Internet through programmable interfaces and using Internet
protocols for the purpose of providing ways to find, subscribe, and invoke those services.
4. What is meant by XML messaging: The basic characteristics of a Web services application
model are as Follows: Web services are based on XML messaging, which means that the data
exchanged between the Web service provider and the user are defined in XML.
Web services provide a cross-platform integration of business applications over the Internet. To
build Web services, developers can use any common programming language, such as Java, C, C++,
Perl, Python, C#, and/or Visual Basic, and its existing application components.
Web services are not meant for handling presentations like HTML context—it is developed to
generate XML for uniform accessibility through any software application, any platform, or device.
All platforms including J2EE, CORBA, and Microsoft .NET provide extensive support for creating
and deploying Web services. Web services are dynamically located and invoked from public and
private registries based on industry standards such as UDDI and ebXML.

5. Describe basic operational model of web services.

Service provider- the service provider is responsible for developing and deploying the Web
services. The provider also defines the services and publishes them with the service broker. Service
broker- the service broker (also commonly referred to as a service registry) is responsible for
service registration and discovery of the Web services. The broker lists the various service types,
descriptions, and locations of the services that help the service requesters find and subscribe to the
required services. Service requestor- the service requestor is responsible for the service invocation.
The requestor locates the Web service using the service broker, invokes the required services, and
executes it from the service provider.

6. Why Use Web Services?

The following are the major technical reasons for choosing Web services over Web applications:
Web services can be invoked through XML-based RPC mechanisms across firewalls. Web
services provide a cross-platform, cross-language solution based on XML messaging. Web
services facilitate ease of application integration using a light-weight infrastructure without
affecting scalability. Web services enable interoperability among heterogeneous applications.
Answers for the topics of the Previous Question Paper: JNTUH 2019 April
2) a. Explain the evolution of distributed computing
In the early years of computing, mainframe-based applications were considered to be the best-fit
solution for executing large-scale data processing applications. With the advent of personal
computers (PCs), the concept of software programs running on standalone machines became much
more popular in terms of the cost of ownership and the ease of application use. Lately, network
computing gained importance, and enabling remote procedure calls (RPCs) over a network protocol
called Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) turned out to be a widely accepted
way for application software communication. Since then, software applications running on a variety
of hardware platforms, operating systems, and different networks faced some challenges when
required to communicate with each other and share data. This demanding requirement lead to the
concept of distributed computing applications.
Distributing Computing is a type of computing in which different components and objects
comprising an application can be located on different computers connected to a network

Today,
Sun Java
RMI
(Remote
Method

Invocation), OMG CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture), Microsoft DCOM
(Distributed Component Object Model), and Message-Oriented Middleware (MOM) have emerged
as the most common distributed computing technologies. These technologies, although different in
their basic architectural design
and implementation, address specific problems in their target environments.
The early years of distributed application architecture were dominated by two-tier business
applications. In a two-tier architecture model, the first (upper) tier handles the presentation and
business logic of the user applica-tion (client), and the second/lower tier handles the application
organization and its data storage (server). This approach is commonly called client-server
applications architecture.

b. Discuss the Role of J2EE and XML in Distributed Computing.

J2EE provides a programming model based upon Web and business components that are managed
by the J2EE application server. J2EE also provides excellent client connectivity capabilities,
ranging from PDA to Web browsers to Rich Clients (Applets, CORBA applications, and Standard
Java Applications).
A typical J2EE architecture is physically divided in to three logical tiers, which enables clear
separation of the various application components with defined roles and responsibilities.
Presentation tier. The Presentation tier is composed of Web components, which handle HTTP
requests/responses, Session management, Device independent content delivery, and the invocation
of business tier components.
Application tier. The Application tier (also known as the Business tier) deals with the core business
logic processing, which may typically deal with workflow and automation.
Integration tier. The Integration tier deals with connecting and communicating to back-end
Enterprise Information Systems (EIS), database applications and legacy applications, or mainframe
applications.
J2EE has been highly adopted as the standard solution for developing and deploying mission critical
Web-based applications. The power of J2EE-based applications would be tremendous, if it is
enabled to interoperate with other potential J2EE-deployed applications. This enables business
components across networks to negotiate among them and interact without human interaction. It
also enables the realization of syndication and collaboration of business processes across the
Internet by enabling them to share data and component-level processes in real time.
This phenomenon is commonly referred to as business-to-business (B2B) communication.

The emergence of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) for defining portable data in a
structured and self-describing format is embraced by the industry as a communication medium for
electronic data exchange. Using XML as a data exchange mechanism between applications
promotes interoperability between applications and also enhances the scalability of the underlying
applications. Combining the potential of a J2EE platform and XML offers a standard framework for
B2B and inter-application communication across networks.
3) a. What are web services ? What are the major technical reasons for choosing web services
over web applications?
Web services are loosely coupled software components delivered over Internet standard
technologies. In short, Web services are self-describing and modular business applications that
expose the business logic as services over the Internet through programmable interfaces and using
Internet protocols for the purpose of providing ways to find, subscribe, and invoke those services.
Major technical reasons:
Traditionally, Web applications enable interaction between an end user and a Web site, while Web
services are service-oriented and enable applicationto-application communication over the Internet
and easy accessibility to heterogeneous applications and devices. The following are the major tech-
nical reasons for choosing Web services over Web applications:
1. Web services can be invoked through XML-based RPC mechanisms across firewalls.
2. Web services provide a cross-platform, cross-language solution based on XML messaging.
3. Web services facilitate ease of application integration using a lightweight infrastructure without
affecting scalability.
4. Web services enable interoperability among heterogeneous applications.
b. What are the key benefits and challenges associated with web services?
The key benefits of implementing Web services are as follows:
1. Provides a simple mechanism for applications to become services that are accessible by anyone,
anywhere, and from any device.
2. Defines service-based application connectivity facilitating EAI, and intra-enterprise and inter-
enterprise communication.
3. Defines a solution for businesses, which require flexibility and agility in application-to-
application communication over the Internet.
4. Enables dynamic location and invocation of services through service brokers (registries).
5. Enables collaboration with existing applications that are modeled as services to provide
aggregated Web services.
Known Challenges in Web Services
1. Distributed transactions. If the environment requires distributed transactions with heterogeneous
resources, it should be studied and tested with standard solutions based on BTP, WS-Transactions,
and WS-Coordination.
2. Quality of Service (QoS). In case of a mission-critical solution, the service providers must
examine the reliability and performance of the service in peak load and uncertain conditions for
high availability. The exposed infrastructure must provide load balancing, and failover and fault
tolerance, to resolve these scenarios.
3. Security. Web services are exposed to the public using http-based protocols. As Web services is
publicly available, it must be implemented using authentication and authorization mechanisms and
using SSLenabling encryption of the messages for securing the usage. Adopting open security
standards like SAML, XML Encryption, XML Signature, or XACML may be a solution.

4) Discuss the architecture and the importance of SOAP.

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)

The Simple Object Access Protocol, or SOAP, plays the role of the messaging protocol for
exchanging information between the service provider and the service requestor. Simple Object
Access Protocol, or SOAP, is a standard for a lightweight XML-based messaging protocol. It
enables an exchange of information between two or more peers and enables them to communicate
with each other in a decentralized, distributed application environment.
Figure 4.1 represents the structure of a SOAP message with attachments. Typically, a SOAP
message is represented by a SOAP envelope with zero or more attachments. The SOAP message
envelope contains the header and body of the message, and the SOAP message attachments enable
the message to contain data, which include XML and non-XML data (like text/binary files). In fact,
a SOAP message package is constructed using the MIME Multipart/Related structure approaches to
separate and identify the different parts of the message.
SOAP request message format:
POST /BookPrice HTTP/1.1
Host: catalog.acmeco.com
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=”utf-8”
Content-Length: 640
SOAPAction: “GetBookPrice”
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope
xmlns:SOAP ENV=”http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/”
xmlns:xsi=”http://www.w3c.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance”
xmlns:xsd=”http://www.w3c.org/2001/XMLSchema”
SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle
=”http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/”>
<SOAP-ENV:Header>
<person:mail
xmlns:person=”http://acmeco.com/Header/”>xyz@acmeco.com
</person:mail>
</SOAP-ENV:Header>
<SOAP-ENV:Body>
<m:GetBookPrice
xmlns:m=”http://www.wiley.com/jws.book.priceList”>
<bookname xsi:type=’xsd:string’>
Developing Java Web Services</bookname>
</m:GetBookPrice>
</SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV: Envelope>

5) a. Discuss about SOAP communication and messaging.

SOAP Communication
SOAP is designed to communicate between applications independent of the underlying platforms
and programming languages. To enable communication between SOAP nodes, SOAP supports the
following two types of communication models:
SOAP RPC. It defines a remote procedural call-based synchronous communication where the
SOAP nodes send and receive messages using request and response methods and exchange
parameters and then return the values.
The SOAP RPC representation defines a tightly coupled communication model based on requests
and responses.
SOAP Messaging. It defines a document-driven communication where SOAP nodes send and
receive XML-based documents using synchronous and asynchronous messaging.
SOAP Messaging represents a loosely coupled communication model based on message notification
and the exchange of XML documents. The SOAP message body is represented by XML documents
or literals encoded according to a specific W3C XML schema, and it is produced and con-
sumed by sending or receiving SOAP node(s).

b. Explain how a structure and an integer with a range check are encoded in SOAP?

( will be given in the next Notes )

 WEB SERVICES
IMPORTANT QUESTIONS – MID-I
UNIT-I
1. Define Distributed Computing? Explain the importance of Distributed computing?
2. List and explain the core distributed Technologies?
3. Discuss about CLIENT and SERVER technology reference to web based applications?
4. Describe about CORBA technology with reference to web based applications?
5. Explain Java RMI in detail?
6. Explain about DCOM technology with reference to web based applications?
7. Describe about MOM technology with reference to web based applications?
8. Explain the concept of Service Oriented Architecture?
9. Define web services and explain the basic characteristics of a web services?
10. Explain about benefits of using web services?
11. Explain about challenges in web services?
12. List the steps involved in implementing web services?
13. Discuss about core web services standards a) xml b) soap c) wsdl d) uddi ?
14. Explain the core building blocks of web services architecture?
15. Discuss about the web services RPC based communication model?
16. Explain about the web services Messaging based communication model?
UNIT- II
17. Explain about anatomy of a soap message (message structure) ?
18. Write short notes on soap encoding?
19. Discuss about soap message exchange models?
20. Explain about soap communication?
21. Discuss about soap bindings for following transport protocols a) http b) smtp?
22. Explain about soap security for soap encryption?
23. Discuss about soap security for soap digital signature?
24. Explain about soap security for soap authorization?
25. Explain about developing SOAP Web Services Using Java
26. Explain about developing SOAP web services using Apache axis?
27. Explain the limitations of SOAP?
 UNIT-III

28. Discuss about WSDL in the World of Web Services

29. Describe the WSDL Structure and its life cycle in detail?
30. Explain about Anatomy of a WSDL Definition Document