Home / Middleware

1 Introducing Oracle Infrastructure Web Services

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

This chapter includes the following sections:

• 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 12c, 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—ADF services

• Java EE (WebLogic) 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 12c

Description of "Figure 1-1 Web Services in Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c"

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 Understanding Web Services.

This chapter describes concepts for developing Oracle Infrastructure Web services. For more information about Java EE Web services, see Understanding 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 12c.

Table 1-1 Oracle Infrastructure Web Services

Web Service

Description

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 Developing Fusion Web Applications with Oracle Application Development Framework.

Table 1-2 summarizes the types of Oracle Infrastructure Web service clients supported in Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c.

Table 1-2 Oracle Infrastructure Web Service Clients

Web Service Client

Description

ADF Web applications

ADF Web applications can invoke a service, such as a WebLogic Web service 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 Developing Fusion Web Applications with Oracle Application Development Framework.

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 Understanding Oracle Web Services Manager.

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—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 Services Security Standards" in Understanding Oracle Web Services Manager. 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,
Optimizing XML transmission	Fast Infoset—Compressed binary encoding format that provides a more efficient serialization than the text-based XML format. Fast Infoset optimizes both document size and processing performance.The Fast Infoset specification, ITU-T Rec. X.891 and ISO/IEC 24824-1 (Fast Infoset) is defined by both the ITU-T and ISO standards bodies. The specification can be downloaded from the ITU Web site: http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-X.891-200505-I/en Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM)—Defines a method for optimizing the transmission of XML data of type xs:base64Binary or xs:hexBinary in SOAP messages.
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
Understanding Web Services	Provides an introduction to Web services for Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c.
Understanding WebLogic Web Services for Oracle WebLogic Server	Provides an introduction to WebLogic Web Services (Java EE).
Understanding Oracle Web Services Manager	Introduces Oracle Web Services Manager (OWSM) used for Web services policy attachment and management.
Administering Web Services	Describes how to secure and administer Web services.
Securing Web Services and Managing Policies with Oracle Web Services Manager	Describes how to secure Web services using OWSM policies. This document also describes how to create and manage OWSM policies.
Extensibility Guide for Oracle Web Services Manager	Describes how to build custom policy assertions for OWSM.
Interoperability Solutions Guide for Oracle Web Services Manager	Describes how to implement the most common OWSM interoperability scenarios.
Developing Fusion Web Applications with Oracle Application Development Framework	Describes how to develop ADF components.
"Developing and Securing Web Services" in Developing Applications with Oracle JDeveloper	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.