1 Introducing Oracle Infrastructure Web Services

This chapter introduces Oracle Infrastructure Web services and describes the standards supported.

• Overview of Oracle Infrastructure Web Services

• Types of Oracle Infrastructure Web Services and Clients

• Supported Standards

• Related Documentation

Overview of Oracle Infrastructure Web Services

In Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g, there are two categories of Web services to support the development, security, and administration of the following types of Web services:

• Oracle Infrastructure Web services—SOA, ADF, and Web Center services

• WebLogic Web services (Java EE Web services)

The following figure illustrates the two Web services categories. Oracle Infrastructure Web services are highlighted (in yellow) in the figure.

Figure 1-1 Web Services in Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g

Note:

For more information about the full set of components shown in the figure, including the development; security and administration; and policy management tools, see Introducing Web Services.

This chapter describes concepts for developing Oracle Infrastructure Web services. For more information about WebLogic Web services, see Introducing WebLogic Web Services for Oracle WebLogic Server.

Types of Oracle Infrastructure Web Services and Clients

Table 1-1 summarizes the types of Oracle Infrastructure Web services supported in Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g.

Table 1-1 Oracle Infrastructure Web Services

Web Service	Description
SOA service components	SOA composite applications include SOA service components. SOA service components are the basic building blocks of SOA applications, implementing a part of the overall business logic functionality. The following SOA service components can be managed using Oracle WSM: BPEL Process—Provides process orchestration and storage of synchronous and asynchronous processes. Oracle Mediator—Routes events (messages) between different components. Human Workflow—Enables you to model a workflow that describes the tasks for users or groups to perform as part of an end-to-end business process flow. Business Rules—Design a business decision based on rules. For more information about developing SOA service components, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle SOA Suite. You can deploy SOA service components to the Oracle Fusion Middleware environment.
SOA service binding components	SOA Service binding components provide the outside world with an entry point to the SOA composite application. The WSDL file of the service advertises its capabilities to external applications. These capabilities are used for contacting the SOA composite application components. For more information, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle SOA Suite.
ADF Business Components	ADF Business Components simplify the development, delivery, and customization of business applications for the Java EE platform by providing a library of reusable components and supporting design time facilities in Oracle JDeveloper. Using ADF Business Components, developers are not required to write the application infrastructure code required by the typical Java EE application to perform the following tasks: Connect to the database. Retrieve data. Lock database records. Manage transactions. Additionally, Oracle JDeveloper facilities expose ADF Business Component application modules that encapsulate built-in data manipulation operations and custom methods as Web services so that a service-enabled application module can be consumed across modules of the deploy Fusion Web application. For more information, see "Integrating Service-Enabled Application Modules" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Fusion Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework.
WebCenter services	WebCenter services expose Web 2.0 technologies for social networking and personal productivity, such as Wiki, RSS, and blogs. WebCenter provides a set of features and services (for example, portlets, customization, and content integration) that you can selectively add to your application. For more information about developing WebCenter services, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle WebCenter.

Table 1-2 summarizes the types of Oracle Infrastructure Web service clients supported in Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g.

Table 1-2 Oracle Infrastructure Web Service Clients

Web Service Client	Description
SOA reference binding components	SOA reference binding components connect the SOA composite application to external partners. For more information about developing SOA reference binding components, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle SOA Suite.
ADF Web applications	ADF Web applications can invoke a service, such as a WebLogic Web service, a SOA composite application, or a service-enabled ADF application module. For more information, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle SOA Suite. In addition, ADF Web applications can work with Web services in the user interface using a Web service data control. For more information about generating service-enabled application modules, calling a Web service from an ADF application module, or creating Web service data controls, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Fusion Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework.
WebCenter portlets	WebCenter portlets enable you to surface WebCenter services. For more information about developing WebCenter portlets, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle WebCenter.

Supported Standards

The following table summarizes the Oracle Infrastructure Web service specifications that are part of the Oracle implementation, organized by high-level feature.

Oracle considers interoperability of Web services platforms to be more important than providing support for all possible edge cases of the Web services specifications. Oracle complies with the following specifications from the Web Services Interoperability Organization and considers them to be the baseline for Web services interoperability:

• Basic Profile 1.1 and 1.0: http://www.ws-i.org/Profiles/BasicProfile-1.1-2004-08-24.html

• Basic Security Profile 1.0: http://www.ws-i.org/Profiles/BasicSecurityProfile-1.0.html

• WS-I Attachments Profile 1.0: http://www.ws-i.org/Profiles/AttachmentsProfile-1.0.html

Note:

For more information about Oracle Infrastructure Web service security standards, see "Web Services Security Standards" in Security and Administrator's Guide for Web Services.

Table 1-3 Specifications Supported by Oracle Infrastructure Web Services

Feature	Specification
Programming model (based on metadata annotations) and runtime architecture	Web Services Metadata Exchange (WS-MetadataExchange) 1.1—Part of the WS-Federation roadmap which allows retrieval of metadata about a Web service endpoint. For more information, see Web Services Metadata Exchange (WS-MetadataExchange) specification at http://xml.coverpages.org/WS-MetadataExchange.pdf.
Web service description	Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 1.1 and 2.0—XML-based specification that describes a Web service. For more information, see Web Services Description Language (WSDL) at http://www.w3.org/TR/wsdl. Web Services Policy Framework (WS-Policy) 1.5 and 1.2—General purpose model and corresponding syntax to describe and communicate the policies of a Web service. For more information, see: WS-Policy 1.5 Framework (Recommendation): http://www.w3.org/TR/ws-policy/ WS-Policy 1.2 Framework (Member Submission): http://www.w3.org/Submission/WS-Policy Web Services Policy Attachment (WS-PolicyAttachment) 1.5 and 1.2—Abstract model and an XML-based expression grammar for policies. For more information, see: WS-Policy Attachment 1.5 (Recommendation): http://www.w3.org/TR/ws-policy-attach/ WS-PolicyAttachment 1.2 (Member Submission): http://www.w3.org/Submission/WS-PolicyAttachment
Data exchange between Web service and requesting client	Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) 1.1 and 1.2—Lightweight XML-based protocol used to exchange information in a decentralized, distributed environment. For more information, see Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) at http://www.w3.org/TR/SOAP. SOAP with Attachments API for Java (SAAJ) 1.3—Implementation that developers can use to produce and consume messages conforming to the SOAP 1.1 specification and SOAP with Attachments notes. For more information, see the SOAP with Attachments API for Java (SAAJ) specification at https://saaj.dev.java.net. Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM) you can specify that a Web service use a streaming API when reading inbound SOAP messages that include attachments, rather than the default behavior in which the service reads the entire message into memory. For more information, see SOAP Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism specification at http://www.w3.org/TR/soap12-mtom/.
Security	Web Services Security (WS-Security) 1.0 and 1.1—Standard set of SOAP [SOAP11, SOAP12] extensions that can be used when building secure Web services to implement message content integrity and confidentiality. For more information, see OASIS Web Service Security Web page at http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=wss. Web services security supports the following security tokens: - Username—defines how a Web service consumer can supply a username as a credential for authentication). - X.509 certificate—a signed data structure designed to send a public key to a receiving party. - Kerberos ticket—a binary authentication and session token. - Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) assertion—shares security information over the Internet through XML documents For more information, see "Web Service Security Standards" in Security and Administrator's Guide for Web Services. Web Services Security Policy (WS-SecurityPolicy) 1.3, 1.2, and 1.1—Set of security policy assertions for use with the WS-Policy framework. For more information, see Web Services Security Policy (WS-SecurityPolicy) 1.3 specification at http://docs.oasis-open.org/ws-sx/ws-securitypolicy/200802 Web Services Security Policy (WS-SecurityPolicy) 1.2 specification at http://docs.oasis-open.org/ws-sx/ws-securitypolicy/200702/ws-securitypolicy-1.2-spec-os.html Web Services Security Policy (WS-SecurityPolicy) 1.1 specification at http://specs.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/07/securitypolicy/ws-securitypolicy.pdf Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0—XML standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between security domains. For more information, see the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) specification at http://docs.oasis-open.org/security/saml/v2.0/. Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) Token Profile 1.1—Set of SOAP extensions that implement SOAP message authentication and encryption. For more information, see the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) Token Profile 1.1 specification at http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/16768/wss-v1.1-spec-os-SAMLTokenProfile.pdf. WS-Trust—Defines extensions to WS-Security that provide a framework for requesting and issuing security tokens, and to broker trust relationships. For more information, see http://docs.oasis-open.org/ws-sx/ws-trust/v1.3/ws-trust.html XML Signature—Defines an XML syntax for digital signatures. For more information, see XML Signature Syntax and Processing at http://www.w3.org/TR/xmldsig-core/. XML Encryption—Defines how to encrypt the contents of an XML element. For more information, see XML Encryption Syntax and Processing at http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlenc-core/.
Reliable communication	Web Services Addressing (WS-Addressing) 1.0—Transport-neutral mechanisms to address Web services and messages. For more information, see Web Services Addressing (WS-Addressing) specification at http://www.w3.org/TR/ws-addr-core. Web Services Reliable Messaging (WS-ReliableMessaging) 1.0 and 1.1—Implementation that enables two Web services running on different WebLogic Server instances to communicate reliably in the presence of failures in software components, systems, or networks. For more information, see: Web Services Reliable Messaging (WS-ReliableMessaging) 1.1 specification at http://docs.oasis-open.org/ws-rx/wsrm/200702/wsrm-1.1-spec-os-01.pdf. Web Services Reliable Messaging (WS-ReliableMessaging) 1.0 specification at http://specs.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/02/rm/ws-reliablemessaging.pdf. Web Services Reliable Messaging Policy (WS-ReliableMessaging Policy) 1.1—Domain-specific policy assertion for reliable messaging for use with WS-Policy and WS-ReliableMessaging. For more information, see Web Services Reliable Messaging Policy (WS-ReliableMessaging Policy) specification at http://docs.oasis-open.org/ws-rx/wsrmp/200702/wsrmp-1.1-spec-os-01.pdf
Atomic transactions	Web Services Atomic Transaction—Defines the Atomic Transaction coordination type that is to be used with the extensible coordination framework described in the Web Services Coordination specification. The WS-AtomicTransaction and WS-Coordination specifications define an extensible framework for coordinating distributed activities among a set of participants. For more information, see: WS-AtomicTransaction: http://docs.oasis-open.org/ws-tx/wstx-wsat-1.2-spec-cs-01/wstx-wsat-1.2-spec-cs-01.html WS-Coordination: http://docs.oasis-open.org/ws-tx/wstx-wscoor-1.2-spec-cs-01/wstx-wscoor-1.2-spec-cs-01.html,
Advertisement (registration and discovery)	Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) 2.0—Standard for describing a Web service; registering a Web service in a well-known registry; and discovering other registered Web services. For more information, see the Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) specification at http://uddi.xml.org. Web Services Inspection Language 1.0—Provides an XML format for assisting in the inspection of a site for available services. For more information, see Web Services Inspection Language (WS-Inspection) 1.0 specification at http://download.boulder.ibm.com/ibmdl/pub/software/dw/specs/ws-wsilspec/ws-wsilspec.pdf.

Related Documentation

The following table summarizes the documentation that is related to Oracle Infrastructure Web services development, security, and administration.

Table 1-4 Related Documentation

Document	Description
Oracle Fusion Middleware Introducing Web Services	This document. Provides an introduction to Web services for Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g.
Security and Administrator's Guide for Web Services	Describes how to secure and administer Web services.
Extensibility Guide for Oracle Web Services Manager	Describes how to build custom assertions for Oracle Web Services Manager (Oracle WSM).
Oracle Fusion Middleware Interoperability Guide for Oracle Web Services Manager	Describes how to implement the most common Oracle WSM interoperability scenarios.
Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle SOA Suite	Describes how to develop SOA composite services.
Oracle Fusion Middleware Fusion Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework	Describes how to develop ADF components.
Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle WebCenter	Describes how to develop WebCenter services.
"Developing with Web Services" in the "Designing and Developing Applications" section of the Oracle JDeveloper online help	Describes how to develop Web services and attach policies using Oracle JDeveloper.
Oracle Workshop for WebLogic Server	Explains how to use Workshop to write and manage source code and design with sophisticated visual tools and Java frameworks.