Integration Platform Technologies: Siebel Enterprise Application Integration > Web Services >

About Web Services

Web Services combine component-based development and Internet standards and protocols that include HTTP, XML, Simple Object Application Protocol (SOAP), and Web Services Description Language (WSDL). You can reuse Web Services regardless of how they are implemented. Web Services can be developed on any computer platform and in any development environment as long as they can communicate with other Web Services using these common protocols.

Business services or workflow processes in Siebel Business Applications can be exposed as Web Services to be consumed by an application. Siebel Web Services framework has an ability to generate WSDL files to describe the Web Services hosted by the Siebel application. Also, the Siebel Web Services framework can call external web services. This is accomplished by importing a WSDL document, described as an external Web Service, using the WSDL import wizard in Siebel Tools.

To specify the structure of XML used in the body of SOAP messages, Web Services use an XML Schema Definition (XSD) standard. The XSD standard describes an XML document structure in terms of XML elements and attributes. It also specifies abstract data types, and defines and extends the value domains.

Users or programs interact with Web Services by exchanging XML messages that conform to Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). For Web Services support, SOAP provides a standard SOAP envelope, standard encoding rules that specify mapping of data based on an abstract data type into an XML instance and back, and conventions for how to make remote procedure calls (RPC) using SOAP messages.

Supported Web Services Standards

The following Web services standards are supported by Siebel Business Applications:

• Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 1.1
• Web Services Security (WS-Security) based on the clear-text UserName Token mechanism. For information, see the following:
  • About WS-Security UserName Token Profile Support
  • http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2002/07/secext
• Web Services Interoperability (WS-I) Basic Profile 1.0
• Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) 1.1
• Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 1.1
• Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0
• XML Schema
• Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) 1.0

For more details on supported elements and attributes, see XML Reference: Siebel Enterprise Application Integration. For information on supported standards, see http://www.w3.org.